“But you mistake me,” pleaded Clym.
“All this was very depressing. But not
so depressing as something I next perceived—that
my business was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate
business that ever a man could be put to. That
decided me: I would give it up and try to follow
some rational occupation among the people I knew best,
and to whom I could be of most use. I have come
home; and this is how I mean to carry out my plan.
I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as possible,
so as to be able to walk over here and have a night-school
in my mother’s house. But I must study a
little at first, to get properly qualified. Now,
neighbours, I must go.”
And Clym resumed his walk across the heath.
“He’ll never carry it out in the world,”
said Fairway. “In a few weeks he’ll
learn to see things otherwise.”
“’Tis good-hearted of the young man,”
said another. “But, for my part, I think
he had better mind his business.”
The New Course Causes Disappointment
Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction
that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort
which brings wisdom rather than affluence. He
wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals
rather than individuals at the expense of the class.
What was more, he was ready at once to be the first
unit sacrificed.
In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life
the intermediate stages are usually two at least,
frequently many more; and one of those stages is almost
sure to be worldly advance. We can hardly imagine
bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without
imagining social aims as the transitional phase.
Yeobright’s local peculiarity was that in striving
at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living—nay,
wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness
with clowns.
He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather
than repentance for his text. Mentally he was
in a provincial future, that is, he was in many points
abreast with the central town thinkers of his date.
Much of this development he may have owed to his studious
life in Paris, where he had become acquainted with
ethical systems popular at the time.
In consequence of this relatively advanced position,
Yeobright might have been called unfortunate.
The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should
be only partially before his time: to be completely
to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame.
Had Philip’s warlike son been intellectually
so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without
bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero
that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an
Alexander.
