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.At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own.
He underestimated what could be doubted, and overlooked the possibility of a reaction in which some are instead persuaded that their transient fashions are the immutable law of god, to be rigorously enforced on all doubters.
3 comments:
I looked at the first line and thought it sounded like a CS Lewis sentiment, and was surprised I did not recognise its provenance. I then immediately thought "It Must Be Chesterton." This is an excellent example of GKC reversing the conventional wisdom to reveal truth that we find jarring because it is not what anyone thinks, but upon further examination is clearly true.
We can quibble and say "It's not true in this way," or "That's not quite what people meant when they said that," but the point stands. Such deeper discussions, cutting the truth more finely with precise distinctions, are of course also useful. Yet they cannot occur without a Chesterton to hammer a stake in the ground and say "the modern saying is less true than the one which preceded it." In this case, that humility is a good thing, but when incorrectly placed a dangerous one is not an idea which occurs often even to Christians, who think about humility at times.
That book is amazing. There are parts of it where almost every sentence contains a shocking truth.
I reread it regularly.
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