But in this world, which as a whole the heart rejects--"my heart," said Terry, "is the last analysis of all things"--the idealist sees things of beauty which constitute for him the elements of perfection, elements which in some future state he dreams may be fully realised in a social whole.
"I saw a fine thing from the window to-day," Terry wrote, "a thing of sheer delight, the complete transfiguration of a human being. An Italian street labourer came into the yard and sprawled on the grass to eat his own lunch. He was bandy-legged from being coaxed to stand alone too soon. But he had a most wonderful face; all the mobility which toil had banished from his form must have sought refuge in his eyes and his caressing countenance. Catching sight of some children playing 'house,' he jumped up and in a most charming way offered them all of his cakes and went back to his luncheon. The children instinctively brought him back some of the cakes, which he not only refused, but offered them the rest of his food. They gathered in a semicircle while he spoke to them. There came something in his face and attitude which I have seen many 'cultured' people vainly attempt. He absolutely was one of them; the children stood spell-bound, dazed at the sudden transformation of a man into a child. The imagination that can become one with its object is a high form of unconscious art and rests upon the heart and the mass feeling of the race. The ancient folk-lore and ballads must have arisen from some such fusion as this. How unfair, at least unwise, it is to judge the individual action of the proletaire, when he is made for action in the mass."
This vague philosophy and transcendental ethics pass naturally enough, at times, into the feeling of violent revolution, where bomb-throwing, if not advocated, is emotionally sympathetic.
"Just now," wrote Terry, "there is strong predisposition among the 'reds' to resort to Russian methods. It needs only the occasion, which must be waited for, and cannot be created. When the 'error' is great enough, the 'Terror' will surely rise to the occasion. Were it not for my faith in this, I should be glad to see Humanity lapse back to whence it came."
In the idealist there is a growing impatience with the world; in his attempt to react even against Nature and some of the necessary qualities of men there is such inevitable failure that no moral revolutionist or anarchist can indefinitely endure the struggle. He is destroyed by his fundamental opposition to the world which he seeks to destroy. Therefore, impatiently, weakly, he sometimes breaks out--with a bomb--even against his philosophy and his temperament.