Humility is so successful that it is mistaken for pride.
It is mistaken for it all the more easily because it generally goes
with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity.
Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold;
pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please
it too much. In a word, the failure of this virtue actually lies
in its success; it is too successful as an investment to be believed
in as a virtue. Humility is not merely too good for this world;
it is too practical for this world; I had almost said it is too
worldly for this world.
The instance most quoted in our day is the thing called the humility
of the man of science; and certainly it is a good instance as well
as a modern one. Men find it extremely difficult to believe
that a man who is obviously uprooting mountains and dividing seas,
tearing down temples and stretching out hands to the stars,
is really a quiet old gentleman who only asks to be allowed to
indulge his harmless old hobby and follow his harmless old nose.
When a man splits a grain of sand and the universe is turned upside down
in consequence, it is difficult to realize that to the man who did it,
the splitting of the grain is the great affair, and the capsizing
of the cosmos quite a small one.
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