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It seems strange even to myself, when I have described a man who was cruel, selfish, brutal and sensual, to say that he was a great idealist. The fact remains. He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder. He cared nothing for those things which with most people make life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money. He cared nothing about fame.
The persistence of slavery seems, then, to be a demonstration of the unchangeability of human nature and of the ultimate hopelessness of idealist causes. In every reform accomplished the practical application is local, transitory, dependent on racial and geographical conditions. There is obviously a great change in our penal methods.
Society soon learned the news of the Countess Hermenstein's betrothal to the "eccentric Englishman," Aubrey Leigh, and with its million tongues discussed the affair in all tones, most people preferring to say, with the usual "society" kindness, that "Leigh was not quite such a self-sacrificing idealist as he seemed to be, he was going to marry for money."
The place was crowded, and the people about her were almost equally made up of very good-looking and enthusiastic young people and a great variety of Goopes-like types. In the discussion there was the oddest mixture of things that were personal and petty with an idealist devotion that was fine beyond dispute.
The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians.
This is creative genius; this is the idealist dealing faithfully with realistic material; this is, as we should say in our day, the work of the artist as distinguished from the work of the photographer.
'In spite of all, June thought, 'Boris is wonderful. To know that your hand is against every one's is for some natures to experience a sense of moral release. Fleur felt no remorse when she left June's house. Reading condemnatory resentment in her little kinswoman's blue eyes-she was glad that she had fooled her, despising June because that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after.
His education had not been liberal; he saw that that made no difference, and wisely pursued the bent of his positive mind where another man might have wasted his time in the attempt to gain culture. He saw that his was the age of the practical. Let who would be an idealist, the practical man in the end got all that was worth having. He worked.
Not merely an idealist, but a practical man who has studied the needs of the State; unselfish to the core; longing, like Washington, the Father of his Country, to remain in a beautiful country home, where he dispenses hospitality with a flowing hand to poor and rich alike, yet harking to the call of duty.
"It was unfortunate," Prince Karschoff said, "that America was dominated for those few months by an honest but impractical idealist. He had the germ of an idea, but he thrust it on the world before even his own country was ready for it. In time the nations would certainly have elaborated something more workable."
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