A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 9 March 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

CONFIDENT MEN!

I UKhf, are two classes of confident men in the world—egotists and egoists —and between them there is a wide gulf fixed. The former are an imitation of the latter.

But the blustering, boasting, pushing, pompous egotism, which exalts the persona I self, is the very antithesis of that calm, restrained sense of innate power and confidence which is experienced a,nd manifested by the person who has found within himself the Real Self—the Ego—and whose confidence is based upon a recognition oif its power. The former remind one of those houses which are sometimes constructed with most pretentious fronts, but with nothing at the hack to justify the fronts, and which were once humorously described by an architect who was asked the style of architecture: “Oil, it is Queen Anne in front, and Mary Ann behind.”

The egotists have false front, too—pretentious fronts, painted to look like iron, but lacking the stability even of wood:

All their goods are in tlie window; there is no stock inside the shop. They are the apes and the peacocks in the world of men, trying to pass as the. lions and the eagles. Confidence in yourself may bluff you that you ,are a worth-while person. But-, however much confidence you may have in yourself, you wilr find the world won’t have much if you are only counterfeit. The world never mistakes apes for lions, nor peacocks for eagles, for long. —M. PRESTON STANLEY.