So long as there is humility, effacement is not reached. Through humility we make very little of our limited self; through effacement we make it as nothing. The small fraction has a value, it may be a very little value, but it still has some value; so humility keeps the ego from expanding itself but does not efface it.
Now in mathematics all numbers are as nothing before the Infinite, and in reality all things or thoughts are as nothing before God. This corresponds to humility. But in mathematics the zero is as nothing before anything which has any value, without taking measure of the thing. This is the effacement of ego, whereupon all things appear as Infinite because in everything one sees God's face.