The French express this
sentiment by the term, AMOUR PROPRE, but as they also express
self-love as well as vanity by the same term, there arises thence
a great confusion in Rochefoucault, and many of their moral
writers.]
arises from the endowments of courage and capacity, industry and
ingenuity, as well as from any other mental excellencies. Who, on
the other hand, is not deeply mortified with reflecting on his
own folly and dissoluteness, and feels not a secret sting or
compunction whenever his memory presents any past occurrence,
where he behaved with stupidity of ill-manners? No time can
efface the cruel ideas of a man's own foolish conduct, or of
affronts, which cowardice or impudence has brought upon him. They
still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts,
and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most
odious colours imaginable.
What is there too we are more anxious to conceal from others than
such blunders, infirmities, and meannesses, or more dread to have
exposed by raillery and satire? And is not the chief object of
vanity, our bravery or learning, our wit or breeding, our
eloquence or address, our taste or abilities? These we display
with care, if not with ostentation; and we commonly show more
ambition of excelling in them, than even in the social virtues
themselves, which are, in reality, of such superior excellence.
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