With the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible adventures and rewards. If we ask an ordinary person how much he merits, he becomes hesitant and instinctively modest. It is doubtful whether he merits six feet of earth. But if we ask him what he'll take or what he's capable of enjoying–the sky's the limit. This gay humility, this holding of ourselves lightly and yet ready for an endless string of unmerited rewards, is the secret of humility, a secret that is almost too simple to grasp. In fact humility is so advantageous and practical a virtue that people suspect it must be a vice. ... Humility is mistaken for a vice all the more easily because it generally goes with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much.