A Limit to Self-Reliance

Among our fellows we ought to be as self-reliant as possible.  But in matters moral and spiritual we ought freely to confess our exigency  and ultimate inability to help ourselves.  Honesty demands it.  But to appreciate properly the need for outside help, one ought first to try to go it alone.  When the self-therapeutics of Buddhism and Stoicism and cognate systems fail, then one will have a concrete motive for the confession of impotence.

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