Ah! well! I suppose we have been too long familiar with the
unprofitableness of speculation, have surrendered too definitely to
action--to the material side of things, retaining for what relaxation our
spirits may require, a habit of sentimental aspiration, carefully
divorced from things as they are. We seem to have decided that things
are not, or, if they are, ought not to be--and what is the good of
thinking of things like that? In fact, our national ideal has become the
Will to Health, to Material Efficiency, and to it we have sacrificed the
Will to Sensibility. It is a point of view. And yet--to the philosophy
that craves Perfection, to the spirit that desires the golden mean, and
hankers for the serene and balanced seat in the centre of the see-saw, it
seems a little pitiful, and constricted; a confession of defeat, a
hedging and limitation of the soul. Need we put up with this, must we
for ever turn our eyes away from things as they are, stifle our
imaginations and our sensibilities, for fear that they should become our
masters, and destroy our sanity? This is the eternal question that
confronts the artist and the thinker. Because of the inevitable decline
after full flowering-point is reached, the inevitable fading of the fire
that follows the full flame and glow, are we to recoil from striving to
reach the perfect and harmonious climacteric? Better to have loved and
lost, I think, than never to have loved at all; better to reach out and
grasp the fullest expression of the individual and the national soul,
than to keep for ever under the shelter of the wall.
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