Hubris, that overweening confidence which leads men to regard themselves as exempt from the conditions of existence, is embodied in the very system they have created and from which they so largely benefit. Their present efforts to rearrange that system—by adjustments of the economy, by modifications of institutions, and by the transition of concentrated power—are but attempts to elude the Nemesis which the system itself has already summoned. Yet no such measure can avail. For the system, being itself the expression of Hubris, must of necessity call forth Nemesis as its correlative; and through the slow yet inexorable working of social evolution, Nemesis inevitably will restore that humility without which no enduring equilibrium is possible.

Hubris (ὕβρις): In Greek myth and philosophy, the reckless excess of pride that defies the gods, natural limits, and proper measure. It is the overreach that mistakes mortal power for divine right—and thereby courts its own destruction.

Nemesis (Νέμεσις): The goddess of divine retribution and restoring balance. She is the inescapable force that answers hubris, striking down the arrogant to reassert cosmic order. Not spite, but justice against excess.

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963): 20th-century American classicist and educator best known for Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942) and The Greek Way (1930). These works popularized Greek myth and thought for modern readers and treat hubris as the fatal overreach of pride that defies divine or natural limits, with Nemesis (or the related forces of retribution and balance) as the inevitable response that restores order. Her retellings of stories such as Narcissus, Niobe, Arachne, and Phaethon make the hubris–nemesis pattern vivid and accessible.