Torquemada tortured
people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people
morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada's time there
was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and
peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow. But a much stronger
case than these two of truth and pity can be found in the remarkable
case of the dislocation of humility.

It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned.
Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and
infinity of the appetite of man. He was always out-stripping his mercies
with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed
half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for
the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man
would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even
the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the
creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the
creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest
star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we
look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than
we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest
of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible
without humility to enjoy anything--even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty
has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ
of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be
doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been
exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is
exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The part he doubts is
exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason. Huxley
preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is
so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong
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