bit like Thomas's ideal John, and neither of them is like the real John,
and so it comes about that John and Thomas--that is, you and I--get at
cross purposes.

If I (John) could have your (Thomas's) glimpse of myself, my appearance, my
manner, my conduct, and so on, it would serve as a valuable corrective. It
would give that faculty of self-criticism which most of us lack. That
faculty is simply the art of seeing ourselves objectively, as a stranger
sees us who has no interest in us and no prejudice in our favour. Few of us
can do that except in fleeting flashes of illumination. We cannot even do
it in regard to the things we produce. If you paint a picture, or write an
article, or make a joke, you are pretty sure to be a bad judge of its
quality. You only see it subjectively as a part of yourself--that is, you
don't see it at all. Put the thing away for a year, come on it suddenly as
a stranger might, and you will perhaps understand why Thomas seemed so cool
about it. It wasn't because he was jealous or unfriendly, as you supposed:
it was because he _saw_ it and you didn't.

Even great men have this blindness about their own work. How else can we
account for a case like Wordsworth's? He was one of the three greatest
poets this country has produced, and also an acute critic of poetry, yet he
wrote more flat-footed commonplace than any man of his time. Apparently he
didn't know when he was sublime and when he was merely drivelling. He
didn't know because he never got outside the hypnotism of self.

I have sometimes felt angry with that phrase, "What do they know of
England, who only England know?" It is the watchword of a shallow
Imperialism. But I felt a certain truth in it once. I was alone in the
Alps, in an immense solitude of peak and glacier, and as I waited for the
return of my guide, who had gone on ahead to prospect, I looked, like