"Why?" we asked tactfully.
"Because she'd probably have to go home early!" he answered.
Brian Kent, the hero of Harold Bell Wright's new novel, The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, is first introduced to us as a defaulting bank clerk. Later he is reformed by the influence of "dear old Auntie Sue" and becomes a novelist. His first book sells so well that in six months he is able to pay back all the money he stole and have something left over. This would seem to prove that Brian was an unusually successful novelist. Or, again, it may merely indicate that he had no real gift for embezzlement.
It rather seems to us that the distinct failure of political radicalism in America may be explained in part by its devotion to the concrete as opposed to the abstract. "We are going to make the world over anew at 12:25 o'clock p. m. next Thursday," says the concrete radical. And then Thursday comes and it rains and nothing is done about fixing up the world, and all the followers of the young radical are disappointed, and they go home firmly convinced that the world never will be fixed up. The man who realizes the value of the abstract ideal is shrewder. He says: "The world ought to be scrubbed up a lot, and if we can make a start next Thursday some time after breakfast we will. But if we can't do it then we've just got to keep on plugging away, because the job must be done."
In other words, the man with abstract ideals makes the job the important thing. The concrete man is impressed more by the date of the doing.
A little abstraction is an excellent thing for the reformer or the revolutionist. It provides, we should say, a sort of reinforced concrete purpose.
At the worst, an abstract ideal is pemmican to carry the voyager through the long nights until the ice begins to break.