the street you see a man whom you take for an old
acquaintance. You approach with outstretched hand and expectant
countenance, but his stony glare of non-recognition gives you pause. The
fact that he does not know you gives you time to perceive that you do
not know him and have never seen him before. A superficial resemblance
has deceived you. In the dictionary you may find many instances of such
mistakes in the moral realm.

One of the most common of these 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,