Johann Georg Zimmermann, Essay on National Pride, to Which are added Memoirs of the Author's Life and Writings, tr. Samuel Hull Wilcocke (London, 1797), ch. XVII., pp. 221-24:
This confidence in one's own resources begets that aspiring sentiment of superiority, without which a man cannot attempt any noble deed; deprived of this confidence, the bravest man sinks into a state of dulness and inactivity, by which his soul is fettered and debased as in a narrow prison, where it should seem to be endowed with power only to endure, where the heavy load of calamity wholly presses down the heart, where every duty is a burden, the least labour dreaded, and every future prospect gloomy and cheerless. Every path to fame and honour is inaccessible to him, and his spirit lies motionless and dejected, like the hardy polar navigator, who finds himself hemmed in and surrounded on every side by a vast continent of ice. He arrives at nothing, for he aspires to nothing; and he aspires not, because he is diffident of his faculties. For this reason, we often see people of much lower merit, the foremost in the road to fortune, only because their character is more enterprising and undaunted.
It is from this same degrading and too low opinion of ourselves, that one man becomes the slave of another. I see, with heartfelt sorrow, men of merit fall into the extremest self-contempt, with regard to great men, on whom, perhaps, sometimes their fortune depends; but who do not even require this abasement.
[...] From this same too humiliating opinion of themselves, men become the slaves of their passions and unfaithful to the purposes of their creation. More confidence in their own powers would prove to them, that it is possible to be virtuous amidsl temptation, and that they may rise from the fascinating couch of luxury and pleasure triumphant over both. Were the Ascetics endowed with this confidence, they need not use such exertions to destroy the match at which love takes fire.
We become unfaithful to the purposes of our creation when we do not possess those solid principles which hardens us against suffering. Every man of understanding is of no use to society, if, in a joyless retirement of the world, he has not learned to bear with all that can wound the finer sentiments, dissipate or oppose the softness of humanity, and pierce the tenderness of heart arising from it. He ceases to exert his faculties, when he daily sees people around him, who do not know that their understanding and taste may be improved and sharpened, by a thousand things whose names they are even ignorant of; and, who of coursc heartily hate the commanding influence of understanding and taste. He snatches at momentary joys, and unnerves all the powers of his soul, to be admitted into their society. He opposes the opinions of no man, let them be ever so absurd. He pretends not to correct any prejudice or error, determined, as Tristram Shandy very justly says to his mule, «never to argue a point with any one of that family as long as he lives.»
P. 227:
. . . Confidence in one's self produces the power even of resisting time; an emulation of one's self, to surpass, by new deeds, our former ones, and to eclipse, by greater merits, those which are already acknowledged to belong to us; persevering in our career of fortune, till we overtake the fickle goddess. But the greatest minds are those who, convinced of the vicissitude of human affairs, are never over-bearing in prosperity, nor cast down in adverfity.
Hence it appears, that a noble self-esteem actually gives us the power to exalt ourselves above the weakness of human nature, to exert our talents in praise-worthy enterprises, never to yield to the spirit of slavery, never to be slaves of vice, to obey the dictates of our conscience, to smile under misfortune, and to rely upon seeing better days.
P. 229:
I heard my son once, in his fifth year, ask his mother, who pressed him to her maternal bosom, while she explained to him Plutarch's lives, «Will my life, too, be written?» Every child, nobly born, however poor his parents may be, will desire to be great; when his heart is completely touched with the genius or virtues of great men, the same virtues will germinate in his young mind, and he will burn with impatience to fill, with regard to posterity, the same post of honour which those eminent men have filled before him with such distinguished splendour. This desire of emulation will frequently burst into tears, which every father ought to reward by the fondest embraces.
Pp. 249-50:
The defects of great minds flow from their pride, when this degenerates into vanity. Dazzled by the flattery of their admirers, these demi-gods shut their ears as much to truth as the weakest princes; intoxicated with the sense of their real advantages, they do not comprehend that these are not every where current for them. Whoever always seeks applause, will always be liable to meet with mortification in the extreme, and, in fact, will seldom escape it. He will, at last, nearly look upon himself as the only being of consequence in the world, and all its other inhabitants either as his admirers or his enviers; but one of the ancients says exceedingly well: «If thou wilt not be just and righteous without the ostentation of thy justice and righteousness, thou wilt often be so with shame and derision.» The secret of the most subtle vanity is, on the other hand, nothing else than the art of making one's self prized, without either appearing to be vain or self-conceited. Cicero1 was ignorant of this art, or he would not have attracted the hatred of the Romans as he did, by the ever-recurring praise of himself and his actions; it was the text of all his orations, and never failed to offend his hearers, because he seemed to esteem his services every thing, and those of other men as nothing.
Pride is always misplaced when it cannot command respect. . . .
Pp. 251-2:
Nothing upon earth is perfect; virtue even has its vulnerable points, the sun its spots, and a conscientious prude, who has passed the ordeal of grace, may fall. We must not always judge of men who are thought great, by their writings or their words; we must also view their every action; we must study them in their lives, in their families, and in their houses, if we would rightly know them. The old and rigid Cato had a concubine as well as the philosophical emperor Marcus Antoninus, and many a modern philosopher whom I know. The greatest men are always connected with the rest of mankind by some foible or other; and yet there are few of them who are so candid as Antigonus, who, on Hermodotus saluting him as a deity and the child of the sun, told him very judiciously «to ask the servant who emptied his close-stool his opinion upon this subject.»
The greatest talents assume a hateful appearance, when they are accompanied by arrogance or break out in contempt of others. Contempt in an arrogant man consists in the affection with which he shews, without reserve, his sense of the real or imaginary inferiority of another. Contempt in a proud man consists in the sense of the real inferiority of another, which he exposes when it ought to be exposed, and conceals where it ought to be concealed. This sense is inseparable from the noblest minds, and is ever just in itself, for it is impossible that any one can mistake a cat for an elephant, or a gnat for a mountain, but it is exceedingly offensive when it discovers defects where they ought not to be observed.
1. Regarding this reproach towards Cicero, vide this previous post: Ignoring One's Own Instructions.
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