Self-criticism

“ Let their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of being alive.
One has shrewdly to examine his fellow men from this angle: "Does he work up his own steam; are his boilers of energy heated by his own enthusiasm and his own self-approval? Or does he borrow; can he work only if others add their fire to his; does his light go out if his neighbors turn away or are too busy to help him?" ”

“ Self-criticism is in terms of one's contribution or defects in his contribution to the cause, to the movement, the struggle, etc.; and gives a positive individual commitment to the mission of the group. ”

“ Criticism, if sincere, only expresses what it perceives clearly. For it, personal evidence becomes a guarantee.
But, it will be said, criticism is often the expression of severity. Would you have it the expression of culpable indulgence? When severe, it is an element tending towards self-control; too indulgent, it can only foster vanity. The mission of criticism is not to determine our actions; its duty is to judge them to its own satisfaction. ”

“ I won't say your criticism was eminent for the time and place—I'll say, frankly, that it was eminent in itself, and all full of suggestion. The fact is, however, that one is so aware one's self, even to satiety, of the rights and wrongs of these matters—especially of the wrongs—that freshness of mind almost fails for discriminations, however benevolent, of others. Such is the price of having written many books and lived many years. ”

“ Criticism is ever concerned with archetypal excellence, is continually disengaging, with fine discrimination, what is transitory and accidental from what is permanent and essential in all that man busies himself about, and is thus perpetually helping every individual to the apprehension of his “best self,” to the development of what is real and absolute and the elimination of what is false or deforming. ”

“ Extreme suffering caused to contemporary writers by the Shakespeare legend....
“Another form of opposition to these obsessions is the creation of countervailing reputations. Certain people in certain ages have resolved to set up Great Men of their own to put beside these Brocken spectres from the past. This marks a certain stage of social development, the beginning of self-consciousness in a civilized community. Self-criticism always begins in self-flattery. ”

“ But if, turning from suppositions, which we can not here discuss, but which we believe to be at the mercy of criticism, we hold, as the only conclusion possible, that the character of the man is not what is made, but what makes itself, out of and from the disposition and environment; and if, again, we suppose that everything, which exists outside the self, must, to make that definite self which we know, be fused together in the self, in such manner as to be one thing or another thing, or well-nigh anything, according to the quality of the whole individuality ”

“ There is one form which persistency takes that is peculiarly trying: I mean that persistency of opinion which deems it necessary to stop and raise an argument in self-defence on the slightest personal criticism. ”

“ But because it is self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to be too high and its condemnation too severe. In the final stage literary criticism becomes less self-conscious, less ardent, and more detached and philosophical towards native literature. ”

“ But the lively arts can bear the same357 continuous criticism which we give to the major, and if the criticism itself isn’t bogus there is no reason why these arts should become self-conscious in any pejorative sense. ”

“ This exaggerated sense of self-importance brings with it not only the tendency to criticise everything not in accordance with each person's notion of what is right or expedient, but, inasmuch as conflicting currents of thought and action are unavoidable, a profound feeling of dissatisfaction with one's own environment. ”

“ To say ‘thoughts of what is and is to be, exist in you, are in your head, and then you carry them out, and that is action,’ is futile; because these thoughts, if desired, are not merely in me, they are felt to be mine, ideally to be myself, and, when they are carried out, that therefore is self-realization.
Or shall we be told that ‘to talk of carrying out is nonsense. In action we produce changes in things and in ourselves, answering to thoughts: things resemble thoughts, but, strictly speaking, thought is not realized, because that is unmeaning’? ”

“ The truth is we have been very much interested by your notion—if it was yours, which is not altogether probable—and we have been turning its light upon our own experience, in what we should not so much call self-celebration as self-exploitation. One uses one's self as the stuff for knowledge of others, or for the solution of any given problem. There is no other way of getting at the answers to the questions."
"And what is your conclusion as to my notion, if it is mine?" the veteran observer asked, with superiority. ”

“ Personal ideals have swung historically between two magnets, richness and purity, self-expression and self-repression, indulgence and asceticism. The crux of the individual's problem is the question how much repression is necessary ”

“ He does not adopt an opinion ‘deliberately or for money’; yet his conscience is at the mercy of the first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his head; he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper.—One cause of this phenomenon is perhaps his want of a regular education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring excess. ”

“ He sees himself in all he sees. And this self that a man sees crystallized in all his world of sense, of society, and of philosophy, is simply his own fashion of conduct, his busy world-building temperament. ”

“ What will all my self-esteem avail, if the world calls me a simpleton because, under the ban of my passion, I neglected my studies and social interests? If I am pointed at as an incapable man, shall I not sink in my own eyes? ”

