The evolution of humility (G. K. Chesterton)

  Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man.  He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs… But what we suffer from today 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… For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Image source:  Sadao Watanabe, The Washing of the Feet of the Disciples, 
https://www.philipchircop.com/post/83010382490/washing-of-the-feet-it-has-been-said-that

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