that he had been Quaestor
in the other division of the island, at Lilybaeum. "There was no use in
thinking any more about it," says Cicero. "I gave up being angry and
determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." Yes, he had
been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in
that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had
he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quaestors,
and been conscious that he had done it.

Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own
words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound
to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own
favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's
praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed
judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the
nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader will not
be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must
be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own
dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for honor, probity,
industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues
are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be
altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has not been presumed that
Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. He was honest and
industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. So much is
acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of
himself is false. If a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most
private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit
occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed
at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced
such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been
attained have been seen and valued. A man will not sorrowfully regret
that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to
the glory of the first. But Cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken
as proof against himself. All manner of evil is argued against him from
his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he
speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity.
On the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to