of false Eastern humility (that is, of strictly ascetic humility)
mixed itself with the main stream of European Christianity.
We must not forget that when we speak of Christianity we are speaking
of a whole continent for about a thousand years. But of this virtue
even more than of the other three, I would maintain the general
proposition adopted above. Civilization discovered Christian humility
for the same urgent reason that it discovered faith and charity--
that is, because Christian civilization had to discover it or die.

The great psychological discovery of Paganism, which turned it
into Christianity, can be expressed with some accuracy in one phrase.
The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself.
By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man
cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson has pointed out in words too excellent to need
any further elucidation, the absurd shallowness of those who imagine
that the pagan enjoyed himself only in a materialistic sense.
Of course, he enjoyed himself, not only intellectually even,
he enjoyed himself morally, he enjoyed himself spiritually.
But it was himself that he was enjoying; on the face of it,
a very natural thing to do. Now, the psychological discovery
is merely this, that whereas it had been supposed that the fullest
possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity,
the truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found
by reducing our ego to zero.

Humility is the thing which is for ever renewing the earth and the stars.
It is humility, and not duty, which preserves the stars from wrong,
from the unpardonable wrong of casual resignation; it is through
humility that the most ancient heavens for us are fresh and strong.