One fault very common in members of any large body is conceit. The feeling
of belonging to a fine institution swallows up personal humility. You may
be more occupied with the importance and dignity of your position, than
ready to take home the idea that you yourself are a very faulty member!
Margaret Fuller, a clever American friend of Emerson's, said, "There are
so many things in the universe more interesting than my individual faults,
that I really cannot stay to dwell on them." There is one form of
conceit--or rather of self-satisfaction--to which schoolgirls are liable:
they know they are living up to the average standard imposed by public
opinion and _esprit de corps_, and they are satisfied with this, instead
of trying to live up to their own best self. It is quite possible for any
straightforward, honourable girl to live up to the average standard, and
it is very comfortable to feel satisfied. But if you are trying to live up
to the highest standard you know, you will not be comfortable--you will be
always profoundly discontented with yourself, but it will be the Divine
discontent Plato speaks of. You will be always failing, but it will be
failing nobly--the failure of one who loves the highest, and is content to
follow the highest, even though it be afar off. In King Arthur's court,
the noblest knights went in search of the Sangreal--scarcely one could
succeed in his quest, but it was nobler to aim high and fail than to be
content with "low successes." We, too, ought each to follow the quest of
the Sangreal, that is, to seek to be perfect, and then there is no room
for self-satisfaction, far less conceit.

Sometimes _esprit de corps_ not only makes us think a great deal of our
own merits, but it also makes us blind to the merits of others. We need
only put this into words, to see its smallness, but it often happens. Some
people's patriotism seems to consist in despising the French and Germans.
No one values true patriotism more than I do, but I detest
"insularity"--that insufferable feeling of superiority of which English