o other people.

It is surprising, when once we come to recognize it, how we are in
an almost chronic state of posing to ourselves. Fortunately, a clear
recognition of the fact is most effectual in stopping the poses. But
they must be recognized, pose by pose, individually and separately
stopped, _and then ignored_, if we want to free ourselves from
ourselves entirely.

The interior posing-habit makes one a slave to brain-impressions
which puts all freedom out of the question. To cease from such
posing opens one of the most interesting gates to natural life. We
wonder how we could have obscured the outside view for so long.

To find that we cannot, or do not, let ourselves alone for an hour
in the day seems the more surprising when we remember that there is
so much to enjoy outside. Egotism is immensely magnified in nervous
disorders; but that it is the positive cause of much nervous trouble
has not been generally admitted.

Let any one of us take a good look at the amount of attention given
by ourselves to ourselves. Then acknowledge, without flinching, what
amount of that attention is unnecessary; and it will clear the air
delightfully, for a moment at any rate.

The tendency to refer everything, in some way or another, to one's
self; the touchiness and suspicion aroused by nothing but petty
jealousy as to one's own place; the imagined slights from others;
the want of consideration given us,--all these and many more
senseless irritations are in this over-attention to self. The
worries about our own moral state take up so great a place with many
of us as to leave no room for any other thought. Indeed, it is not
uncommon to see a woman worrying so over her faults that she has no
time to correct them. Self-condemnation is as great a vanity as its
opposite. Either in one way or another there is the steady
temptation to attend to one's self, and along with it an irritation
of the nerves which keeps us from any sense of real freedom.

With most of us there is no great depth to the self-disease if it is
only stopped in time. When once we are well started in the wholesome
practice of getting rid of ourselves, the process is rapid. A
thorough freedom from self once gained, we find ourselves quite
companionable, which, though paradoxical, is without doubt a truth.

"That freedom of the soul," writes Fenelon, "which looks straight
onward in its path, losing no time to reason upon its steps, to
study them, or to dwell up