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 of men too mentally modest to believe in
the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who
doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of
old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be
convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are
too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this
intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation:
that what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his
reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of
reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs
defence. The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower
already reels.

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of