A Man Unconscious of His Faults

It was said of a well-known person of the past, “Her vanity was too fundamental for her to profit by the stern lessons of experience. She could not face the fact that she was wrong, so she was unable to reform herself.”

This is a basic and penetrating theme: the admission of wrong, the willingness to face facts, to admit our own errors. What prevents it is sometimes pride, sometimes stubbornness, sometimes actual ignorance.

An eminent observer has this to say: “What progress can there be for a man unconscious of his faults? Such a man has lost the fundamental element of growth, which is the realization that there is something bigger, better, and more desirable than the condition in which he now finds himself. In the soil of self-satisfaction, true growth has poor nourishment . . . Heaven pity the man who is unconscious of a fault! Pity him also who is ignorant of his ignorance!”

Repentance, of course, is a great and indispensable principle⎯and yet repentance is impossible without the recognition of error, without admitting a mistake, without sincere searching of ourselves. So long as we rationalize and justify ourselves in wrongdoing, so long as we pamper our weaknesses and use the example of others who do wrong as a reason or excuse for ourselves, so long as we do not really reach for the improvement or perfection of which the Master spoke⎯so long as we surrender to our appetites and vanities, and justify and cover up our errors rather than seek to correct them⎯we shall not make much progress toward improvement.

“She could not face the fact that she was wrong, so she was unable to reform herself.” “What progress can there be for a man unconscious of his faults?” As Carlyle commented: “The greatest of faults . . . is to be conscious of none.”