ake a
comfortable corner for oneself at the expense of others; I do not at
all believe that every man of ideals is bound to take a part in the
administration of the community. We can easily have too many
administrators; and that ends in the dismal slough of municipal
politics. After all, we must nowadays all be specialists, and a man
has as much right to specialise in beauty as he has to specialise in
Greek Grammar. In fact a specialist in Greek Grammar has as his
ultimate view the clearer and nicer appreciation of the shades of Greek
expression, and is merely serving a high ideal of mental refinement.
It seems to me purely conventional to accept as valuable the work of a
commentator on Sophocles, because it is traditionally respectable, and
to say that a commentator on sunsets, as I once heard a poet described,
is an effeminate dilettante. It is the motive that matters.
Personally, I think that a man who has drifted into writing a
commentary on Sophocles, because he happens to find that he can earn a
living that way, is no more worthy of admiration than a man who earns
his living by billiard-marking. Neither are necessary to the world.
But the commentator and the billiard-marker are alike admirable, if
they are working out a theory, if they think that thus and thus they
can best help on the progress of the world._

"_My own desire is, so to speak, to be a commentator on life, in one
particular aspect. I think the world would be all the better if there
were a finer appreciation of what is noble and beautiful, a deeper
discrimination of motives, a larger speculation as to the methods and
objects of our pilgrimage. I think the coarseness of the intellectual
and spiritual palate that prevails widely nowadays is not only a
misfortune, I think it is of the nature of sin. If people could live
more in the generous visions of poets, if they could be taught to see
beauty in trees and fields and buildings, I think they would be happier
and better. Most people are obliged to spend the solid hours of the
day in necessary work. The more sordid that work is, the more
advisable it is to cultivate a perception of the quality of things.
Every one has hours of recreation in every day; the more such hours are
filled with pleasant, simple, hopeful, beautiful thoughts, the better
for us all._

"_Of course I may be quite wrong; I may be meant to find out my
mistake; but I seem to discern in the teaching of Christ a desire to
mak