understanding him. He is, nevertheless, sincere in his bravado, as his
dreams entirely deceive him as to his real self.

In his solitary meditations he deliberately shakes off his own
personality, as a butterfly abandons the shelter of its chrysalis, and,
following the example of that gorgeous insect, he flies away on the
wings of his dreams in the guise of the being that he imagines himself
to have become.

This creature resembles him not at all. It is brave, courageous,
eloquent. It accomplishes the most brilliant feats of daring.

In this way, just so soon as the timid man becomes intermittently a
braggart, he commences to boast of exploits quite impossible of
performance. We must remember, however, that it is not he who speaks,
but merely the idealized ego which he invents because he is chagrined at
being misunderstood.

Moral isolation is the parent of other curious phenomena. It imparts the
gift of seeing things exactly as we would wish them to be, by clothing
them little by little with a character entirely foreign to that which
they really possess.

In "Timidity: How to Overcome It," we are told the following little
personal anecdote of the Japanese philosopher Yoritomo:

"It was my misfortune as a child," says this ancient sage, "to be the
victim of a serious illness which kept me confined to a bed and unable
to move.