Yet it is not the highest aim, for in all its forms,
whether as personal improvement, the salvation of the soul, or ascetic
religion, it has at its core a profound selfishness. Margaret's soul
was too generous for any low form of selfishness. Too noble to
become an Epicurean, too large-minded to become a modern ascetic, the
defective nature of her rule of life, showed itself in her case,
only in a certain supercilious tone toward "the vulgar herd," in the
absence (at this period) of a tender humanity, and in an idolatrous
hero-worship of genius and power. Afterward, too, she may have
suffered from her desire for a universal human experience, and an
unwillingness to see that we must often be content to enter the
Kingdom, of Heaven halt and maimed,--that a perfect development here
must often be wholly renounced.
But how much better to pursue with devotion, like that of Margaret, an
imperfect aim, than to worship with lip-service, as most persons do,
even though it be in a loftier temple, and before a holier shrine!
With Margaret, the doctrine of self-culture was a devotion to which
she sacrificed all earthly hopes and joys,--everything but manifest
duty. And so her course was "onward, ever onward," like that of
Schiller, to her last hour of life.
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