He thought himself a poor pedagogue because, as he explains in his self-analysis, whenever he got excited – which was most of the time – he ‘burst into speech without having time to weigh whether he was saying the right thing’. His ‘enthusiasm and eagerness is harmful, and an obstacle to him’, because it continually leads him into digressions, because he always thinks of ‘new words and new subjects, new ways of expressing or proving his point, or even of altering the plan of his lecture or holding back what he intended to say’.
