makes fewer mistakes if one tries to develop one's sense of professional judgment, and if one avoids the temptation to become a slave to precedent.
Expressing it in more general terms, whenever a man is of too small a calibre for the job he is in, either through youthfulness, or inexperience, or lack of strength of character, one tends to get this phenomenon of sticking rigidly to the letter, and ignoring the spirit. It is the same whether it is the small world of the law, or of social convention, or any other walk of life. And unless the tendency is resisted, it increases and spreads like a disease throughout a person's entire mind and consciousness. Whoever heard of a man being a doctrinaire in one department of his life, and at the same time being natural, carefree and easy-going in other departments? Possibly that is how you begin. But surely experience teaches that by the end, if you are a doctrinaire in one department, you are a doctrinaire in all? In conclusion therefore it seems as though real confidence must be used if it is to be retained, but if used is self-generative, and goes from strength to strength. In contrast lack of confidence tends to make a person egotistical; and the tendency if not resisted ends in greater egotism, together with a corresponding hardening of the consciousness, an inability to see things from anyone's point of view except one's own, correspondingly faulty judgment leading to mistakes, and in turn to more wilful and still blinder egotism. Confidence on the other hand is not egotistical; indeed it is its antithesis. True confidence is always selfless, or if you like - dedicated.