In the story of Adam Bede, George Eliot describes a certain conceited person as being "like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow." I've known, as you probably have, a few persons along the way who were just about as vain as this. Remember that line by Tennyson: "One far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves?" I knew one fellow once who apparently believed himself to be that divine event. He seemed to have the idea that all of time and circumstance, up to then, had conspired to accomplish only one purpose, and that was just to get him into the world. He saw himself as creation's ultimate achievement, the apex toward which all else had forever been aimed, and beyond which nothing of any notable quality would ever appear again. There isn't much future in that.

This man John was a different type; beyond himself he saw something else, something better, something to be cherished and looked forward to. "He who is coming after me is mightier than I," says he. It is he, not I, who will do the wonderful things the world needs to have done, he says. "His winnowing fork is in his hand," and he will put everything where it belongs; he will set things right. John had a hope, an expectation. He had an outlook. In other words, he could see out. And the view was forward. He could see beyond himself, and beyond his day; and what he saw was good.