Ideala

Ideala

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Title: Ideala
Author: Sarah Grand
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6855] [Yes, we are more than
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IDEALA
BY SARAH GRAND
"L'esprit ne nous garantit pas des sottises de notre
humeur."--VAUVENARGUES

PREFACE
You will ask me, perhaps, even you who are all charity, why parts of
this 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 to
take any of Ideala's opinions, here given, as final. Much of what she
thought was the mere effervescence of a strong mind in a state of
fermentation, a mind passing successively through the three stages of
the process; the vinous, alcoholic, or excitable stage; the acetous,
jaundiced, or embittered stage; and the putrefactive, or unwholesome
stage; and also embodying, at different times, the characteristics of all
three. But, even during its worst phase, it was an earnest mind, seeking
the truth diligently, and not to be blamed for stumbling upon good and
bad together by the way. It is, in fact, not a perfect, but a transitional
state which I offer for your consideration, a state which has its
repulsive features, but which, it may be hoped, would result in a
beautiful deposit, when at last the inevitable effervescence had
subsided.
But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourage
others, of course. What help is there in the contemplation of perfection
ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down our arms, 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. The

imperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details of the
process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people who
criticise, 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
and failings 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 that one
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 lives are
one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest; the
decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal
carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag
others after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has the
courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the best
of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt to
make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the manners,
some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of an
objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a miserable
state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by robbing 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 worth living for. When
we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate is hell, and all the
intervals of like