of fact, the
strongest nations are those, like Prussia or Japan, which began from
very mean beginnings, but have not been too proud to sit at the feet of
the foreigner and learn everything from him. Almost every obvious and
direct victory has been the victory of the plagiarist. This is, indeed,
only a very paltry by-product of humility, but it is a product of
humility, and, therefore, it is successful. Prussia had no Christian
humility in its internal arrangements; hence its internal arrangements
were miserable. But it had enough Christian humility slavishly to copy
France (even down to Frederick the Great's poetry), and that which it
had the humility to copy it had ultimately the honour to conquer. The
case of the Japanese is even more obvious; their only Christian and
their only beautiful quality is that they have humbled themselves to be
exalted. All this aspect of humility, however, as connected with the
matter of effort and striving for a standard set above us, I dismiss as
having been sufficiently pointed out by almost all idealistic writers.

It may be worth while, however, to point out the interesting disparity
in the matter of humility between the modern notion of the strong man
and the actual records of strong men. Carlyle objected to the
statement that no man could be a hero to his valet. Every sympathy can
be extended towards him in the matter if he merely or mainly meant that
the phrase was a disparagement of hero-worship. Hero-worship is
certainly a generous and human impulse; the hero may be faulty, but the
worship can hardly be. It may be that no man would be a hero to his
valet. But any man would be a valet to his hero. But in truth both the
proverb itself and Carlyle's stricture upon it ignore the most
essential matter at issue. The ultimate psychological truth is not
that no man is a hero to his valet. The ultimate psychological truth,
the foundation of Christianity, is that no man is a hero to himself.
Cromwell, according to Carlyle, was a strong man. According to
Cromwell, he was a weak one.

The weak point in the whole of Carlyle's case for aristocracy lies,
indeed, in his most celebrated phrase. Carlyle said that men were
mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism,
says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the
doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of
the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely thi