Whatever mere doctrine he may promulgate, is of inferior importance
to the spontaneous action of his concrete life, in which the True,
the Beautiful, and the Good, breathe and live. What is born
in the brain dies there, it may be; at best, it does not,
and cannot of itself, lead up to the full concrete life.
It is only through the spontaneou and unconscious fealty
which an inferior does to a superior soul (a fealty resulting
from the responsiveness of spirit to spirit), that the former
is slowly and silently transformed into a more or less
approximate image of the latter. The stronger personality
leads the weaker on by paths which the weaker knows not,
upward he leads him, though his steps be slow and vacillating.
Humility, in the Christian sense, means this fealty to the higher.
It doesn't mean self-abasement, self-depreciation, as it has been
understood to mean, by both the Romish and the Protestant Church.
Pride, in the Christian sense, is the closing of the doors of the soul
to a great magnetic guest.

Browning beautifully expresses the transmission of personality
in his `Saul'. But according to Browning's idea, personality cannot
strictly be said to be transmitted. Personality rather
evokes its LIKE from other souls, which are "all in degree,
no way diverse in kind." (`Sordello'.)

David has reached an advanced stage in his symbolic song to Saul.
He thinks now what next he shall urge "to sustain him where song
had restored him? -- Song filled to the verge his cup with the wine
of this life, pressing all that it yields of mere fruitage,
the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields glean a vintage
more potent and perfect to brighten the eye and bring blood to the lip,