l teach it care in approaching the next
jump.
The only real cure for arrogance is a check--not an absolute failure.
For complete disaster is as likely to breed the arrogance of despair as
supreme triumph is to breed the arrogance of invincibility. A set-back
is the best cure for arrogance.
It would be a false assumption to suppose that temporary humiliations or
mistakes can rid one definitely and finally of the vice I am describing.
Arrogance seems too closely knit into the very fibre of early success.
The firsthand experience of youth is not sufficient to effect the
cure--and it may be that no years and no experience will purge the mind
of this natural tendency. When Pitt publicly announced at twenty-three
that he would never take anything less than Cabinet rank he was
undoubtedly arrogant. He became Premier at twenty-four. But age and
experience moderated his supreme haughtiness, leaving at the end a
residue of pure self-confidence which enabled him to bear up against
blow after blow in the effort to save the State.
Arrogance, tempered by experience and defeat, may thus produce in the
end the most effective type of character. But it seems a pity that youth
should suffer so much in the aftermath while it learns the necessary
lessons. But will youth listen to the advice of middle-age?
For every man youth tramples on in the arrogance of his successful
career a hundred enemies will spring up to dog with an implacable
dislike the middle of his life. A fault of manner, a deal pressed too
hard in equity, the abruptness by which the old gods are tumbled out to
make room for the new--all these are treasured up against the successful
newcomer. In the very heat of the strife men take no more reckon of
these things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand
battle. It is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that
breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the
conqueror. Years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed
away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young
man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a
strange or even a friendly quarter. He will stagger, as though hit from
behind with a stone, and exclaim, "Why did this man hit me suddenly from
the dark?" Then searching back in the chamber of his mind he will
remember some long past act of arrogance--conceived of at the time
merely as an exertion of legitimate p
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