By the Christmas Fire | Page 8

mistakes in identity is the confusion of the Idealist and the Doctrinaire. An idealist is defined as "one who pursues and dwells upon the ideal, a seeker after the highest beauty and good." A doctrinaire may do this also, but he is differentiated as "one who theorizes without sufficient regard for practical considerations, one who undertakes to explain things by a narrow theory or group of theories."
The Idealist is the kind of man we need. He is not satisfied with things as they are. He is one
Whose soul sees the perfect Which his eyes seek in vain.
If a more perfect society is to come, it must be through the efforts of persons capable of such visions. Our schools, churches, and all the institutions of a higher civilization have as their chief aim the production of just such personalities. But why are they not more successful? What becomes of the thousands of young idealists who each year set forth on the quest for the highest beauty and truth? Why do they tire so soon of the quest and sink into the ranks of the spiritually unemployed.
The answer is that many persons who set out to be idealists end by becoming doctrinaires. They identify the highest beauty and truth with their own theories. After that they make no further excursions into the unexplored regions of reality, for fear that they may discover their identification to have been incomplete.
The Doctrinaire is like a mason who has mixed his cement before he is ready to use it. When he is ready the cement has set, and he can't use it. It sticks together, but it won't stick to anything else. George Eliot describes such a predicament in her sketch of the Reverend Amos Barton. Mr. Barton's plans, she says, were, like his sermons, "admirably well conceived, had the state of the case been otherwise."
By eliminating the "state of the case," the Doctrinaire is enabled to live the simple life--intellectually and ethically. The trouble is that it is too simple. To his mind the question, "Is it true?" is never a disturbing one, nor does it lead to a troublesome investigation of matters of fact. His definition of truth has the virtue of perfect simplicity,--"A truth is that which has got itself believed by me." His thoughts form an exclusive club, and when a new idea applies for admission it is placed on the waiting list. A single black-ball from an old member is sufficient permanently to exclude it. When an idea is once in, it has a very pleasant time of it. All the opinions it meets with are clubable, and on good terms with one another. Whether any of them are related to any reality outside their own little circle would be a question that it would be impolite to ask. It would be like asking a correctly attired member who was punctilious in paying his club dues, whether he had also paid his tailor. To the Doctrinaire there seems something sordid and vulgar in the anxiety to make the two ends--theory and practice--meet. It seems to indicate that one is not intellectually in comfortable circumstances.
The Doctrinaire, when he has conceived certain ideals, is not content that they should be cast upon the actual world, to take their chances in the rough-and-tumble struggle for existence, proving their right to the kingdom by actually conquering it, inch by inch. He cannot endure such tedious delays. He must have the satisfaction of seeing his ideals instantly realized. The ideal life must be lived under ideal conditions. And so, for his private satisfaction, he creates for himself such a world into which he retires.
It is a world of natural law, as he understands natural law. There are no exceptions, no deviation from general principles, no shadings off, no fascinating obscurities, no rude practical jokes, no undignified by-play, no "east windows of divine surprise," no dark unfathomable abysses. He would not allow such things. In his world the unexpected never happens. The endless chain of causation runs smoothly. Every event has a cause, and the cause is never tangled up with the effect, so that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. He is intellectually tidy, and everything must be in its place. If something turns up for which he cannot find a place, he sends it to the junk shop.
When the Doctrinaire descends from the homogeneous world which he has constructed, into the actual world which, in the attempt to get itself made, is becoming more amazingly heterogeneous all the time, he is in high dudgeon. The existence of these varied contradictorinesses seems to him a personal affront.
It is as if a person had lived in a natural history museum, where every stuffed animal knew his place, and had his scientific name painted