Motes and Beams

It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less henious than the offenses of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.

But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has never told not one, but a hundred?

There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of gratness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more oppotunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same.

For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every anction in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind, the world would consider me a monster of depravity. The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take our selves not too seriously.

henious a. 极邪恶的，极糟糕的 occasion v. 引起，惹起 untoward a. 意外的，异常的 condone v. 宽恕，原谅 trivial a. 微不足道的 hotchapotch n. 混合体，大杂烩 depravity n. 腐化，堕落 eminent a. 著名的，杰出的 scorn n/v 轻蔑；鄙视 virtue and vice 善与恶 For all I know 据我所知 To take a trivial instance 举一个小例子

至于我自己，我不认为自己会比大多数人更好或更差，但是我知道，如果我记下我生命中的每一个行动和每一个掠过我心头的想法的话，世人将会把我看成一个邪恶的怪物。