But people who have this faculty are generally mildly ashamed of
it; they do not believe that their fantastic adventures are likely
to happen. They only think how pleasant it would be if things
arranged themselves so. It all depends whether such dramatisation
is looked upon in the light of an amusement, or whether it is
applied in a heavy-handed manner to real life. Imaginative
children, who have true sympathy and affection as well, generally
end by finding the real world, as they grow up into it, such an
astonishing and interesting place, that their horizon extends, and
they apply to other people, to their relationships and meetings,
the zest and interest that they formerly applied only to
themselves. The kind of temperament that falls a helpless victim to
dramatic egotism is generally the priggish and self-satisfied man,
who has a fervent belief in his own influence, and the duty of
exercising it on others. Most of us, one may say gratefully, are
kept humble by our failures and even by our sins. If the path of
the transgressor is hard, the path of the righteous man is often
harder.
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