The inverse type of deviation is exemplified by the man who, while not lacking a certain elan, refuses to take account of his limitations and is thus driven to magnify his stature artificially. Suppose he is present at some discussion of spiritually relevant topics: he will take part in the debate as though he were fully equipped to do so; he will claim impressions as deep as the others; he will not yield to any other man as regards intellectual proficiency or even religious stature. Thus he works himself up, as it were, to a level which he has not reached in reality—and which he may not even be able to reach, so far as it is a matter of natural capacities.

He is not without zeal; but that zeal is nourished at heart by pride. He misjudges the limitations of the natural talents which God has lent him, and consequently lapses into pretense. He is fond of speaking of things which far transcend the limits of his understanding; he behaves as though a mere mental or verbal reference to such subjects (however poorly implemented with actual knowledge and penetration) would by itself amount to their intellectual possession. This cramped attitude of sham spirituality is mostly underlain by an inferiority complex, or by a kind of infantile unconsciousness. Stupidity in its really oppressive form is traceable to this pretension to appear something different from what one is in fact, and by no means to a mere deficiency of intellectual gifts. A person who knows his position and confines himself to themes he does understand will, for all his lack of acumen, never really produce the impression of stupidity, that is to say, his fellow men will not feel embarrassed and exasperated by his intellectual weakness.

Both these attitudes—that of undue depression, and that of forced zeal, to put it briefly—are reprehensible. The supernatural readiness to change steers clear of both these dangers. The man whom it governs is cognizant, at the same time, of his natural limits and of the specific call which God has implanted in his soul. He refuses to flag, and to rest content with the lowest potentialities in his individual nature; but neither does he strain to answer a false idealized concept of himself. While he is conscious of his wretchedness, he will not sink into resignation; for he possesses a supernatural zeal for perfection, expecting the supreme fructification of the talents which God has in reality entrusted to him from his transformation in Christ, rather than from his own effort alone, Man must be sufficiently spirited to be ready to don his festive garment. Whatever his nature be like, he will know that it is possible for him to become another man if he is rightly disposed for being created anew by Christ—mindful of the words which the king in the parable addresses to his guest: “Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment?” (Matt. 22:12). The state of fluidity in relation to Christ, and the readiness to leave behind everything, particularly one’s own self—such is the tissue of which the festive garment is woven.