repeated, which should, indeed, be inscribed in letters of gold over the
doors of every institution where men meet together, runs as follows:
"Envy and malice are nothing more than homage rendered to superiority."

Only those who occupy an enviable position can become objects of
calumny.

Such calumny is always the work of the unworthy, who think to advertise
their own merits by denying those of better men.

Men of resolution under such circumstances simply shrug their shoulders
and pass by.

The rest, those who are enslaved by timidity, become confused.

Their ego, which they cultivated in a fashion at once obscure and
absolute, becomes so profoundly affected that they lack all courage to
openly defend it.

Moreover, that instinctive need of sympathy, which is so marked a
characteristic of the timid, is deeply wounded, while their chronic fear
of disapprobation is strengthened by the criticisms spread abroad.

The illogicality of these sentiments is obvious. The man who is timid
shuns society, yet nevertheless the judgments of this same society are
for him a question of absorbing interest. Timidity is, in effect, a
disease of many forms, every one of which is founded upon illogicality.

It is always a mental weakness. It is sometimes vanity, but never pride,
that reasonable pride that a philosophy now abandoned once numbered as