Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/75

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CHAPTER IV

VAINGLORY AND SHORTSIGHT

Vainglory is a characteristic which a Jingo-ridden people exhibits in common with the child and the savage. The naïve braggadocio of the latter, expressed in boastful claims and (where imagination is strong) in detailed invention of dangers and difficulties overcome, is rightly regarded as a note of irrationality rather than of immorality. Even Falstaff with his hundred men in buckram half credits his story as he tells it: sheer self-assertion drives the mind of the savage or the child to multiply his enemies and exaggerate their size; the delusions are genuine, and telling them to others feeds and strengthens them. Confront such a child or savage with plain fact or figure, and he will betray a most extraordinary cunning in avoiding it, so as to preserve an illusion which pampers that pride of personality which is the root of falsehood. So with a people

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