How am I to become
what I see it would be wise to be?" It is as when the woman of
Samaria said, "Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is
deep!" It is true that civilisation does seem more and more to
create men and women with these instincts, and to set them in
circumstances where it is hard to gratify them. And then such
people are apt to say, "Is it after all worth while to aim at so
impossible a standard? Is it not better just to put it all aside,
and make oneself as comfortable as one can?" And that is the
practical answer which a good many people do make to the question;
and when such people get older, they are the most discouraging of
all advisers, because they ridicule the whole thing as nonsense,
which young men and young women had better get out of their heads
as soon as they can; as Jowett wrote of his pupil Swinburne, that
he was a clever fellow, and would do well enough as soon as he had
got rid of all this poetry and nonsense. I feel no doubt that these
ideas, this kind of interest in life, in the wonder and strangeness
of it, can be pursued by many who do not pursue it. It is like the
white deer, which in the old stories the huntsman was for ever
pursuing in the forest; he did not ever catch it, but the pursuit
of it brought him many high adventures.
Of course it is far easier if one has a friend who shares the same
tastes; but if one has not, there are always books, in which the
best minds can be found thinking and talking at their finest and
liveliest.
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