delivery, self is secondary to your subject, not only in the opinion of the

audience, but, if you are wise, in your own. To hold any other view is to regard

yourself as an exhibit instead of as a messenger with a message worth

delivering. Do you remember Elbert Hubbard's tremendous little tract, "A Message

to Garcia"? The youth subordinated himself to the message he bore. So must you,

by all the determination you can muster. It is sheer egotism to fill your mind

with thoughts of self when a greater thing is there--_TRUTH_. Say this to

yourself sternly, and shame your self-consciousness into quiescence. If the

theater caught fire you could rush to the stage and shout directions to the

audience without any self-consciousness, for the importance of what you were

saying would drive all fear-thoughts out of your mind.

 

Far worse than self-consciousness through fear of doing poorly is

self-consciousness through assumption of doing well. The first sign of greatness

is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call

yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must "not look too good nor talk

too wise."

 

Nothing advertises itself so thoroughly as conceit. One may be so full of self

as to be empty. Voltaire said, "We must conceal self-love." But that can not be

done. You know this to be true, for you have recognized overweening self-love in

others. If you have it, others are seeing it in you. There are things in this

world bigger than self, and in working for them self will be forgotten, or--what

is better--remembered only so as to help us win toward higher things.