It is at one with the virtue of charity in this respect.
Every generous person will admit that the one kind of sin which charity
should cover is the sin which is inexcusable. And every generous
person will equally agree that the one kind of pride which is wholly
damnable is the pride of the man who has something to be proud of.
The pride which, proportionally speaking, does not hurt the character,
is the pride in things which reflect no credit on the person at all.
Thus it does a man no harm to be proud of his country,
and comparatively little harm to be proud of his remote ancestors.
It does him more harm to be proud of having made money,
because in that he has a little more reason for pride.
It does him more harm still to be proud of what is nobler
than money--intellect. And it does him most harm of all to value
himself for the most valuable thing on earth--goodness. The man
who is proud of what is really creditable to him is the Pharisee,
the man whom Christ Himself could not forbear to strike.

My objection to Mr. Lowes Dickinson and the reassertors of the pagan
ideal is, then, this. I accuse them of ignoring definite human
discoveries in the moral world, discoveries as definite, though not
as material, as the discovery of the circulation of the blood.
We cannot go back to an ideal of reason and sanity.
For mankind has discovered that reason does not lead to sanity.
We cannot go back to an ideal of pride and enjoyment. For mankind
has discovered that pride does not lead to enjoyment. I do not know
by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly
connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking.
Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent thinking.
For under independent or individualistic thinking, every man starts
at the beginning, and goes, in all probability, just as far as his