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The want of comprehension of her pursuits in her mother's limited range of acquaintance had greatly conduced both to her over-weening manner and to her general dissatisfaction with the world, and for the first time she was neither succumbed to, giggled at, avoided, nor put down with a grave, prosy reproof.
It may seem to us to present in many of its aspects an almost unthinkable combination of spiritualistic idealism and of gross materialism, of asceticism and of sensuousness, of over-weening arrogance when it identifies the human self with the universal self and merges man in the Divinity and the Divinity in man, and of demoralizing pessimism when it preaches that life itself is but a painful illusion, and that the sovereign remedy and end of all evils is non-existence.
Day after day the Senate sat, in solemn state, to hear its delinquencies rehearsed in the words of Paul V, by the graphic pen of his Excellency Agostino Nani, Ambassador from the Republic to the Holy See, with ceaseless repetitions of demand on the part of the Sovereign Pontiff; with ceaseless repetitions of refusal, most deferently couched, from the courtly representative of the offending power; with threats of that most dread compeller of obedience which none but a sovereign pontiff may wield; and very clearly phrased, that all might understand, the declaration in the words of his Holiness himself, that he had determined to "mortify the over-weening audacity of the secular rulers of the world."
"Therefore, my friends," said he, in conclusion, "despair not however guilty you may be, despair not however desperate your condition may seem," said he, fixing his eyes upon me, "despair not. There is nothing more foolish and more wicked than despair; over-weening confidence is not more foolish than despair; both are the favourite weapons of the enemy of souls."
It is clear, however, that he was not able fully to satisfy even his own mind; for he admits that "it will be thought that I have an over-weening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well established facts do not annihilate the theory."
For when a citizen has rendered some splendid service to his country, if to the distinction which his action in itself confers, were added an over-weening confidence that any crime he might thenceforth commit would pass unpunished, he would soon become so arrogant that no civil bonds could restrain him.
I have repeated the name of his office because he was so very much more a Commissary than a man. The spirit of his dignity had entered into him. He carried his corporation as if it were something official. Whenever he insulted a common citizen it seemed to him as if he were adroitly flattering the Government by a side-wind; in default of dignity he was brutal from an over-weening sense of duty.
His satire delighted the old gentleman, who laughed till his eyes ran over as he heard the youth, whose claims to his respect he little dreamed of, amusing him with successive imitations of the Scottish Presbyterian clergymen, of the proud and poor Hidalgo of the North, of the fierce and over-weening pride and Celtic dialect of the mountain chief, of the slow and more pedantic Lowlander, with all of which his residence in Scotland had made him familiar.
Kind, charitable, overflowing with hospitality, and remarkable for the domestic virtues and affections in an extraordinary degree, they were, notwithstanding, extremely weak-minded, and almost silly, in consequence of an over-weening anxiety to procure "great matches" for their children.
It was so foolish, and based on such foolish misconception; it sprang from such over-weening, arrogant self-opinion that it deserves the bitter punishment which will come; which is coming; which is with me now! It was the cause of something whose blackness I can't yet realise; but of which I will tell you when I can speak of it.
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