But it is the devil and all when it becomes a careful carelessness. It is no metaphor to say that it is the devil and all. By the same fine old original religious formula, it is all of the devil. We could go through any number of social types illustrating the same spiritual truth. It would be easy to point out that even the miser, who is half ashamed of his madness, is a more human and sympathetic type than the millionaire who brags and boasts of his avarice, and calls it sanity and simplicity and the strenuous life.
Men hate priggishness because it is the driest form of pride.
Thus there is a paradox in the whole position. The spiritual idea of the evil of pride, especially spiritual pride, was dismissed as a piece of mysticism not needed by modern morality, which is to be purely social and practical. And, as a fact, it is very specially needed because the morality is social and practical. On the assumption that we need care for nothing except making other human beings happy, this is quite certainly the thing that will make them unhappy. The practical case against pride, as a mere source of social discomfort and discord, is, if possible, even more self-evident than the more mystical case against it, as a setting up of the self against the soul of the world.