r. "But, for my part, I
think he had better mind his business."

2--The New Course Causes Disappointment

Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men
was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. He
wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than
individuals at the expense of the class. What was more, he was ready at
once to be the first unit sacrificed.

In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate
stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those
stages is almost sure to be worldly advanced. We can hardly imagine
bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining
social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity was
that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay,
wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns.

He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance
for his text. Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in
many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date. Much of
this development he may have owed to his studious life in Paris, where
he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the time.

In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Yeobright might
have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him. A
man should be only partially before his time--to be completely to the
vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been
intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without
bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but
nobody would have heard of an Alexander.

In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the
capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded
because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners
have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man who advocates
aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be
understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter.
To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic
world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence
to which humanity has been long accustomed. Yeobright preaching to
the Egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness
without