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The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars: it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful.
Also, when he comes to speak to saints, how doth he make himself vile before them! 'I am, saith he, 'the least of the apostles; that am not meet to be called an apostle'; I am 'less than the least of all saints'; I was a blasphemer; I was a persecutor, and injurious, &c. What humility, what self-abasing thoughts, doth a broken heart produce!
An emotional reaction carried them from one extreme to the other; from self-sufficient disregard of their adversaries to an almost self-abasing regard. The very type of these people and of their reaction was Horace Greeley.
While self-hate in this pathological aspect is relatively uncommon, in every person there are self-critical, self-condemning activities which sometimes for short periods of time reach self-hatred and disgust. McDougall makes a good deal of the self-abasing instinct which makes us lower ourselves gladly and willingly.
"Forgive me, Ravenel," he said, taking his hat and stick from a self-abasing waiter, "for dragging you into my private affairs in the way I have done, but somehow I thought it might interest you to know of my love for Katrine," and, humming an old song, he went his devious Celtic way. "Three seventeen! Three seventeen! Mr. Ravenel! Three seventeen!"
Awahy! we are beset, and here's abasement brought on us without self-abasing! Meantime these horsemen detached themselves from the main bodies and advanced at a gallop, wheeling and circling round each other, toward the walls of the city, and when they were close they lowered their arms and made signs of amity, and proclaimed their mission and the name of him they served.
After a short pause, and an abundance of felicitations on his excellent and self-abasing discourse, the newly admitted member again rose, and began to read an essay on some discoveries he had made in the science of Latent Sympathies.
His clothes were in tatters, and his fine face was like that of a warrior defaced by swords. But he refused to be carried, and his first care was for the boy, who had received no mortal injury. "You have saved the boy, Pierre," said the priest, in a low voice. "Self-abasing always, dear abbe; you saved us both. By heaven, but the king lost a great man in you!" "Hush!
It is marked by reverence and godly fear; for she appeals to "the Lord of hosts," whose prerogative it is to marshal the celestial armies, and to regulate with undeviating skill and irresistible influence the affairs of this lower world: it displays profound humility; for she repeats the simple and self-abasing term, "thine handmaid:" it expresses submission and dependence of spirit; for she refers with implicit obedience to the determinations of the divine will, as comprising whatever is best calculated to promote her real interests, though without presumption, she solicits Omnipotent interference to remove her affliction, if it should comport with the arrangements, and seem proper to the wisdom of God; it manifests an importunity which will always operate with more or less intenseness in every genuine prayer.
Next morning, prince Asaad went out in his turn to rule the folk in his father's stead and sat in the audience-chamber, judging and administering justice, appointing and deposing, ordering and forbidding, giving and bestowing, till near the time of afternoon-prayer, when Queen Budour sent for a crafty old woman and discovering to her what was in her heart, wrote a letter to prince Asaad, complaining of the excess of her love and longing for him, as follows: 'From her who perisheth for passion and love-longing to the goodliest of mankind in form and nature, him who is conceited of his own loveliness and glories in his amorous grace, who turneth away from those that seek to enjoy him and refuseth to show favour unto the lowly and the self-abasing, him who is cruel and disdainful; from the despairing lover to prince Asaad, lord of surpassing beauty and excelling grace, of the moon-bright face and the flower-white brow and dazzling splendour.
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