The Apostle and the Wild Ducks/The True Vanity of Vanities

It will not, I imagine, be disputed that the one black and inexcusable kind of pride is the pride of the man who has something to be proud of. It is true that you often do hear people saying, as they say other idle and unmeaning things while they are really watching a bird fly or expecting the dinnerbell, that such and such a person is vain, but has some right to be. But you do not find these people actually regarded with anything short of the most delightful loathing; whereas the nice old donkeys who are vain without any earthly ground for vanity at all, are not only universally and rightly beloved, but are made Cabinet Ministers and Bishops, and covered with a continual admiration. And this popular feeling is right. The universal objection to the people who are proud of genuine calibre is not any mere jealousy of them; it is not a paltry or panic-stricken resentment of their admitted superiority. It is, like a great many other things which ordinary people feel in a flash and could not possibly defend, entirely philosophical. The instinct of the human soul perceives that a fool may be permitted to praise himself, but that a wise man ought to praise God. A man who really has a head with brains in it ought to know that this head has been gratuitously clapped on top of him like a new hat. A man who by genius can make masterpieces ought to know that he cannot make genius. A man whose thoughts are as high as the stars ought to know that they roll almost as regardless of his power. A man who possesses great powers ought to know that he does not really possess them.

So it certainly does in practice come about that the more right a man has to vanity the less the sensible human race permits him to be vain. The most really ennobling, the most really health-giving orders of conceit are those that concern something of which a man has no obvious right at all to be conceited, the things over which he exercises no control, which he did not create and which he could not terminate. If we want what we should all regard as the very kindliest and most harmless kind of pride a man could have, the kind of pride that does not in effect make him offensive and unbrotherly, we should all mention something like the love of country or the dim pride of some very ancient race. The people who, profess these are mostly dear old buffers, because they are proud of something they have not procured. Far more brutal than these are the people who have in some sort of way deserved their position--the capitalists, the parvenus, the children of the modern mercantile ferocity. Yet they, too, in their way have a silvery thread of graciousness, because they are stupid, and have been, like the aristocrats, the acceptors of some beautiful accident.

The sin of pride blackens into an unbearable infamy when we came to the artistic and literary people who are proud of their intellects. They are worse than the scientific people, because the scientific people have far less reason to be proud than the artistic and literary people. The scientists to a great extent inherit, like the aristocrats, and are thus kept tolerable; the literary people--such, for instance, as the present writer--create, and are too disgusting for words. The literary arrogance is very nearly the worst, but is not the worst. Those who swagger because they have intellects suppose that intellect is the most important thing on earth, and theirs would be an easy existence only that it happens that it is not. Those who pride themselves on intelligence are priding themselves on a quite subordinate and suburban sort of excellence. The highest thing in the world is goodness. It is so high that, fortunately, the great majority of people who have it are horribly frightened of it, and keep their own virtue as they would keep some sort of wild horse or griffin. But every now and then there do appear people who are good and who know they are good, and who are proud of being good. And if there be any reality burning through the written phrase, if there be any passion which strains at the strings of language, if there be any emotion which, through translations and re-translations and versions and diversions, is still alive, these were the people whom Jesus Christ could hardly forbear to scourge.

This is, I suppose, the whole subtlety of the sin of pride; all other sins attack men when they are weak and weary; but this attacks when men are happy and valuable and nearer to all the virtues. And when it attacks most easily the results are vilest. The whole difference betwen the religion of Christianity and such a religion, for instance, as that of Brahminism, is merely this. The castes of Christian Europe are insolent, abominable, unendurable things, which have been endured, as a matter of fact, for centuries; but they have one great virtue, they are irreligious. But in Brahminism the castes are religious things; it is a virtue to be aristocratic. And against any people who claim to rule me by spiritual superiority, I will everlastingly and happily rebel, conscious of that image of deity which equalises us all.