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But Mr Verloc, turning up providentially to occupy the first-floor front bedroom, there had been no more question of the young butcher. It was clearly providential. “ . . . All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity—it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads.
Yet the ideal of mastery and idealisation remains the same, if any one could only attain it: mastery, to see things as they are and dare to describe them ingenuously; idealisation, to select from this reality what is pertinent to ultimate interests and can speak eloquently to the soul. We have seen how arts founded on exercise and automatic self-expression develop into music, poetry, and prose.
The so-called superstitious ages were not merely transitionary. Our regret that they have departed is to be explained not by a mere idealisation of the past, but by a conviction that truths have been lost, or at least have been submerged. Perhaps some day they may be recovered, and in some other form may again become our religion.
Ohiost phepnytai, toi de skiai hahissoysi. We know very little in reality of Peter and James and John, of Apollos and Barnabas. And of our divine Master no biography can ever be written. With St. Paul it is quite different. He is a saint without a luminous halo. His personal characteristics are too distinct and too human to make idealisation easy.
It therefore calms the passions in expressing them, like all idealisation, and tends to make the will conformable with reason and justice. A comprehensive ideal, however, is harder to realise than a particular one: the rain wished for may fall, the death feared may be averted, but the kingdom of heaven does not come. It is in the very essence of prayer to regard a denial as possible.
I knew my dear mother would set herself against this idea, but it nestled warm at my heart, for ever that idea of escaping from the humdrum of ordinary life by some complete sacrifice lured me onwards with its overmastering fascination. Now one unlucky result of this view of religion is the idealisation of the clergyman, the special messenger and chosen servant of the Lord.
How strange now appeared the dreams of her childhood, the idealisation of the young and beautiful mother! The letter was short, but very earnest, and had all the ring of truth in it. She could not but think that any mother would respond to it, and, for herself, after sending it there could be no looking back.
The student of art may, therefore, now enjoy the pleasure of tracing sculpturesque or pictorial motives from their genesis in some rude fragment to their final development in the master-works of a Lionardo or a Raphael, where scientific grouping of figures, higher idealisation of style, the suggestion of freer movement, and more varied dramatic expression yield at last the full flower that the simple germ enfolded.
Bare rebellion cannot endure, and no succession of generations can continue nourishing themselves on the poetry of complaint, and the idealisation of revolt.
One very practical and mischievous result of this religious feeling is the idealisation of all clergymen, as being the special messengers of, and the special means of communication with, the "Most High". The priest is surrounded by the halo of Deity. The power that holds the keys of heaven and of hell becomes the object of reverence and of awe.
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