y and hatred between different classes of men,
it is due less to exterior conditions than to an interior fatality.
Conflicting interests and differences of situation dig ditches between
us, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and in
reality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: "There is
nothing in common between you and us."

* * * * *

We have not finished with pride, but it is impossible to picture it
under all its forms. I feel most resentful against it when it meddles
with knowledge and appropriates that. We owe our knowledge to our
fellows, as we do our riches and power. It is a social force which ought
to be of service to everybody, and it can only be so when those who know
remain sympathetically near to those who know not. When knowledge is
turned into a tool for ambition, it destroys itself.

And what shall we say of the pride of good men? for it exists, and makes
even virtue hateful. The just who repent them of the evil others do,
remain in brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despise
others for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity,
and their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for their
vanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, like
authority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth and
arrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters in
man traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight of
it repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguish
with its benefits feel as though they had been slapped in the face.

To resume and conclude, it is an error to think that our advantages,
whatever they are, should be put to the service of our vanity. Each of
them constitutes for him who enjoys it an obligation and not a reason
for vainglory. Material wealth, power, knowledge, gifts of the heart and
mind, become so much cause for discord when they serve to nourish
pride. They remain beneficent only so long as they are the source of
modesty in those who possess them.

Let us be humble if we have great possessions, for that proves that we
are great debtors: all that a man has he owes to someone, and are we
sure of being able to pay our debts?

Let us be humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others in
our hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitness
for so grave a role.

Let us b