|
All this means that a wise person will continually watch and pray against letting this urge to self-glorification slip into his talking. The passion to find sly opportunities of patting one's self on the back is ever lying in wait for its chance. Voltaire rightly says, "Self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: — it is necessary, it is dear to us, 106 it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it." That is the essential requirement regarding ourselves in conversation, we must conceal our self-love. All culture, all salvation even, proceeds from the control, the regulation, or the sublimation of our natural urges. Self is to everyone the supremely interesting topic of conversation. A person cannot get away from it, and he may not give in to it: he must sublimate it. He must somehow make what interests the "self" of others become his own self-interest. Just as a person truly in love honestly rather talks to the loved one about her than about himself, so the truly Christian and cultured conversationalist must ever strive to make others' interests his own, and their glory, his glory. |
|||
|
