The contrast between humilty and self-awareness is one which Eliot implicitly draws in at least two of his major works. In Prufrck, we are introduced to lonely men in shirt-sleeves:

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

and in The Wasteland, we are introduced to fishmen lounging at lunchtime:

'This music crept by me upon the waters' And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

Can the self-aware observer (Eliot or you or me) ever achieve the humility of the observed (the lonely man in shirtsleeves, the fishman lounging at noon)?

The same contrast can be observed in Yeats' poem The Fisherman:

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And the same is true of Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and many of Hardy's poems. I've always used 'The Fisherman' to illustrate the ultimate fallacy underpinning Yeats's Celtic Revival. The same logic can be applied to Wordsworth's romanticist notion that the language of the ordinary working classes can be replicated in high-culture poetry.

Back to your original question -- the humility of the observed doesn't exist; it's a projection rather from the observer, another instance of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacies'. It's assumed by the observer.

Back to your original question -- the humility of the observed doesn't exist; it's a projection rather from the observer, another instance of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacies'. It's assumed by the observer.

Fair enough.

But what are you answers to two questions:

1) Are there "observed" who can truly be said to be less self-aware than their "observers"?

2) If so, could there not be true humility in their lesser degree of self-awareness, humility of which they of course are not aware?

I think you may be dismissing something important too easily - maybe not.

commonality? tobacco(nicotine & Suds)-Beer induced humility!

point?

quiet before the grunt storm!

lol

The commonality is difficult to denote, but it can be connoted in various ways, one of which might be:

Neither the lonely men nor the fishmen think very often, if at all, about matters such as are pondered here on a regular basis.

It's odd that you'll stoop to relative clarity when you're going for a relatively cheap shot.

Makes your whole pose quite suspect.

Thus I am cheap shoting err shod-ing?

yeats and company of artisian scribes of the Crowns use the power of English-German words in this case -Yet both use a stimulant-relaxant for their characters--- A Great industry came from this pipe and tavern muddlings of the hard workers needing an extra stim-relaxant fore the crown's next day catch?

Tis not chicanery nor clowning as you might point out--

nor is your/my di-ability the problem of the other!

mirror imagery of the Greatest painters of all time were worshiped and praised by todays and yesterdays licensed scribes and scholars who teach others certain truths with no unskin!

Any who are ignorant/arrogant to (alchemy history are Philo Stone (bible ref) guding our crafts into Noah's Arc angle trades) history are dooming us to repeat it!

hmm

1) Sure.

2) Sure.