estimate of the value of this evil of physical pain. For thus we can realize the strength of the will that seeks to escape it, and can act with due respect to this will. But nature generally gives us enough experience of pain to furnish excellent material for the calculations needed. Therefore, bodily pains, save as punishments, are seldom useful instruments for our great purpose. Not thus can self be duly mortified.
It is different with certain mental pains. All those that tend to make the individual feel his own necessary limitations, and thereby to approach the realization of the great world of life about him, are necessary evils. His will must be overwhelmed, that the Universal Will may have place to establish itself in him. Therefore, without considering whether we are thereby increasing or diminishing the sum of human misery, we all of us unhesitatingly set about the work of contending with blind self-confidence and self-absorption wherever it may appear. Therefore it is right that we ridicule all pretentious mediocrity that is unconscious of its stupidities. Therefore, in fact, it is right that we should criticise unsparingly all pretenders, however much they may be pained by our criticism. Therefore it is well that we should feel not a selfish but a righteous joy whenever pride has a fall, whenever the man who thinks that he is something discovers of a truth that he is nothing. Therefore, also, do we put down excessive forwardness and vanity in growing children, although so to do hurts their sensitive young selfishness very keenly. In all such ways we must ask and we must
