Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely
altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember
walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often
heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I
had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing
in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he
believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen,
my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him,
"Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For
I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally
than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty
and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men
who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said
mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in
themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I
retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from
whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That
elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room,
he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience
instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that
believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors
who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would
be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail because he believes
in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete
self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a
hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote:
the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is
written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made
this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe in
himself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I