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Updated: June 15, 2025
Leave to idle thinkers, to soporific dreamers, to waking visionaries, to useless enthusiasts, the unproductive task, the unfruitful occupation, of fathoming depths, from which ye ought sedulously to divert your attention; enjoy with moderation, the benefits attached to your present existence; augment their number when reason sanctions the multiplication; but never attempt to spring yourselves forward, beyond the sphere destined for your action.
Now these visionaries at least the true ones honour each other according to the degree of "eye" that each possesses. By "eye" the collector means a faculty of discerning a fine object quickly and instinctively. And, in fact, the trained eye becomes a magically fine instrument. It detects the fractions of a millimetre by which a copy belies its original.
A dreamer, with the clouds of the visionaries and apocalyptists ever in his head? When we look at the ancient world, the great men are not archaic figures. Matthew Arnold found in Homer something of the clearness and shrewdness of Voltaire.
He was not less ambitious for the greatness of Athens than the most daring of these visionaries; but he better understood on what foundations it should be built.
All countries at all times require, and England perhaps at the present not less than others, men having a faith at once distinct and large, the expression of what is best in their times, and having also the courage to proclaim it, and take their stand upon it.... But in our day such visionaries are less and less possible.
By "visionaries" I suppose the Morning Post means those who believe in the League of Nations; and by the "blind" I suppose it means them, too, though usually a distinction is drawn between those who see too much and those who cannot see at all. Nor need we determine whether those who believe in the Balance of Power belong rather to the visionaries or to the blind.
It's all I can do to stay here." Smith regarded him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen this frozen wilderness?" Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the Spring." "I see!" The edged voice snapped, "Visionaries!" Hillas's eyes opened again, wide, and then the boy was looking beyond the man with the far-seeing eyes of the plainsman.
Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, and Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also? What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as Dorothea Dix?
The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away my reverence for names long consecrated in our annals abates and the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors.
But in merely mentioning these subjects I am transgressing my proper limits. I mention them only with a view to reminding the reader once more that the object of this volume is not to suggest, or supply arguments for maintaining that existing conditions are perfect, or that socialists are visionaries in declaring that they are capable of improvement.
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