other people, and then of oneself, and finally the lie in the heart, which means in effect the situation is out of control. When this stage is reached, if one does lack confidence, one is blissfully unaware of it; and if one's lack of confidence is progressively increasing, one is unaware of that too. All one is aware of is that one's confidence, in some respects, is increasing; and if side by side one's lack of confidence is increasing too, one is unaware of it, and can afford to disregard it. And so gradually as one becomes older, one becomes more set in one's ways, more limited in the things one dares to attempt, more obstinate in the things one refuses to attempt. One's consciousness becomes progressively hardened. One's pleasures become progressively more sophisticated; the glass of port after dinner, rather than stumbling out of bed to watch the dawn as one does occasionally in one's youth.
But in fact this is too superficial an approach. All actions are the natural and spontaneous expression of the nature of the person putting the actions into practice, having regard to the situation and circumstances in which the actor finds himself. Figs do not grow on thistles. If an action is confident, it means that in the circumstances in which he found himself the actor was confident. If the action lacked confidence, it means that in the circumstances in which he found himself the actor was not confident. In the main it is safe to say that people act according to their natures. Even the evil man doing good is no exception, because as Bonhoeffer has pointed out, that is almost worse than the good man doing evil. In other words, if it is true that, for most of us, our actions are a putting into practice of confidence and lack of confidence at the same time, and if it is true that generally our actions are an expression of the totality of ourselves in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, then it follows that both the confidence and the lack of confidence are functions of the totality of ourselves - or in picture language permeate all our limbs and our…