oples his world
involuntarily with imaginary utopias, which he begins by considering as
desirable, then as possible, and finally as actually existing.

This is the starting-point of boastfulness. It partakes at once of
falsity and of sincerity. The timid man loves to feel himself important,
and he merely pities the people whom he considers incapable of
understanding him. He is, nevertheless, sincere in his bravado, as his
dreams entirely deceive him as to his real self.

In his solitary meditations he deliberately shakes off his own
personality, as a butterfly abandons the shelter of its chrysalis, and,
following the example of that gorgeous insect, he flies away on the
wings of his dreams in the guise of the being that he imagines himself
to have become.

This creature resembles him not at all. It is brave, courageous,
eloquent. It accomplishes the most brilliant feats of daring.

In this way, just so soon as the timid man becomes intermittently a
braggart, he commences to boast of exploits quite impossible of
performance. We must remember, however, that it is not he who speaks,
but merely the idealized ego which he invents because he is chagrined at
being misunderstood.

Moral isolation is the parent of other curious phenomena. It imparts the
gift of seeing things exactly as we would wish them to be, by clothing
them little by little with a character entirely foreign to that which
they really possess.

In "Timidity: How to Overcome It," we are told the following little
personal anecdote of the Japanese philosopher Yoritomo:

"It was my misfortune as a child," says this ancient sage, "to be the
victim of a serious illness which kept me confined to a bed and unable
to move.

"I was not allowed to read and my only distraction was the study of the
objects in my immediate neighborhood.

"The pattern of a screen made a particular impression upon me with its
clusters of flowers and its bouquets of roses.

"I passed hours in the contemplation of it.

"At first I merely followed the outlines with my eye, finding in them no
more than an artistic reproduction of nature. But, little by little, the
clusters of flowers were transformed into gardens, the rose-trees took
on the imposing aspect of forests. In these gardens my dreams created a
princess, and in the forest a company of warriors.

"Then the romance began.

"Every new line I observed became the pretext for creating a new
character. The princess was very so