Except when describing diamonds and freshly painted metals, except, that is, when used as a synonym for shining, brilliance is a metaphor used to indicate extreme intelligence. A quality that distinguishes the brilliant from the dull, the flat, the undifferentiated.

Whether used as noun, verb or adverb, humility and its derivatives and variants are, in their essence, animated solely through reference to the relationship of a person or the person’s activities to those of another. One is not humble before a rock. One is not humble (although one may be insecure or tentative) in private. One cannot humble herself before a mirror, although humility before another presupposes one’s prior gaze at, and into, the mirror and one’s reflection on the reflection. As water and oxygen promote germination of seeds, love promotes germination of humility, which takes root in one’s cognition and recognition of the views of others and the uncertainties that are fundamental, inescapable, impervious to shouts, no matter the volume.

Commentators who have endured through the ages, with universal appeal to our common qualities, have observed the inseparability of brilliance (as in extremely intelligent, differentiated from the crowd) and humility. Montaigne, translated loosely, captures the fusion through playful irony: “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we know least.” Or, in the wit of Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Or through the rhythm of Pope: “Much was Believ’d, but little understood, And to be dull was constru’d to be good…”

Now, hesitancy, tentativeness, may indeed reflect a dullard but it does not follow, in logic or experience, that unequivocal conviction reflects brilliance. Indeed, the history of thought has been an endless stream of visions and revisions, paradigm shifts, and adaptation to unforeseen (and often unforeseeable) consequences.

With the foregoing, paradoxically, being my firm conviction about the inherent flaws in and of firm convictions, one must marvel at the prominence we provide to, and the deference we display towards, those who are frequently wrong but never in doubt. My recommendation: beware of the man who holds the crystal ball, who loudly proclaims questions as if they were settled conclusions, who glibly dismisses counterpoints as beside the (i.e., his) point, who preaches his objectivity and neutrality, who uses his voice to stifle and his pen to censor, who confounds consensus and coercion.

We conclude with a quote from Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism:

“But where’s the Man, who Counsel can bestow,
Still pleas’d to teach, and not proud to know?
Unbiassed or by Favour or by Spite;
Not dully prepossest, nor blindly right;
Tho’ Learn’d well-bred; and tho’ well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and Humanly severe?
Who to a Friend his Faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the Merit of a Foe?
Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin’d;
A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind;
Gen’rous Converse; a Sound exempt from Pride;
And Love to Praise, with Reason on his Side?”