The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all
that they are more boastful than other people (they are not);
it is that they are boastful about those particular things which
nobody can boast of without losing them. A Frenchman can be proud
of being bold and logical, and still remain bold and logical.
A German can be proud of being reflective and orderly, and still
remain reflective and orderly. But an Englishman cannot be proud
of being simple and direct, and still remain simple and direct.
In the matter of these strange virtues, to know them is to kill them.
A man may be conscious of being heroic or conscious of being divine,
but he cannot (in spite of all the Anglo-Saxon poets) be conscious
of being unconscious.

Now, I do not think that it can be honestly denied that some portion
of this impossibility attaches to a class very different in their
own opinion, at least, to the school of Anglo-Saxonism. I mean
that school of the simple life, commonly associated with Tolstoy.
If a perpetual talk about one's own robustness leads to being
less robust, it is even more true that a perpetual talking
about one's own simplicity leads to being less simple.
One great complaint, I think, must stand against the modern upholders
of the simple life--the simple life in all its varied forms,
from vegetarianism to the honourable consistency of the Doukhobors.
This complaint against them stands, that they would make us simple
in the unimportant things, but complex in the important things.
They would make us simple in the things that do not matter--
that is, in diet, in costume, in etiquette, in economic system.
But they would make us complex in the things that do matter--in philosophy,
in loyalty, in spiritual acceptance, and spiritual rejection.