ike it--it seems to me vain, and not proud,
I don't mind a kind of pride--I think a man ought to know what he is
worth: but I hate vanity. Perhaps that's only because I haven't been a
success myself."

"But mayn't you desire fame?" said Vincent. "It seems to me rather priggish
to condemn it!"

"Many fine things sound priggish when they are said," said Father Payne.
"But, to be frank, I don't think that a man ought to desire fame. I think
he may desire to do a thing well. I don't think he ought to desire to do it
better than other people. It is the wanting to beat other people which is
low. Why not wish them to do it well too?"

"You mean that the difference between pride and vanity lies there?" said
Barthrop.

"Yes, I do," said Father Payne, "and it is a pity that pride is included in
the deadly sins, because the word has changed its sense. Pride used to mean
the contempt of others--that's a deadly sin, if you like. It used to mean a
ghastly sort of self-satisfaction, arrived at by comparison of yourself
with others. But now to be called a proud man is a real compliment. It
means that a man can't condescend to anything mean or base. We ought all to
be proud--not proud _of_ anything, because that is vulgar, but ashamed
of doing anything which we know to be feeble or low. The Pharisee in the
parable was vain, not proud, because he was comparing himself with other
people. But it is all right to be grateful to God for having a sense of
decency, just as you may be grateful for having a sense of beauty. The
hatefulness of it comes in when you are secretly glad that other people
love indecency and ugliness."

"That is the exclusive feeling then?" said Barthrop.

"Yes, the bad kind of exclusiveness," said Father Payne--"the kind of
exclusiveness which ministers to self-satisfaction. And that is the fault
of the group when it becomes a coterie. The coterie means a set of inferior
people, bolstering up each other's vanity by mutual admiration. In a
coterie you purchase praise for your own bad work, by pretending to admire
the bad work of other people. But the real group is interested, not in each
other's fame, but in the common work."

"It seems to me confusing," said Vincent.

"Not a bit of it," said Father Payne; "we have to consider our limitations:
we are limited by time and space. You can't know everybody and love
everybody and admire everybody--and you can't sacrifice the joy and
happiness of real intimacy with a f