But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourage
others, of course. What help is there in the contemplation of
perfection ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down our
arms, we should struggle no longer, we should be hopeless, despairing,
reckless, if we never had a glimpse of growth, of those "stepping-
stones of their dead selves" upon which men mount to higher things. The
imperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details of
the process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people who
criticise, not with a view to mending matters, but because a

... low desire
Not to seem lowest makes them level all;

the people who judge, who condemn, who have no mercy on any faults and
failings but their own, and who,

... if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,

and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling that
one mistake must mar a life--anybody's life but their own, of course;
who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose lives
are one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest;
the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal
carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag
others after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has the
courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the
best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt