SHAKING HANDS WITH ONESELF.
WHY is self-congratulation so dangerous P From time immemorial it has been observed to bring disaster. From one end of the world to the other we all fear it.
Ancient men of letters and modern women of no education hold the same superstition, if superstition it can be called.
" Something was bound to go wrong," said the mother of a family in Southwark a day or two ago, in excuse for an unfor- tunate mistake which she had made in the complicated pre- liminaries necessary to the carrying out of her most cherished ambition—i.e., the apprenticing of her son. " Something was bound to go wrong ! I felt so pleased yesterday to think how well I was managing. I shook hands with myself, so to speak, and then something always goes wrong." It is horribly true ; but why is it ? The odd thing is that the mental prick we experience when we have " shaken hands with ourselves" is almost like a prick of conscience. There is a suggestion of remorse in it. Yet a moderate indulgence in self-congratulation can hardly be reckoned a moral offence, and, if it is, the temptation to it is some- times overwhelming. Now and then we must congratulate ourselves, whatever we risk by it. Our wits, perhaps, have brought us success. We can no more keep it to ourselves than a child can conceal a gift. We feel particularly well and we cannot help speaking about it, any more than a boy can help whistling. We have done right, with a great effort and great efforts leave sometimes an irresistible craving for recognition. It is a symptom of moral fatigue. We feel that we cannot go on without a congratulation from some one, and there is not always anyone else to do it. Even from the sternest point of view, while it may be wrong to congratulate oneself on cleverness and kindness, it can hardly be wrong to con- gratulate oneself on exceptional freedom from colds in the head. Yet all three offences are equally liable to punishment, or so it seems. An instant expression of repentance is con- sidered sometimes to avert the evil. We see the delinquent pause in his talk, and we perceive that he has received some warning which has put him in fear. A courageous person will often do no more than touch wood, while the timid will set deliberately to work to unsay all they have been saying, and, till they have taken hack every assertion, no absurd stories of the ways in which Japanese and Indians avert the evil eye will avail to restore their peace of mind.
There are a few serious and religious people who tell one that this whole theory about the ill-luck of boasting is not only foolish but wicked. Such nonsense, they argue, reflects upon the character of the Creator. This argument has always seemed to the present writer to be illogical, unless we push it to its extreme and say that all vague fears witness to want of faith. If we are to allow all morally incom- prehensible penalties to influence our conception of the Deity, we shall not have a very adequate notion of His attributes. What are the wages of heroism, as a rule ? Does the misfortune of the hero reflect upon the character of his Maker ? The same instructors will reprove us if we shiver at the thought of a curse pronounced against us. But why, if curses are certainly innocuous, is it so great a sin to put a curse upon anyone ? and we are all agreed that all curses which convey the real wish of the speaker, and are not mere expletives, are nothing short of Wicked.
It is true that in Hebrew literature not much is written about the dangers of self-congratulation. The classics feared it far more than did the prophets. Job maintained his own absolute integrity both of purpose and action, but the Book of Job is a drama whose scene is laid in the human soul, and if we refuse to understand its obvious purpose, and accentuate the thin framework of the story, we shall be obliged to admit that Job, though his luck turned at last, was very unlucky. It is impossible to deny that all forms of self-congratulation are deprecated in the New Testament, wherein several very "hard sayings" relate to the matter— sayings which yet strike the most casual reader as obviously true, though he may wish he could see it otherwise. But if we admit all this, and we think most people do in practice—with many apologies for superstition—admit it, must we conclude that self-distrust is a desirable state of mind? It certainly is not. Self-reliance might be called one of the cardinal virtues, and even those who might be supposed to be prejudiced—those, we mean, who suffer most acutely from self-distrust—will hardly venture to regard their infirmity as a grace. It is a defect for which we ought to feel pity, because it is accompanied by so much pain. It is a sort of private panic, self-generating and not contagious, demora- lizing the energies and rendering even exceptional ability ineffectual. It has no direct connexion with humility, though it may, through its relation to shyness, have some distant kinship with that rare virtue. It is not such an ugly quality as self-satisfaction, but it is doubtful if it is in itself a much better one. It is simply one manifestation of fear. To advise self-distrust as a cure for self-satisfaction is like advising an adventurous man to go to bed and stop there. He will thus avoid accident as certainly as he will lose health.
There is, of course, a great deal of superstition which is allied to what is to our minds the very real danger of self- congratulation. All those absit omen expedients (if we may be allowed the adjective) for averting the evil eye are unde- niably superstitious, but the feeling which gives rise to them may yet be reasonable. Take first of all the most morally harmless of all boasts, the boast of physical strength. Is it not very possible that the state of mind which leads to the boast may be inimical to health. It may tend to relax that subconscious vigilance which is part of the instinct of self- preservation. Something warns us that when we do it we have thrown aside a safeguard, and to this warning we shall do wrong not to attend. Again, if we congratulate ourselves upon our astuteness, or even on our less petty qualities of mind, we rest from that constant effort which can alone keep our minds in full working order. As to a moral boast, we have no sooner uttered it than we have detracted somewhat from the beauty of goodness. We bring goodness down to our own level; men judge of our action as they judge of us, and sometimes their verdict is contemptuous. We do not do much harm to ourselves if we observe due moderation ; but our action is inimical to the moral health of the many, and some instinct of homogeneity gives us pause.
But what if we congratulate ourselves on sheer good fortune—that also appears to be unlucky—what law can we run counter to then ? We do not believe the two things can be brought into the same category. Good fortune is rare; when it comes it makes us happy and we expect it again—as a rule we expect in vain. We did not destroy an enchantment by a word. In the nature of things it could not last. That handshake that we suspect was part of a fleeting good time— let us not regret it.
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