“ Well then, just as we must accept the teaching that ‘all is relative to self,’ but supplement and correct it with the teaching that ‘myself also is relative’; so we must accept the teaching of the selfish theory that I can will myself only, but correct it by the addition ‘and yet the self which is myself, which is mine, is not merely me.’ Hence that all willing is self-realization is seen not to be in collision with morality. ”

“ The collection of evil habits and desires, which before had no identity beside the feeling of self-assertion, is now thought of as one, and gets a general character. It does this of course by its antagonism to the good. The common point in all bad self-assertions, their opposition to good, is recognized, and in all these realizations the self knows it is bad. ”

“ For, by the laws of spirit, in the right Is every individual character That acts in strict consistence with itself: Self-contradiction is the only wrong. ”

“ Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, form another accusation against men of genius; but the complexion of self-praise must alter with the occasion; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity, and the consciousness of superiority seem envy—to Mediocrity. It is we who do nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who are so much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence, self-admiration, which with the man of genius may often be nothing but an ostensible modification of the passion of glory. ”

“ But though the natural impulses of the will are thus the work of the self-realising principle in us, it is not in their gratification that this principle can find the satisfaction which is only to be found in the consciousness of becoming perfect, of realising what it has it in itself to be. In order to any approach to this satisfaction of itself the self-realising principle must carry its work farther. ”

“ Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. ”

“ From this continual reaction of your mind on your heart, from this insatiable need of occupying your thoughts, is born the fatal habit of self-examination, that entices you to such horrid study of your own conduct, and the spirit of analysis that leads you to the discovery of such unworthy motives in others. ”

“ And by selfishness, I do not precisely understand a vulgar self-interest, or an ordinary ambition, but that absolute will or conduct which springs from some unalterable resolution, which, hurrying from one extreme to another, is sure to produce a perpetual alternation of extreme measures. ”

“ Both other selves and my own self are intellectual constructions, each as secure as we can expect special facts to be. But, if any one stands out for demonstration, then neither is demonstrated. And, if this demand is pressed, you must remain with a feeling about which you can say nothing, and which is, emphatically, not the self of any one at all. ”

“ To go farther than this, and say that the mind as the representative of truth, is or ought to be interested in things as they are really and truly interesting in themselves, without any reference to the manner in which they immediately affect the individual, is to destroy at once the foundation of every principle of selfishness, which supposes that all objects are good or bad, desirable or the contrary, solely from their connection with self. ”

“ Another habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant on conventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's self at every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and the examination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own mental attitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good living. But quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation of one's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece of mechanism. ”

“ In moral self-assertion the materials used may be drawn from any source, and they may belong to any world. They may, and they must, largely realize ends which visibly transcend my life. But it is self-assertion when, in applying these elements, I am guided by the idea of the greatest system in myself. If the standard used in measuring and selecting my material is, in other words, the development of my individual perfection, then my conduct is palpably not self-sacrifice, and may be opposed to it. It is self-sacrifice when I pursue an end by which my individuality suffers loss. ”

“ Self-respect, self-help, application, industry, integrity—all are of the nature of habits, not beliefs. Principles, in fact, are but the names which we assign to habits; for the principles are words, but the habits are the things themselves: benefactors or tyrants, according as they are good or evil. It thus happens that as we grow older, a portion of our free activity and individuality becomes suspended in habit; our actions become of the nature of fate; and we are bound by the chains which we have woven around ourselves. ”

“ And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found) , who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they exhibit. ”

“ Now this disposition to skulk the austere requirements of intellectual growth in an indolent surrender of the mind's power of self-direction must be overcome at the outset, or, in spite of your grand generalities, you will be at the mercy of every bullying lie, and strike your colors to every mean truism, and shape your life in accordance with every low motive, which the strength of genuine wickedness or genuine stupidity can bring to bear upon you. ”

“ By this excessive analysis you can transform an act of self-sacrifice into an act of narrow egotism, an excuse into a meanness, a certainty into an hypothesis, or a sincere affection into a selfish pretence. ”

“ And this, as soon as the decomposing process is finished, which in the as yet undecided will, or its mixed states, separates and distinguishes between the good voice and the evil inclination—remains to us as our own Ego and our proper self. ”

“ Now intellectual self-esteem requires us to believe that our thinking is purely disinterested and that our public spirit and philanthropy are untainted by any self-seeking. The terminology of psychology in its elevated character promotes this self-deception, and is in part designed to do so. ”

“ Such a disposition shows itself at once in self-gratulatory contemplation of its own parts and endowments, dwelling on these in complacent indolence, commonly accompanied by contemptuous disparagement of the personal qualities and gifts of others;—while, on the contrary, he who is constantly urged on by the Idea has no time left to think of his own personality;—lost with all his powers in the object he has in view, he never weighs his own capacities of grasping it against those of other men. ”