red at the lowest
tide: in our own comfort and satisfaction cannot we extend a little
compassion to him? Not that I have the least prejudice against
Patagonia; but we need some name for the better concentration of our
sympathy. The intelligent but discontented Patagonian, then, who
rejects the Patagonian ideals, whose thoughts are not the thoughts of
Patagonia, whose ways are not Patagonian ways, he to whom even the most
successful popular career in Patagonia would seem a humiliation,
because it would associate him with the Patagonian character, and so
compromise him before the extra-Patagonian world--his, I say, is not a
happy case. His exile must end like other banishments for life--either
in escape or in death. For while he lives he must do without spiritual
light and heat, without the intellectual climate that he needs.

Do you call this a morbid state of mind in the Patagonian? Well, it may
be that he should imitate the repose, the serenity of the limpet; it
may be his duty to rest contented with the beach at low tide, with the
estate to which he was born; and yet I say that his feeling is not
devoid of a certain distinction; it may be, indeed, very blamable, but
it is a feeling that is no trait of ignoble natures.

And there is, too, a sanative quality in that feeling. His critical
attitude may help the exile to keep before him higher standards,
whether in thought or in conduct, whether in his "Hellenizing" or his
"Hebraizing" tendencies, as Mr. Arnold calls them, than he might
entertain were he living comfortably at the very centre. His
privations may thus be more effective than the maceration of the
recluse in keeping him in sympathy with culture, with the best things
of the mind; and surely that is some compensation for living in
Patagonia! There is still another: there is a fortunate exemption for
such exiles--fortunate we may safely call it, though it is but a
negative beatitude--the exemption from envy. That is worth not a
little. In Paris, in London, in Pekin, how many provocatives to envy
beset even the philosopher! For in those cities he must see many
undeniably superior persons about him--persons superior to himself not
only in fortune, but in ability! There, in attainment of all sorts, he
meets his rivals; and if he is a real philosopher, he will remember
Creon's caution--"not to get the idea fixed in your head that what you
say and nothing else is right."[5] Still, philosopher or not, he will
be like