Then there are the practical men, beloved of our American life. Both
their feet are firmly fixed upon the solid ground. They generally
know just where they are, which is not surprising, for they do not,
for the most part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent
unusual places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers and the
impractical dreams of the artist make small appeal to them; the world
they live in is a sharply defined and clearly lighted and rather
limited place. They like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to
that man go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, typewriters,
telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, programs, conferences
and drives. Getting results is their goal; everything is judged by the
criterion of effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious
pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football games in their
youth and impressive captains of industry in their old age. Their
virtues are wholesome, if obvious; they are good mixers, have shrewd
judgment, immense physical and volitional energy. They understand that
two and two make four. They are rarely saints but, unlike many of
us who once had the capacity for sainthood, they are not dreadful
sinners. They are the tribe of which politicians are born but, when
they are blended with imaginative and spiritual gifts, they become
philanthropists and statesmen, practical servants of mankind. They
make good, if conservative, citizens; kind, if uninspiring, husbands
and deplorable preachers.

Then there are those fascinating men of feeling and imagination, those
who look into their own hearts and write, those to whom the inner
dominions which the spirit conquers for itself become a thousand-fold
more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet. These are the
literary or the creative folk. Their passion is not so much to know
life as to enjoy it; not to direct it, but to experience it; not even