If I laugh at you, O fellow-men!
the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses,
if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions,
note the inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at
your helpless endeavours in a rashly chosen part, it is not that
I feel myself aloof from you:
the stronger to me is the proof that I share them.
How otherwise could I get the discernment?--
for even what we are averse to, what we vow not
to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself
within us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it.
No man can know his brother simply as a spectator.
Dear blunderers, I am one of you.
George Eliot,"Impressions of Theophrastus"
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