learning, it is because I had supposed him ignorant; if for helping
the unfortunate, I hint that I did not anticipate that he would regard
any but himself. Wherever praise appears, we cannot evade the
suggestion that excellence is a matter of surprise. And as nobody
likes to be thought ill-adapted to excellence, praise may rightly be
resented.

It is true, there is a group of cases where praise seems differently
employed. We can praise those whom we recognize as high and lifted up.
"Sing praises unto the Lord, sing praises," the Psalmist says. And our
hearts respond. We feel it altogether appropriate. We do not disparage
God by daily praise. No, but the element of disparagement is still
present, for we are really disparaging ourselves. That is the true
significance of praise offered to the confessedly great. For them, the
praise is inappropriate. But it is, nevertheless, appropriate that it
should be offered by us little people who stand below and look up.
Praising the wise man, I really declare my ignorance to be so great
that I have difficulty in conceiving myself in his place. For me, it
would require long years of forbidding work before I could attain to
his wisdom. And even in the extreme form of this praise of superiors,
substantially the same meaning holds. We praise God in order to abase
ourselves. Him we cannot really praise. That we understand at the
start. He is beyond commendation. Excellence covers him like a
garment, and is not attained, like ours, by struggle through
obstacles. Yet this difference between him and us we can only express
by trying to imagine ourselves like him, and saying how difficult such
excellence would then be. We have here, therefore, a sort of reversed
praise, where the disparagement which praise always carries falls
exclusively on the praiser. And such cases are by no means uncommon,
cases in which there is at least a pretense on the praiser's part of