And there is, too, a sanative quality in that feeling. His critical attitude may help the exile to keep before him higher standards, whether in thought or in conduct, whether in his "Hellenizing" or his "Hebraizing" tendencies, as Mr. Arnold calls them, than he might entertain were he living comfortably at the very centre. His privations may thus be more effective than the maceration of the recluse in keeping him in sympathy with culture, with the best things of the mind; and surely that is some compensation for living in Patagonia! There is still another: there is a fortunate exemption for such exiles--fortunate we may safely call it, though it is but a negative beatitude--the exemption from envy. That is worth not a little. In Paris, in London, in Pekin, how many provocatives to envy beset even the philosopher! For in those cities he must see many undeniably superior persons about him--persons superior to himself not only in fortune, but in ability! There, in attainment of all sorts, he meets his rivals; and if he is a real philosopher, he will remember Creon's caution--"not to get the idea fixed in your head that what you say and nothing else is right."[5] Still, philosopher or not, he will be likely to envy some of the desirable things that he sees; and the fault is perhaps excusable: at any rate an occasional touch of the claw, an _effleurement_ now and then of the passion, need not surprise us, even when we do not excuse it, in London or Pekin. But in the Patagonian civilization, however important it may be to the progress of the world, what does such a man find to envy? Surely the higher provocatives to that weakness are not abundant. Hereditary wealth, ancient family dignities, culture, scholarship, imposing genius--these do not surround him, these do not confront him with his inferiority as they do, let us say, in this country. It is we, then, who are the unhappy ones in this respect; but we can understand, at least, the weakness of brethren who may be a little shaken by the contemplation of all the desirable things in which the richer civilizations abound.
[5] [Greek: Mê nyn en êthos mounon en sautô phorei, Hôs phês sy, kouden allo, tout' orthôs echein.]