“I will try to be great,” he said, “for the sake of what I think is great.”
There was a short pause, and the pair by common consent skated slowly out of the shadow into the broad moonlight.
“Not that I believe you will be happy if you think of nothing else,” said Joe presently.
“In order to do anything well, one must think of nothing else,” answered John.
“Many great men find time to be great and to do many other things,” said Joe. “Look at Mr. Gladstone; he has an immense private correspondence about things that interest him, quite apart from the big things he is always doing.”
“When a man has reached that point he may find plenty of time to spare,” answered Harrington. “But until he has accomplished the main object of his life he must not let anything take him from his pursuit. He must form no ties, he must have no interests, that do not conduce to his success. I think a man who enters on a political career must devote himself to it as exclusively as a missionary Jesuit attacks the conversion of unbelievers, as wholly as a Buddhist ascetic gives himself to the work of uniting his individual intelligence with the immortal spirit that gives it life.”
“I do not agree with you,” said Joe decisively, and in her womanly intelligence of life she understood the mistake John made. “I cannot agree with you. You are mixing up political activity, which deals with the government of men, with spiritual ideas and immortality, and that sort of thing.”
“How so?” asked John, in some surprise.
“I am quite sure,” said Joe, “that to govern man a man must be human, and the imaginary politician you tell me of is not human at all.”
“And yet I aspire to be that imaginary politician,” said John.