PRIDE.
THE readers of Professor Nichol's admirable study of Carlyle, which Messrs. Macmillan and Co. have just published,—the best in short compass which has been written on that most over-elaborated of all subjects, in a time when almost every subject is over-elaborated by dozens of competing students,—will be struck afresh by the almost illimitable pride which marked his character, both intellectual and moral. Pride we take to show itself most vividly and most frequently in an inveterate hatred of dependence. Carlyle owed many good turns to Lord Jeffrey, and once even consented to be for a short time under a pecuniary obligation to him, which no doubt he profoundly resented ; at all events, he never treated Jeffrey with the same cordiality after he had accepted the favour. Again, when he went to play the tutor to Charles Buller and his brother, he was, by his own account of the matter, most cordially and courteously treated. Yet he never could endure to realise and express the sense of obligation under which this conduct of his hosts laid him, and at the last he terminated the relation with scant show of gratitude. The same quality displayed itself in his intel- led. His scorn for the so-called -Jaws of political economy was fall of pride. His contempt for constitutionalism,—for "thin-lipped, constitutional Hampden," for instance,—was full of the pride of a strong will. His leaning to slavery, and his eagerness to drill "black Quashee " into involuntary industry, were instinct with pride. His infinite delight in the manifestation of Titanic passions, and in all that was lurid, fiery, and volcanic, and even his anathemas on shams, were the thunderclaps of a proud nature. His hearty admiration of all the manifestations of inexorable will, his denunciations of mere philanthropy, his propaganda against parliamentarism, his impatience of all refinement, whether metaphysical or moral, his taste in heroes, his intolerance of the jargon about progress, was all of it more closely connected with the deep- seated pride in his own nature, than with any of the lessons of historic experience. Carlyle's pride was no doubt, in the main, a peasant pride. That was the ground of his early im- patience of the aristocracy of birth or mere culture. Perhaps, indeed, of all forms of pride, the sturdy peasant's pride is the deepest. And not unnaturally ; for the deepest pride is that which relies least on adventitious circumstances, and most on the naked rock of self. Now, the peasant has hardly any adventitious circumstances on which to plume himself. He has rarely any inheritance of wealth, or rank, or personal beauty, or culture, or any honour except the honour of bare integrity. If he is proud, he is proud of nothing except being himself, and that is the very essence of pride. The man who plumes himself on talents or possessions or ancestral manners, is rather vain than proud. He values himself on something of which he might, conceivably at least, be deprived. But pride clings to the very barest essence of self. If every adventitious advantage could be rent away, it would revel in the thought of being itself still. That was Carlyle's case, and would, we imagine, have been his case even if he had not been conscious of the exceptional genius which gave greater plausibility to his pride. He was as proud of his father and mother, who had none of that genius, as he was of himself. He was proud, we believe, of the very clownishness of the stock to which he belonged, apart almost from its integrity and uprightness. He was proud of its ruggedness, almost of its rudeness. He would have been proud of having nothing to be proud of, even if he had been without genius as well as without wealth or rank or culture. And it is precisely that disposition in any nature to take pride in its own poverty, which discriminates pride from vanity.
And that, we take it, is what makes theologians regard pride as the most fatal of all the sources of evil, because it is at the very bottom of any heart which is disposed to repudiate the grace of God. There is, of course, something that is honourable and pleasing to men in what is called a " proper pride,"—i.e., in the disposition to exhaust every possibility of effort and toil rather than depend on the generosity of man. There would be no pauperdom if men were all gifted with such pride ; and as it would be very grateful to man not to be teased and taxed and borrowed from, there has always been a very close connection between such pride as this and high respectability. Those who repudiate the help of others are sure to command some of the respect of others, and this is how pride gets its honourable re- putation in the world. But then, the very same disposition which is unwilling to accept the help of others, however willingly it is tendered, is evidently not really in search of the highest good- ness, but at best of the highest self .caused goodness ; and that is, after all, a very barren kind of goodness indeed, even if goodness be so much as conceivable without grace, without what the theologians call "prevenient grace." After all, even the most naked species of goodness must be rooted in the gift of God. Even the sturdiness of the rugged peasant is a gift, and cannot be conceived otherwise than as a gift. And if truly realised as a gift, there is not only more humility, but more reality of mind, in the willingness to accept any other supplementary gift which will turn its barrenness into fertility, than there is in the angry independence of spirit which rejects adventitious help, and even resents the willingness and generosity which offers that help. The high theological value placed upon humility originates, no doubt, in the recognition of God as the giver of every good and perfect gift. But humility towards God is inseparable from a good deal of humility towards man, for he who is willing to accept gratefully all that God gives, must be willing to accept gratefully all that God gives through that generosity of man which God inspires and stimulates. reehaps the best distinction between true and false pride is to be found in this, that true pride, while unwilling to accept what is grudgingly given, is willing to accept all that is willingly given, all that comes from the heart of the giver; while false pride is all the more jealous of any gift which so much as savours even of the attitude of beneficence or condescension, however cordial and eager. True pride consists in reluctance to receive reluctant gifts, for that can hardly be said to be inspired by God which is doled out grudgingly by man. False pride resents the sense of obligation itself, however willing and spontaneous. It loves independence for the sake of inde- pendence, whereas there is really no such thing amongst men as independence of each other, society consisting in that give and take as between man and man without which there would be nothing but what a modern poet calls "granite-dust,"—gritty atoms of unorganised individuality. Willing and even eager mutual dependence is inconsistent with false pride, but quite. consistent with true pride ; for if dependence is mutual and willing, it can hardly help being prolific of good. The great care for pride is to recognise fully that all evil pride, all unwilling- ness to receive through man's agency what God has put it into man's heart to give, not only deprives one's own nature of the chance of bearing fruit which it could not otherwise bear, but still more deprives the nature of the giver of the chance of bearing fruit that it could not otherwise bear. For- giving is receiving, and receiving is giving, where both giver and. receiver are truly willing; and it is not possible to say which gives the most, the giver or the receiver. Pride of the lower kind brings sterility not only to the proud man, but to the generous man who is not permitted to earn the natural fruits- of his own openness of heart. In fact, the proud man not only refuses to receive, but refuses to give what is perhaps the best gift he could bestow on another,—the gratification of his wish to help. Pride is a kind of moral Protection. It prevents the- diffusion and interchange of the best gifts, and builds a wall of exclusiveness round the region in which it reigns. That is the reason, we suppose, why it is said to "go before destruction,' and a haughty spirit before a fall. Yet it is not always so.. Sometimes, as in Carlyle's case, pride is strong enough to survive the loneliness which it involves, and to produce some of its most characteristic fruit in the midst of that solitude, of any interruption of which it is so jealous. Still, it is given to very few proud men to bring forth as much fruit, even of the literary kind, as Carlyle brought forth ; nor was the fruit he did produce destitute of that bitter flavour characteristic of what is called "the Forbidden fruit." A great deal of the brilliant " nonsense " in Carlyle, a great deal of that deficiency in genuine sagacity which spoils, for instance, the brilliancy of his "Latter-Day Pamphlets," was due to the delight he- took in defying even the wisdom of his contemporaries,— was due, in a word, to the depth and intensity of his moral and spiritual pride.
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