We left divorce-law revision to exposed adulterers and marriage reform
to hot adolescents and craving spinsters driven by the furies
within them to assertions that established nothing and to practical
demonstrations that only left everybody thoroughly uncomfortable. Far
better to leave all these matters to calm, patient men in easy chairs,
weighing typical cases impartially, ready to condone, indisposed to
envy.
In return for which restraint on the part of the eager and adventurous,
the calm patient man was prepared in his thoughts to fly high and
go far. Without giving any guarantee, of course, that he might not
ultimately return to the comfortable point of inaction from which he
started.
In Sir Richmond, Dr. Martineau found the most interesting and
encouraging confirmation of the fundamental idea of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A
NEW AGE, the immediate need of new criteria of conduct altogether. Here
was a man whose life was evidently ruled by standards that were at once
very high and very generous. He was overworking himself to the pitch
of extreme distress and apparently he was doing this for ends that
were essentially unselfish. Manifestly there were many things that an
ordinary industrial or political magnate would do that Sir Richmond
would not dream of doing, and a number of things that such a man would
not feel called upon to do that he would regard as imperative duties.
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