gained by assuming an attitude of humility that is a mere pose. Men have done this, but it has not helped the situation. The attitude, to be of any value, must grow out of an inward feeling. If the feeling is lacking the attitude is worth nothing. "The pride that apes humility" is altogether hateful.

What is needed, therefore, is a serious consideration of the nature of public office, and of the relation of the citizen to it. Probably men will always seek it. But Lincoln sought it, and sought it actively. So the trouble is not in that, though the effect of office-seeking on small or egotistical men is necessarily bad and demoralizing. But the change must come, if it comes at all, from a change in the whole attitude of the people toward this subject. We must all of us learn-and the lesson will be difficult-that it is still true that "the powers that be are ordained of God," that the state is a divine institution, that the men who bear rule are entitled to our respect, and that it is their highest duty to show themselves worthy of it. Office must be regarded, not as a part of the party machinery of state or nation, but as an integral part of the state itself. The powers

which it confers must be used solely for the public good. Only so will our rulers be "able to judge this thy so great people." We must exalt the idea of the state, not as the source or the wielder of power, but as the center of a delegated authority to be exercised in the interest of sound morality and of the general welfare. It will do none of us any harm to think on these things. So this appeal has been made to Solomon and to Abraham Lincoln as representing the type, in this regard, that ought to prevail more and more widely. If democratic government is to succeed-and it is yet an experiment-it will be only on the condition that we are wise enough to choose public servants who will dread rather than seek positions of power, and who will realize that when chosen to such positions their first and only duty is to God, and to the people, to the administration of whose affairs they have been called by God. Something more than appointment or popular election is necessary. There must be in spirit, if not in form, the old anointing to a service which is truly divine. The very thought that a man is called to be the servant of God and of His people ought to make him humble.

INDUSTRY AND HUMILITY

THAT there was a large element of humil

ity in the make-up of Thackeray is clear from his writings. His knowledge of human nature, and of his own individual nature, which was always in his mind when he discussed the general subject, made him very humble. Behind his bitterest satire there is always a feeling of pity for man-and for himself— which makes the reader realize that he did not delight in his task, though he refused to shrink from what he believed to be his duty. His work was a burden to him, and in more ways than one. You can almost feel the physical and mental weariness that fell upon him after the completion of one of his great books. But more even than this does one note his doubt of whether it was after all worth while. "It will all be over soon enough," we can hear him say, "Why then all the toil and strife?" This spirit breathes in much of his work, more par

ticularly in The Roundabout Papers, some of which were penned immediately after the last proofs of one of his great books were sent to the printer. In the little essay entitled De Finibus we get much of Thackeray's philosophy of life. There is a sadness in it which one feels can have come only from a sense of his own inadequacy-from which his humility sprang and from a sort of despair as to the outcome which sometimes overwhelmed him. But it can not be said of many men, as it can be said of him, that there is strength to be derived from this very humility. In one of the papers just mentioned he says: "Industry and humility will help and comfort us." There is a text which will bear a good deal of expounding. Industry, of course, we have thought of as a stay and comfort, but we have hardly thought so of humility. Possibly the two things are more nearly identical than we sometimes suppose them to be. Did any one ever know an honest and true worker, especially if he belonged to the guild of "them that handle the pen," who did not have something of this humility in him? The great engineers and inventors and scientists have almost invariably

been modest men. They are much given to underestimating their achievements, and with entire sincerity.

It is even truer of the great writers, with those who really treat their vocation as a serious thing, as one that imposes heavy responsibilities on them. They doubt the popular judgment, doubt when it is favorable even more than when it is unfavorable. For their standard is invariably higher than the standard of the public, and they know how easily the public is deceived. And they dread being a party to such deception. There is always, too, the question of how much of their own lives they shall reveal, when to reveal any portion of them seems to them a vulgar thing—and the more sensitive and the more fit for their task they are, the more vulgar does it seem. The writer is all the while consulting with himself, as it were, all the while asking himself whether he has any right to share with the great world even the confidences that he has with himself. And as he goes on the very characters that he creates become so intensely real to him that they almost seem to be members of his family. How can he, such a man must ask himself, hon