Humility as a Species of Modesty

The tendencies of a man (that is to say, his appetites)need two types of virtue for their just regulation: one to support them in weakness, one to moderate them when they are inordinatelyimpulsive or strong. Humility is of the second type. It is the virtue which restrains a man lest he be immoderate in his striving to reach high goals.

Humility is in the appetitive order, not the knowing order. It is a moral virtue, a will-virtue, not an intellectual virtue.

Humility is not a pose. The humble man does not bow to all others as though they were in all respects superior to himself. But humility does honestly recognize that all good, all excellence,is in God, and that all creatural good comes from God. Therefore, humility sees God in every fellowman, and bows to that which is divine.

Humility is a virtue allied with temperance through the medium of the virtue of modesty, which is a part of temperance.

So excellent and necessary a virtue is humility that its rank is first after the theological virtues, the intellectualvirtues that regard reason itself, and the virtue of justice.

Humility is a moral virtue, not an intellectual one. But it does involve the knowledge that we are what we are, and arenot to think more of ourselves than facts warrant. And back of the act of humility is reverence for God. The inward disposition of humility has outward manifestations which, in many instances, are expressive of modesty. Some writers, like St. Benedict in his Rule,enumerate degrees of humility according to inner disposition and outer sign.