[00:11.36]It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than the offenses of others.
[00:19.55]I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them
[00:25.29]and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others.
[00:31.42]We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them,
[00:40.06]find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us
[00:48.07]and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.
[00:53.27]But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them,
[01:01.64]but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything
[01:08.16]that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance:
[01:16.71]how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie;
[01:21.82]but who can say that he has not told not one, but a hundred?
[01:28.30]There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness,
[01:36.11]of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character,
[01:44.19]or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play,
[01:51.37]but potentially they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people,
[02:01.44]but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind,
[02:09.37]the world would consider me a monster of depravity.
[02:15.35]The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others.
[02:25.31]It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable,
[02:31.99]with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.
