The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues
which make the woman a good housewife and house-mother, which make the
man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need,
stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be
added thereto if a State is to be not only free but great. Good
citizenship is not good citizenship if exhibited only in the home.
There remain the duties of the individual in relation to the State,
and these duties are none too easy under the conditions which exist
where the effort is made to carry on free government in a complex,
industrial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary
citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to
remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire.
The closet philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from
his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions,
is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic,
and still more the mob leader, and the insincere man who to achieve
power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not
merely useless but noxious.
The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve
them in practical fashion.
Pages:
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86