Pride and Humility by Thomas Brown

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 28, 1857

Pride and Humility.

By Thomas Brown

PRIDE and humility are always relative terms. They imply a comparison of some sort with an object higher or lower; and the same mind, with natural excellence exactly the same, and with the same comparative attainments in every one around, may thus be either proud or humble, as it looks above or looks beneath.

In the great scale of society, there is a continual rise from one excellence to another excellence, internal or external, intellectual or moral. Wherever we may fix, there is still some one whom we may find superior or inferior; and these relations are mutually convertable as we ascend or descend. The shrub is taller than the flower which grows in its shade; the tree than the shrub; the rock than the tree; the mountain than the single rock; and above all are the sun and the heavens. It is the same in the world of life. From that Almighty Being who is the source of all life, to the lowest of his creatures, what innumerable gradations may be traced, even in the ranks of excellence on our own earth—each being higher than that beneath, and lower than that above; and thus, all to all, objects at once of pride or humility, according as the comparison may be made with the greater or with the less.

Of two minds, then, possessing equal excellence, which is the more noble—that which, however high the excellence attained by it, has still some noble excellence in view, to which it feels its own inferiority; or that which, having risen a few steps in the ascent of intellectual and moral glory, thinks ever of those beneath, and rejoices in an excellence which would appear to it of little value if only it lifted a single glance to the perfection above? Yet this habitual tendency to look beneath, rather than above, is the character of mind which is denominated "pride;" while the tendency to look above, rather than below, and to feel an inferiority, therefore, which others perhaps do not perceive, is that character which is denominated "humility."

Is it false, then, or even extravagant, to say that humility is truly the nobler; and that pride, which delights in the contemplation of abject objects beneath, is truly in itself more abject than that meekness of heart which is humble because it has greater objects, and which looks with reverence to the excellence that is above it, because it is formed with a capacity of feeling all the worth of that excellence which it reveres?

The accomplished philosopher and man of letters, to whom the great names of all who have been eminent in ancient and modern times, in all the nations in which the race of man has risen to glory, are familiar, almost like the names of those with whom he is living in society—who has thus constantly before his mind images of excellence of the highest order, and who even in the hopes which he dares to form, feels how small a contribution it will be in his power to add to the great imperishable stock of human wisdom—may be proud indeed; but his pride will be of a sort that is tempered with humility, and will be humility itself if compared with the pride of a pedant or sciolist, who thinks that in adding the result of some little discovery which he may have fortunately made, he is almost doubling that mass of knowledge in which it is scarcely perceived as an element.

Pride, then, as a character of self-complacent exultation, is not the prevailing cast of mind of those who are formed for genuine excellence. He who is formed for genuine excellence has before him an ideal perfection—that semper melius aliquid—which makes excellence itself, however admirable to those who measure it only with their weaker powers, seem to his own mind, as compared with what he has ever in his own mental vision, a sort of failure. He thinks less of what he has done than of what it seems possible to do; and he is not so much proud of merit attained, as desirous of a merit that has not yet been attained by him.

It is in this way that the very religion which ennobles man, leads him, not to pride, but to humility. It elevates him from the smoke and dust of earth; but it elevates him above the darkness, that he may see better the great heights that are above him. It shows him, not the mere excellence of a few frail creatures, as fallible as himself, but excellence, the very conception of which is the highest effort that can be made by man: exhibiting thus constantly what it will be the only honor worthy of his nature to imitate, however faintly; and checking his momentary pride, at every step of his glorious progress, by the brightness and vastness of what is still before him.

May I not add to these remarks, that it is in this way we are to account for that humility which is so peculiarly a part of the christian character, as contrasted with the general pride which other systems either recommend or allow? The christian religion is, indeed, as has been often sarcastically said by those who revile it, the religion of the humble in heart; but it is the religion of the humble, only because it presents to our contemplation a higher excellence than was ever before exhibited to man. The proud look down upon the earth, and see nothing that creeps upon its surface more noble than themselves: the humble look upward to their God.—Thomas Brown.