Almost every
obvious and direct victory has been the victory of the plagiarist.
This is, indeed, only a very paltry by-product of humility,
but it is a product of humility, and, therefore, it is successful.
Prussia had no Christian humility in its internal arrangements;
hence its internal arrangements were miserable. But it had enough
Christian humility slavishly to copy France (even down to Frederick
the Great's poetry), and that which it had the humility to copy it
had ultimately the honour to conquer. The case of the Japanese
is even more obvious; their only Christian and their only beautiful
quality is that they have humbled themselves to be exalted.
All this aspect of humility, however, as connected with the matter
of effort and striving for a standard set above us, I dismiss as having
been sufficiently pointed out by almost all idealistic writers.
It may be worth while, however, to point out the interesting disparity
in the matter of humility between the modern notion of the strong
man and the actual records of strong men. Carlyle objected
to the statement that no man could be a hero to his valet.
Every sympathy can be extended towards him in the matter if he merely
or mainly meant that the phrase was a disparagement of hero-worship.
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