Life, which is so humdrum, from time to time turns shabbily operatic, and tempts me to
improvise a bogus role, which my pride then forbids me to give up. I hope to prove that I am not playing a part by continuing to play it in the same vein. What laughable airs I’m forced to put on, in order to appear as if I were behaving naturally.
Some people are so proud that they have to act as if they were vexed by their own successes in order to scarf their ebullience. Others try to veil their embarrassment by pretending to be elated.
They need to work up their affectations, since they blush to seem so affected.
Some proud people would have you believe that they were all the time purposing to do the very thing that exigencies have forced them to do, or else that they are behaving on impulse when they have in fact computed minutely how their acts will be regarded by the world. They become the captives of chance, in order to prove that they are free. They make fools of themselves by pretending that they don’t mind what others think of them.
Some people acknowledge their blunders in order to show that they don’t mean a thing to them, or else they persevere in them for the same reason. They put themselves to shame by
persisting in the pranks and antics that have shamed them, in order to prove that they have not.
They hope to hide that they have gone wrong by continuing to go wrong in the same way. So they exacerbate small indiscretions into grand calamities. They fancy that if they behave with unswerving absurdity, no one will notice how absurdly they are behaving.
3 Modesty
We are as self-effacing as we have to be, but we are as pretentious as we can get away with.
Most of us pretend to be meek from prudence and good policy, but some do so out of a circuitous pride. We may speak bashfully to savour our strength in overmastering or
underestimating ourselves. We take pleasure in our icy strictness when we judge our efforts so astringently. Some people use deference as Socrates used self-derision, to lure their dupes into a trap that will lay bare their fatuity more starkly. And some fools seem self-abasing, since they lack the wit to be anything but foolish. Some proud people put on an ostentatious modesty, to show that they are superior to what they are prized for, and to make clear how cheap they count most praise. They decline panegyrics, since they know how valueless they are. They class their worth so far above most people’s, that they feel no call to boast to them. They parry some
compliments, since they feel that they fail to do full justice to their vast talents. Shrewd climbers speak reticently of the success that they have gained, to screen how insistently they sought it.
We are ashamed to expose our pride, but we are proud to flaunt our meekness. Watch out that you don’t overplay your lowliness, lest others spot how highly you rate yourself. Those who are genuinely modest are chary of advertising their modesty, since they have no wish to draw attention to it. But the falsely demure turn down praise before it has even been proffered to them. The winding trail of their humility leads straight to their pride. ‘All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise,’ as Johnson wrote.
If you can’t flatter yourself that the world appreciates you, you can at least flatter yourself that it undervalues you.
Even unfeignedly diffident people take themselves more seriously than you could guess. ‘The most humble,’ Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, ‘think better of themselves than their best friends think of them.’ Some people have to overdo their humility, since they overrate their success. The vastness of their accomplishments shocks them into modesty.
All of us are modest, since none of us is quite so mad as to let slip how well we think of our own merits, because we know that the world is too foolish to share our view. I take care not to boast to those who might not agree with me, or to run down my merits to those who might. ‘We find it easy to reprimand ourselves on one condition,’ says Ebner-Eschenbach, ‘so long as no one else concurs with us.’
Many people feel that they have no need to boast, but they think that others still need to hear of their phenomenal successes.
Some people will go to a world of trouble to prove to others that they have nothing to prove.
Pride prods some people to flaunt themselves, and some, like T. E. Lawrence, to bury themselves. Some who lust to be noticed still long to be anonymous, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot,’ as Pope phrased it. Infected with a fever for renown, they find relief in dreams of obscurity. Though they may be glad to stay in the shade, they still begrudge others when they shine. Hermits dream of adoring crowds who wait at the mouth of their cave to hear the world-redeeming wisdom which they’ve gleaned in their retreat.
Some people are so proud that they refuse to laugh at their own foibles. Others are so sure of themselves that they are always game to. Pity those who have no one to contest their
compulsory self-deprecation.
I know my place so well, that I am the hub of the world, that I feel that others ought to know theirs too, that they are not. So how is their sight so clouded, when I can see so clearly?
Season your boasts with a spoonful of self-deprecation, and most people will swallow them whole.
How obscenely our natural self-belief shows through our skimpy and synthetic modesty.
I presume that my meekness will make people see how much they have underestimated me, but unfortunately I overestimate how insightful they are.
I think it right that others ought to be modest, but that they only fake it, whereas I am sincerely modest, but ought not be. We don’t believe what our modesty makes us say, and that is exactly why we do believe that we are modest. I hope that people will discern that I am unreservedly but mistakenly meek. I want them to doubt what my forced humility feigns to believe, and yet still see that I am humble at heart. I am convinced by my own self-effacement, but I trust that others won’t be. I hope that this is the one pose of mine that they will have the wit to see through. I count on them to read between the lines of my lowliness, and I’m chagrined when they take it literally. ‘He who speaks humbly of himself,’ wrote Multatuli, ‘grows angry if you believe him and furious if you pass on what he says.’
By observing people who do modest jobs with an unselfconscious grace we can learn to bear our own dull lot.
4 Humility
A creature that was genuinely self-effacing would straightway cease to exist. How could it dare to claim for its own use a mere puff of air to breathe? Even if my pride failed to trounce my humility in a direct assault, my greed would still overrun it in its inexorable march.
I trust that unimportant people will be meek, but I overrate their meekness, as they overrate their importance. I think too well of them when I judge them to be modest, and they think so well of themselves that they are not.
We deem that obscure people ought to be meek, seeing that they are so obscure. And we deem that the great ought to be meek, seeing that they are so great. We think that the first have nothing to boast of and that the second should have no need to boast. But when did that ever stop anyone?
Humility is one of pride’s most grotesque perversions. It is conceit flattering itself that it can mortify itself. Would-be saints, like Tolstoy or Weil, who are racked by their inordinate pridefulness, trust that they can harrow their hearts into self-abasement.
I don’t doubt that there must be a horde of humble people, since I know that I at least am one.
Nothing beats the presumption of the lowly soul which can conceive of nothing more exalted and commendable than a lowly soul.
How do humble people dare to assert that humility is a duty, and expect that all the rest of us emulate their own laudable lowliness? They presume that the great must be as meek as they are. ‘One law for the lion and ox is oppression,’ as Blake wrote. Is it not more desirable to do great things and not be modest than to be modest and lose the power to do great things?
‘Humility to genius,’ Shenstone wrote, ‘is as an extinguisher to a candle.’
The meek who are to inherit the earth should doubtless be the sinless beasts of the field, and not the unrivalled but perverted predator mankind. But we will have wiped them out before they get the chance to claim their bequest.