Put to
the test, I also showed resentment and was moved with the spirit of
retaliation towards those who wronged me. Nor, save as a matter of
theory and sentiment, did I love my fellows any better than the average
of mankind. I sought those who were congenial to me, and had no
pleasure in the company of the common and the ignorant. I liked clever
people. I gave them my best, but I had nothing to bestow upon the dull
and stupid. How many times have I borne the society of inferior people
with ungracious tolerance, and hastened from them with undisguised
relief? How often when dealing with the poor and ignorant in the
exercise of conventional philanthropy, have I been careful to preserve
the sense of a great gulf that yawned between me and them? And what
was my daily life after all but a life existing for its own purposes,
as most other men's lives were; and what credit could I take for the
fact that the nature of those purposes was a trifle more consonant with
what the world calls high ideals than theirs?
So the years went on, and the sense of unreality in my teaching grew
steadily more intense and intolerable. I saw myself continually
expending all the forces of my mind on theories which left me and my
hearers alike unchanged in the essential characteristics of our lives.
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