and nobler, purer and wider,
than sorrow can ever procure. There is a certain humility that ranks
with parasitic virtues, such as sterile self-sacrifice, arbitrary
chastity, blind submission, fanatic renouncement, penitence, false
shame, and many others, which have from time immemorial turned aside
from their course the waters of human morality, and forced them into a
stagnant pool, around which our memory still lingers. Nor do I speak of
a cunning humility that is often mere calculation, or, taken at its
best, a timidity that has its root in pride--a loan at usury that our
vanity of to-day extends to our vanity of to-morrow. And even the sage
at times conceives it well to lower himself in his own self-esteem, and
to deny superior merits that are his when comparing himself with other
men. Humility of this kind may throw a charm around our ways of life,
but yet, sincere as it doubtless may be, it nevertheless attacks the
loyalty due to ourselves, which we should value high above all. And it
surely implies a certain timidity of conscience; whereas the conscience
of the sage should harbour neither timidity nor shame. But by the side
of this too personal humility there exists another humility that
extends to all things, that is lofty and strong, that has fed on all
that is best in our brain and our heart and our soul. It is a humility
that defines the limit of the hopes and adventures of men; that lessens
us only to add to the grandeur of all we behold; that teaches us where
we should look for the true importance of man, which lies not in that
which he is, but in that which his eyes can take in, which he strives
to accept and to grasp. It is true that sorrow will also bring us to
the realm of this humility; but it hastens us through, branching off on
the road to a mysterious gate of hope, on whose threshold we lose many
days; whereas happiness, that after the first few hours has nothing
else left to do, will lead us in silence through path after path till
we reach the most unforeseen, inaccessible places of all. It is when
the sage knows he possesses at last all man is allowed to possess, that
he begins to perceive that it is his manner of regarding what man may
never possess, that determines the value of such things as he truly may
call his own. And therefore must we long have sunned ourselves in the
rays of happiness before we can truly conceive an independent view of
life. We must be happy, not for happiness' sake, but so