Your friends plainly see that you expect too much from
them, that you are annoyed when their duller perceptions can discover no
grounds for your annoyance, that you decline their offers of service
when they are not made in exactly the refined manner your imagination
requires. Your annoyance may seldom or never express itself in words,
but it is nevertheless perceptible in the restraint of your manner, in
your carelessness of sympathy on any point with those who generally
differ from you, in the very tone of your voice, in the whole character
of your conversation. Gradually the gulf becomes wider and wider that
separates you from those among whom it has pleased God that your lot
should be cast.

You cannot yet be at all sensible of the dangers I am now pointing out
to you. You cannot yet understand the consequences of your present want
of self-control in this particular point. The light of the future alone
can waken them out of present darkness into distinct and fatal
prominence.

Habit has not yet formed into an isolating chain that refinement of mind
and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert
into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of
total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with
such thoughts as these: "Sheep herd together, eagles fly alone,"[57]&c.

Small consolation this, even for the pain your loneliness inflicts on
yourself, still less for the breach of duties it involves.

There must, besides, be much danger in a habit of mind that leads you to
attribute to your own superiority those very unpleasantnesses which
would have no existence if that superiority were more complete. For, in
truth, if your spiritual nature asserted its due authority over the
animal, you would habitually exercise the power which is freely offered
you, of supreme control over the hidden movements of your heart as well
as over the outward expression of the lips.

I would strongly urge you to consider every evidence of your
isolation--of your want of sympathy with others--as marks of moral
inferiority; then, from your conscientiousness of mind, you would seek
anxiously to discover the causes of such isolation, and you would
endeavour to remove them.

Nothing is more difficult than the perpetual self-control necessary for
this purpose. Constant watchfulness is required to subdue every feeling
of superiority in the contemplation of your own character, and co