You find them in mysterious nooks of islands and
continents, mostly red-nosed and watery-eyed, and not even amusingly
boastful. There is nothing more futile under the sun than a mere
adventurer. He might have loved at one time--which would have been a
saving grace. I mean loved adventure for itself. But if so, he was
bound to lose this grace very soon. Adventure by itself is but a
phantom, a dubious shape without a heart. Yes, there is nothing more
futile than an adventurer; but nobody can say that the adventurous
activities of the British race are stamped with the futility of a chase
after mere emotions.
The successive generations that went out to sea from these Isles went out
to toil desperately in adventurous conditions. A man is a worker. If he
is not that he is nothing. Just nothing--like a mere adventurer. Those
men understood the nature of their work, but more or less dimly, in
various degrees of imperfection. The best and greatest of their leaders
even had never seen it clearly, because of its magnitude and the
remoteness of its end. This is the common fate of mankind, whose most
positive achievements are born from dreams and visions followed loyally
to an unknown destination.
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