Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tom Allen, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
"L'esprit ne nous garantit pas des sottises de notre humeur."—VAUVENARGUES
You will ask me, perhaps, even you who are all charity, why parts ofthis book are what they are. I can only answer with another question:Why are we what we are? But I warn you that it would not be fair totake any of Ideala's opinions, here given, as final. Much of what shethought was the mere effervescence of a strong mind in a state offermentation, a mind passing successively through the three stages ofthe process; the vinous, alcoholic, or excitable stage; theacetous, jaundiced, or embittered stage; and the putrefactive,or unwholesome stage; and also embodying, at different times, thecharacteristics of all three. But, even during its worst phase, it wasan earnest mind, seeking the truth diligently, and not to be blamedfor stumbling upon good and bad together by the way. It is, in fact,not a perfect, but a transitional state which I offer for yourconsideration, a state which has its repulsive features, but which, itmay be hoped, would result in a beautiful deposit, when at last theinevitable effervescence had subsided.
But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourageothers, of course. What help is there in the contemplation ofperfection ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down ourarms, we should struggle no longer, we should be hopeless, despairing,reckless, if we never had a glimpse of growth, of those "stepping-stones of their dead selves" upon which men mount to higher things. Theimperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details ofthe process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people whocriticise, not with a view to mending matters, but because a
… low desire
Not to seem lowest makes them level all;
the people who judge, who condemn, who have no mercy on any faults andfailings but their own, and who,
… if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling thatone mistake must mar a life—anybody's life but their own, of course;who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose livesare one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest;the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternalcarping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to dragothers after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has thecourage to face them—for they are terrible cowards—and taking thebest of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are aptto make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in themanners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text ofan objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is amiserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth byrobbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength,and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worthliving for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate ishell, and all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers toeither, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we canattain to the mystery that may not