To the same cause may be attributed another of my defects, a tendency
to waver which has almost neutralized my power of giving verbal
expression to my thoughts in many matters. The priest carries his
sacred character into every relation of life, and there is a good deal
of what is conventional about what he says. In this respect, I have
remained a priest, and this is all the more absurd because I do
not derive any benefit either for myself or for my opinions. In my
writings, I have been outspoken to a degree. Not only have I never
said anything which I do not think, but, what is much less frequent
and far more difficult, I have said all I think. But in talking and
in letter-writing, I am at times singularly weak. I do not attach any
importance to this, and, with the exception of the select few between
whom and myself there is a bond of intellectual brotherhood, I say to
people just what I think is likely to please them. In the society of
fashionable people I am utterly lost. I get into a muddle and flounder
about, losing the thread of my ideas in some tissue of absurdity. With
an inveterate habit of being over polite, as priests generally are, I
am too anxious to detect what the person I am talking with would
like said to him. My attention, when I am conversing with any one,
is engrossed in trying to guess at his ideas, and, from excess of
deference, to anticipate him in the expression of them. This is based
upon the supposition that very few men are so far unconcerned as to
their own ideas as not to be annoyed when one differs from them.
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