The aspirations, dreams, devotions, and sacrifices of
men are as real as their response to self-interest or their tendency
to the conventional and the commonplace; and they are, in the long
run, a great deal more influential. They have wider play; they are
more compelling; and they are of the very highest significance,
because they spring out of that which is deepest and most distinctive
in human nature. A host of men never give these higher impulses, these
spiritual aptitudes and possibilities, full play; but they are in all
men, and all men recognise them and crave an expression of them.
Nothing is truer, on the lowest and most practical plane, than the old
declaration that men do not live by bread alone; they sometimes exist
on bread, because nothing better is to be had at the moment; but they
live only in the full and free play of all their activities, in the
complete expression not only of what is most pressing in interest and
importance at a given time, but of that which is potential and
possible at all times.
The novel of romance and adventure has had a long history, and the
elements of which it is compounded are recognisable long before they
took the form of fiction.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153