rget the grammatical rules; it is only
by long practice that a blockhead turns into a courtier, that a
passionate man becomes shrewd and worldly-wise, or a frank person
reserved, or a noble person ironical. But though self-discipline of
this kind is the result of long habit, it always works by a sort of
external compulsion, which Nature never ceases to resist and sometimes
unexpectedly overcomes. The difference between action in accordance
with abstract principles, and action as the result of original,
innate tendency, is the same as that between a work of art, say a
watch--where form and movement are impressed upon shapeless and inert
matter--and a living organism, where form and matter are one, and each
is inseparable from the other.

There is a maxim attributed to the Emperor Napoleon, which expresses
this relation between acquired and innate character, and confirms what
I have said: _everything that is unnatural is imperfect_;--a rule of
universal application, whether in the physical or in the moral sphere.
The only exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine,[1] a
substance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state cannot
compare with the artificial preparation of it.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Aventurine is a rare kind of quartz;
and the same name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling
it, which is manufactured at Murano. It is so called from the fact
that the glass was discovered by chance _(arventura)_.]

And in this connection let me utter a word of protest against any and
every form of _affectation_. It always arouses contempt; in the first
place, because it argues deception, and the deception is cowardly,
for it is based on fear; and, secondly, it argues self-condemnation,
because it means that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and
therefore something which he things better than he actually is. To
affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just to confess
that you have not got it. Whether it is courage, or learning, or
intellect, or wit, or success with women, or riches, or social
position, or whatever else it may be that a man boasts of, you may
conclude by his boasting about it that that is precisely the direction
in which he is rather weak; for if a man really possesses any faculty
to the full, it will not occur to him to make a great show of
affecting it; he is quite content to know that he has it. That is the
application of the Spanish proverb: _