"Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them"
About this Quote
The promise of moral example collapses under a double flaw: those who might model virtue hide behind modesty, while those who need models bristle with vanity. Augustus Hare exposes a social stalemate. To set an example is to risk seeming self-important, a target for envy or charges of hypocrisy. Many prefer the safety of humility, real or feigned, to the vulnerability of leadership by conduct. On the other side, to follow an example feels like surrendering status, admitting that someone else shows the way. Pride resists imitation; it wants originality or supremacy, not apprenticeship.
The insight is both psychological and cultural. Societies extol leading by example, yet often punish those who try, reading their initiative as self-praise. The same societies celebrate independence, yet expect communal standards, making imitation look like weakness. Modesty and vanity, ordinarily virtues and incentives in moderation, become vices when they obstruct the transmission of good habits.
Hare wrote among early nineteenth-century Anglican moralists who prized character as persuasion, not just eloquence. He knew sermons rarely reform without a living pattern to copy. But he also knew how human pride distorts even the best pedagogy. Example is the most persuasive rhetoric, yet it requires a giver brave enough to be seen and a receiver humble enough to learn.
The observation remains sharp today. Public figures evade the duties of example, wary of scrutiny or accusations of grandstanding. Audiences, armed with skepticism and yearning for distinction, dismiss models as performative or beneath them. Social media intensifies both tendencies, turning exemplary acts into self-branding and following into fandom rather than emulation.
Hare’s remedy is implied: courage that refuses the refuge of false modesty, and teachability that abandons vain self-sufficiency. Where those two virtues meet, example recovers its power, and moral influence flows again from the seen to the doer.
The insight is both psychological and cultural. Societies extol leading by example, yet often punish those who try, reading their initiative as self-praise. The same societies celebrate independence, yet expect communal standards, making imitation look like weakness. Modesty and vanity, ordinarily virtues and incentives in moderation, become vices when they obstruct the transmission of good habits.
Hare wrote among early nineteenth-century Anglican moralists who prized character as persuasion, not just eloquence. He knew sermons rarely reform without a living pattern to copy. But he also knew how human pride distorts even the best pedagogy. Example is the most persuasive rhetoric, yet it requires a giver brave enough to be seen and a receiver humble enough to learn.
The observation remains sharp today. Public figures evade the duties of example, wary of scrutiny or accusations of grandstanding. Audiences, armed with skepticism and yearning for distinction, dismiss models as performative or beneath them. Social media intensifies both tendencies, turning exemplary acts into self-branding and following into fandom rather than emulation.
Hare’s remedy is implied: courage that refuses the refuge of false modesty, and teachability that abandons vain self-sufficiency. Where those two virtues meet, example recovers its power, and moral influence flows again from the seen to the doer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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