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Updated: May 18, 2025
A great poet has told us that the things which lead life to sovereign power are self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control.
Thus there is disclosed the slowly-won and slowly-revealed secret of modern Philosophy, that the knowledge which is indispensable, which is necessary as the consummation and key-stone of all other knowledge, is knowledge of the knowing-self, self-knowledge, or, as it is sometimes more technically called, self-consciousness, with the corollary that this knowledge cannot be won by any methods known to or specially characteristic of Science or Art or Religion.
Jennie Montgomery was also a maiden of sound intellectual ability. Her fund of reading was extensive. She never allowed a day to pass without devoting two hours to good solid reading. Pope was a constant friend, as was also Wordsworth, and few could give a better exposition of the mental depth of this metaphysical poet, his self-knowledge and his keen realization of the depth of such knowledge.
Hence it follows that man can discern and see all the stains with which he has wilfully or involuntarily defiled his life, that man by means of his self-knowledge can decide to subdue his passions, to despise his pleasures and desires, to wage the battle of repentance, and to be just at any cost, and by the fundamental virtues of humanity, piety, and justice, to imitate the virtues of the Father.... In such perfection as is possible to all, even to women and to slaves, since no one is a slave by nature, the wise man is truly rich.
'Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; we, too, have had a poet who taught this. And so dignity of manner is very marked amongst this people. It is cultivated as a gift, as the outward sign of a good heart. 'A rough diamond; no Burman would understand this saying. The value of a diamond is that it can be polished.
Is it over-fanciful to think that in the master Prospero we have the type of Imagination? in Ariel, of the wonder-working and winged Fantasy? in Caliban, of the half-animal but serviceable Understanding, tormented by Fancy and the unwilling slave of Imagination? and that there is something of self-consciousness in the breaking of Prospero's wand and burying his book, a sort of sad prophecy, based on self-knowledge of the nature of that man who, after such thaumaturgy, could go down to Stratford and live there for years, only collecting his dividends from the Globe Theatre, lending money on mortgage, and leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips with neighbors?
These startling truths fastened themselves at last upon his conviction, breaking through his worldliness and all the hard accumulations which a life of underground politics had heaped upon a nature capable of great good. It was not without a struggle that the Mayor had yielded himself to this true self-knowledge.
But but That large, respectable project, the increase of wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming of wars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on
Owing to this lack of self-knowledge, he is convinced that his "culture" is the consummate manifestation of real German culture; and, since he everywhere meets with scholars of his own type, since all public institutions, whether schools, universities, or academies, are so organised as to be in complete harmony with his education and needs, wherever he goes he bears with him the triumphant feeling that he is the worthy champion of prevailing German culture, and he frames his pretensions and claims accordingly.
From the households that followed this way have come men that could rule themselves as well as their fellows, women that could be trusted as well as loved. Read the history of such families, and you will understand the truth of the poet's words: "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
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