ion
without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he
seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.

In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the
capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded
because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their
listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man
who advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only
likely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become a
stale matter. To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury
to the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt
to disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed.
Yeobright preaching to the Egdon eremites that they might rise to
a serene comprehensiveness without going through the process of
enriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient Chaldeans that
in ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to
pass first into the intervening heaven of ether.

Was Yeobright's mind well-proportioned? No. A well-proportioned mind
is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely
say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman,
tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the
other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet,
revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are
happiness and mediocrity. It produces the poetry of Rogers, the
paintings of West, the statecraft of North, the spiritual guidance
of Tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, to
wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortably
in their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in many
cases, they deserve. It never would have allowed Yeobright to do
such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit his
fellow-creatures.

He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyone
knew the heath well it was Clym. He was permeated with its scenes,
with its substance, and with its odours. He might be said to be its
product. His eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all
the first images of his memory were mingled; his estimate of life
had been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives and
arrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow"
to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and