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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Try to think out any line of action that one will, or any future sequence of events or any plan touching the war, one runs into the question whether the British are doing the best that could be done or are merely plugging away. They are, as a people, slow and unimaginative, given to over-much self-criticism; but they eternally hold on to a task or to a policy.
If our theories be but tinctured with due admixture of that sound self-criticism that comes of prolonged and serious reflection and deliberation, and if the results of observation and investigation be brought forth in support of these theories, then we need have no hesitancy in permitting freedom in theorization and speculation.
If Balder Helwyse had been in a vein for self-criticism at this juncture, the review might probably have dissatisfied him. He possessed qualities which make men great. He could have discharged august offices, for he saw things in large relations and yet minutely. His mind and courage could rise to any enterprise, and carry it with ease and cheerfully.
Concentration, recollection, a profound self-criticism, the stilling of his busy surface-intellect, his restless emotions of enmity and desire, the voluntary achievement of an attitude of disinterested love by these strange paths the practical man has now been led, in order that he may know by communion something of the greater Life in which he is immersed and which he has so long and so successfully ignored.
I had only to watch him and listen to his talk across the dinner- table to realise the truth of his own witty self-criticism. When he married, he is said to have described his wife thus: "Ah! you must see my Fanny. You are sure to like her. She has all my graces and none of my airs." The said airs and graces were, of course, only a gentle and pleasant pose.
In other fields, we hope to attain to a capacity for self-criticism. We expect to learn from other men. Why should we, in the sphere of morals, lay claim to the possession of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Why should we refuse to learn from anyone? Such a position seems unreasoning. It puts moral judgments beyond the pale of argument and intelligent discussion.
Analysis and the severest self-criticism are the means of determination as to whether theory and practice conform with one another. Together with the principle of relaxation it provides the player with the most effective means of establishing precise and sensitive coöperation between mental and physical processes. Muscular relaxation at will is one of the results of this coöperation.
He had found his vocation, and his affections were fastening themselves upon his black flock, so that, without losing a particle of his home love, the yearnings homewards were appeased, and the fully employed time, and sense of success and capability, left no space for the self-contemplation and self-criticism of his earlier life. He gives amusing sketches of the scenes:
As a matter of fact, vehemently as the professors may deny it, Mark Twain was an artist of remarkable force and power. From the days when he came under the tutelage of Mr. Howells, and humbly learned to prune away his stylistic superfluities of the grosser sort, Mark Twain indubitably began to subject himself to the discipline of stern self-criticism.
Self-criticism, being a second incipient artistic impulse, contrasting itself with the one which a work embodies, may to some extent modify the next performance. If life is drawn largely into this deepening channel, physical proficiency and its ideal sanctions will develop more or less harmoniously into what is called a school of art.
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