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But when one arrives at this point the mind becomes delirious. All genius is raving mad if it comes to that; but Beethoven's madness concentrated itself in himself, and imagined things for his own enjoyment. The genius of many contemporary German artists is an aggressive thing, and is characterised by its destructive antagonism. The idealist who "possesses the world" is liable to dizziness.
Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic industrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. Gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls the woman's work "freedom to live her own life."
Strange entanglements were here, too, with the brilliant life over the Gulf: a life whose visible thread, it is easily surmised, will hardly lead us by this ancient secretary again. He was all alone in the world; very much so. His father was dead; and his mother, who had married a penniless idealist for love, was dead these many years. Fifteen he was when she died ... a long time ago.
Emerson was a man who influenced others more than others influenced him. Outside of his family connections, the personalities which can be most easily traced in his own are those of Carlyle, Mr. Alcott, and Thoreau. Carlyle's harsh virility could not be without its effect on his valid, but sensitive nature. Alcott's psychological and physiological speculations interested him as an idealist.
There is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up. Especially an idealist. Take a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it that could make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have made a pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute? And the camel with his lopsided hump. "Why, oh, why," cries the idealist, wringing his hands. "Oh, why ?"
Thus Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet" symphony is in its design more the literal story than is Shakespeare's play. And yet there is ever a serious nobility, a heroic reach in the art of Berlioz, where he stands almost alone among the composers of his race. Here, probably, more than in his pictured stories, lies the secret of his endurance. He was, other than his followers, ever an idealist.
He could not accept her as she was. His suspicion painted her black with the sticky ink of a morbid idealist, while his faith, rising from the same ideals, made her seem almost ethereal. His longing for her was an acute physical pain, and he never allowed his ideals to stop his romancing. He insisted that his desire be stated in masking phrases and deceiving glories of chivalrous prattle.
That was what her act had taught her that was the word of the gods to the mortal who had laid a hand on their bolts. And she had humbled herself to accept the lesson, seeing human relations at last as a tangled and deep-rooted growth, a dark forest through which the idealist cannot cut his straight path without hearing at each stroke the cry of the severed branch: "Why woundest thou me?"
There is the man who has made money in business, and late in the day conceives the idea of entering Parliament which he sometimes succeeds in doing even when he has been unable to avoid making an election speech or two. There is the idealist who takes up political work with the sole object of doing useful service. There is the well-informed and open-minded student of public affairs.
His portraits of men have kindred qualities, and the magnificent picture of John O'Leary shows him at his best. It is itself a symbol of the movement of which O'Leary was the last great representative. The stately patriarchal head of the old chief is the head of the idealist, so sure of his own truth that he must act, and, if needs be, become the martyr for his ideal.
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