unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination,
which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom
entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything--
even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place.
Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled
upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about
the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part
of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not
to assert--himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he
ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility
content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble
that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we
had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time.
The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time;
but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility
than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was
a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot
that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man
doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder.
But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make
him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic
and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one
comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not
be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one,
or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race