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The spiritual life depends on self-recollection and detachment from the rush of life; it depends on facing frankly the thought of death; it is signalized, especially, by the identification of self with others, even of the guiltless with the guilty. Spirituality is sometimes spoken of as if it were a kind of moral luxury, a work of supererogation, a token of fastidiousness and over-refinement.
For him to have fallen by the wayside would have caused no comment for it would have been expected in those early days of struggle, but to those who have the benefit of inherited tendencies toward personality, to fail in its development is in the nature of a crime. Personality does not mean over-refinement. Sturdy qualities are the necessary ones.
I have alluded, elsewhere, to grand-parents There are usually uncles, aunts and cousin's sometimes in great numbers. There is much due to these. I know, very well, that out over-refinement, in an over-refined and diseased society, says otherwise, of late; and that our time is expended more and more especially that of females on our own dear selves to the exclusion of remoter relatives.
His clever but too deeply metaphysical romances are not only full of domestic sentimentality and domestic scenes, but they also imitate the over-refinement and effeminacy of Goethe, and yet his sound understanding and warm patriotic feelings led him to condemn all the artificial follies of fashion, all that was unnatural as well as all that was unjust.
"I am always in captivity." With most men Paul was diffident and prone to silence, but something in his effete nature gave him confidence with women. He had been flattered into a sort of assurance that they found him irresistible. They thought him clairvoyantly sympathetic and he was by the very over-refinement of his music and dream-fed temperament.
Canby, it is difficult for many of us who live in the world to realize the effect of luxury and over-refinement upon society! We live too close to it. Mr. Benham is an anachronism. I would have given much if he had not become interested in Marcia. She is not for him nor he for her. But I think it is his mind that attracts her " "Rubbish!" I broke in. "Has he no face, no body?"
But again came silently swelling over him like a flood all that ancient peace, and quietude, and dignity, which looked so stately and beautiful as brooding round the old house; all that blessed order of ranks, that sweet superiority, and yet with no disclaimer of common brotherhood, that existed between the English gentleman and his inferiors; all that delightful intercourse, so sure of pleasure, so safe from rudeness, lowness, unpleasant rubs, that exists between gentleman and gentleman, where, in public affairs, all are essentially of one mind, or seem so to an American politician, accustomed to the fierce conflicts of our embittered parties; where life was made so enticing, so refined, and yet with a sort of homeliness that seemed to show that all its strength was left behind; that seeming taking in of all that was desirable in life, and all its grace and beauty, yet never giving life a hard enamel of over-refinement.
No one appeared doubtless they were sleeping off the fatigue of the journey and I drew no inspiration thence; but as I turned to consult Maignan my eye lit on the faggots, and I saw in a flash that here was a chance of putting into practice a stratagem as old as the hills, yet ever fresh, and not seldom successful. It was no time for over-refinement.
Is there not, with such a group and in such a crisis, infinitely more danger to be apprehended from half-trained minds and shallow thinking than from over-education and over-refinement? Surely we have wit enough to found a Negro college so manned and equipped as to steer successfully between the dilettante and the fool.
If any be ready to call this an over-refinement, deeming it incredible that beings so small and lowly should come so near to human sentiment and virtue, let such not be too hasty with their dissent. Surely they may in reason wait till they can point to at least one country where the men are as universally faithful to their wives and children as the birds are to theirs.
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