The best way of describing the two principles will be to give an account
of two human lives that exemplified them. These shall not be described
from imagination, but from accurate memory; and I will not have recourse
to the easy artifice of selecting an unfavorable example of the class with
which I happen to have a minor degree of personal sympathy. My Philistine
shall be one whom I sincerely loved and heartily respected. He was an
admirable example of everything that is best and most worthy in the
Philistine civilization; and I believe that nobody who ever came into
contact with him, or had dealings with him, received any other impression
than this, that he had a natural right to the perfect respect which
surrounded him. The younger son of a poor gentleman, he began life with
narrow means, and followed a profession in a small provincial town. By
close attention and industry he saved a considerable sum of money, which
he lost entirely through the dishonesty of a trusted but untrustworthy
acquaintance. He had other mishaps, which but little disturbed his
serenity, and he patiently amassed enough to make himself independent. In
every relation of life he was not only above reproach, he was much more
than that: he was a model of what men ought to be, yet seldom are, in
their conduct towards others. He was kind to every one, generous to those
who needed his generosity, and, though strict with himself, tolerant
towards aberrations that must have seemed to him strangely unreasonable.
He had great natural dignity, and was a gentleman in all his ways, with an
old-fashioned grace and courtesy. He had no vanity; there may have been
some pride as an ingredient in his character, but if so it was of a kind
that could hurt nobody, for he was as simple and straightforward in his
intercourse with the poor as he was at ease with the rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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