to admit are determined
by this desire for recognition. The loud, the vulgar,
the notoriety seekers are merely extreme illustrations of a
type of self that most of us are some of the time.

SELF-SUFFICIENT MODESTY. The other extreme is exhibited
by the type of personality that is markedly averse to display
and shrinks from observation. In its intensest and possibly
least appealing form it is exhibited by people who become
awkwardly embarrassed in the presence of a stranger, however
fluent and vivacious they may be with their friends.
This type at its best may be described by the epithet of
self-sufficient modesty. To be such a person may be said to be an
achievement rather than a weakness. To be self-sufficient
and modest at the same time means that one is going about
one's business, that one is too absorbed in one's work to be
continually and anxiously noting what sort of figure one cuts
in the world. To quote Matthew Arnold's well-known lines:

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Self-Dependence._]

There are in every great university quiet great men who
steadily pursue vital and difficult researches without the
slightest reference or desire for cheap conspicuousness. In
every profession and business there are known to the
discriminating men who are experts, even geniuses in their own
field, but who shrink back from the loudness of publicity as
from a plague. There are a number of wealthy philanthropists
in all our large cities who consistently and steadily do
good works in almost complete anonymity. One finds in almost
every department of human activity these types of self-effacing
men who find their fulfillment in the work they do
rather than in moving in the aura of other people's admiration.

THE POSITIVE AND FLEXIBLE SELF. But in order to be effective
in affairs, some positive force must be displayed, and modesty
need not mean pusillanimity. A frequently observable
type of personality--and socially one of a highly desirable
sort--is the type of man who, himself standing for positive
convictions, ideas, and principles of action, and not casually
to be deflected from them, has sufficient flexibility and sensitivity
to the feelings of others, to accept modification. Such
a self not only has its initial force and momentum, but gains
as it goes by the e