Of Some Human Reasons and Considerations That We Have at Hand to Help Us to Be Humble

ROM the outset of this treatise we have been alleging many reasons and considerations to aid and encourage us to this virtue of humility, saying how it is the root and foundation of all virtues; the short cut to gain them all; the means to preserve them; that if we hold this, we hold them all, and other things to the like effect. But that we may not seem to wish to carry everything by the way of the spirit, it will be well to enumerate some human reasons and considerations, more connatural and proportioned to our weakness, that, being thus convinced, not only by the way of the spirit and perfection, but also even by natural reason, we may animate and dispose ourselves more thoroughly to despise the honor and esteem of the world and take the road of humility. For a purpose so difficult as this we need every inducement we can get, and so it is well to avail ourselves of all. Be this, then, the first point, to set ourselves to consider and examine very leisurely and attentively what manner of thing is this opinion and esteem of men which makes so much war upon us and gives us such matter of thought. Let us look at bulk and weight together, that so we may fix upon what it is, and encourage ourselves to despise it, and not be deluded by it as we are deluded.

Seneca says very well that there are many things wnich we reckon great, not from any greatness that they have in themselves, but because of our meanness and littleness being such that we take small for great and little for much. He gives the example of the burden that ants carry, which looks great in comparison of the size of their bodies, but is in itself very small. So it is with the honor and esteem of men. Otherwise, I ask you, are you any better for others’ taking you for a person of consequence, or worse for their making little account of you? Certainly not, St. Augustine says: “Neither is evil made good for being praised and esteemed, nor good made evil for being despised and found fault with. Think of Augustine what you please; what I wish and care for is that my conscience may not accuse me before God.” ‘That it is that matters; the rest is vanity, since it neither takes away from you nor brings you in anything. So that holy man (A Kempis) says: “What better is any man for another man’s praising him? What each one is in the eyes of God, such he is and no more, says the humble St. Francis”—or rather, the Apostle St. Paul: It is not he that commends and praises himself that is approved for good, but he whom God commends and praises (II Cor. x. 18).

St. Augustine makes a good comparison to this purpose. “Pride and the esteem of the world is not greatness, but wind and swelling; and as, when a thing is swollen out, it appears great and is not, so the proud, who are regarded and esteemed of men, appear great but are not, since that is no real greatness, but a swelling.” There are convalescents or invalids who appear stout and in good condition, but theirs is no healthy fat, only infirmity and swelling. Such, says St. Augustine, is the applause and esteem of the world; it may bloat you out, but it cannot make you great. If, then, this is the case, as indeed it is, that the opinion and esteem of men is not greatness, but a swelling and infirmity, why do we go about like chameleons, openmouthed, gulping down wind, thereby to make ourselves swollen out and infirm? It is better for a man to be well though he looks ill, than to be ill and appear well. So also it is better to be a good man, though accounted no good, than to be no good and accounted good. For what will it profit you to be accounted virtuous and spiritual, if you are not so? Let her works praise her in the gates (Prov. xxxi. 31). On these words St. Jerome says: “It is not the vain praises of men, but your own good works, that have to praise you and avail you when you appear at the judgment seat of God.”

St. Gregory relates that there was in a monastery in Iconia a monk of whom all had a great opinion as a saint, especially for being very abstemious and penitent. When the hour of his death approached, he called all the monks; they came readily, expecting to hear of him something of edification. But he, trembling and in great distress of mind, was fain by an inward impulse to tell them his state. So he declared to them that he was damned for having been a hypocrite all his life; and when they thought he was fasting and doing great abstinence, all the while he was eating on the sly without anyone’s seeing him. And for that, he said, I am now given over to a fearful dragon, who with his tail holds my feet fast tied, and is now putting his head into my mouth to draw out my soul and carry it off with him forever. And so saying he expired, to the great terror of all. What did it profit this wretch to have been taken for a saint?

St. Athanasius compares proud men seeking honors to children running after butterflies. Others compare them to spiders, who disembowel themselves spinning their webs to catch flies, according to Isaias: They have spun spider’s webs (lix. 5). So the proud man fetches up his inside, as they say, to gain a little human praise. We read of Father Francis Xavier that he felt and always showed a particular hatred and abhorrence of this opinion and esteem of the world; he said it was the cause of great evils and a hindrance to much good. So he was heard to say sometimes with great emotion and groaning: “O opinion and esteem of men, what evils hast thou done, art doing, and will do!”