ABSTRACT
I do not mean to suggest that conceit is confined to the Scottish nation. Almost everybody is more or less conceited, and few of us would be able to support life unless we exaggerated our own merits. The only kind of man who can avoid doing this and yet be happy is a man whose genuine merits are transcendent and universally acknowledged. When the Duke of Wellington was in Paris in the year 1814, it was thought that his life was in danger from conspirators, and the British Government wished to remove him to some other post on the grounds that his life was too valuable to be exposed to unnecessary risk. The Duke entirely concurred in this view. In writing to the Prime Minister, he says: ‘In case of the occurrence of anything in Europe, there is nobody but myself in whom either yourselves, or the country, or your Allies would feel any confidence.’6 This was true and is not therefore to be called conceited. There was a proposal to send him to America to command the British forces in the war against the United States, but he resisted this proposal on the grounds that not even he could win victories there. He had, in fact, a perfectly just and objective estimate of his capacities, but this was only possible because his capacities were sufficient to satisfy anyone’s self-esteem.
