The Conflict by David Graham Phillips
page 292 of 399 (73%)
page 292 of 399 (73%)
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thoroughly as he could the thing next at hand.
What has all this to do with his infatuation for Jane? It serves to show not only why the Workingmen's League was growing like a plague of gypsy moth, but also why Victor Dorn was not the man to be conquered by passion. Naturally, Jane, who had only the vaguest conception of the size and power of Victor Dorn's mind, could not comprehend wherein lay the difference between him and the men she read about in novels or met in her wanderings among the people of her own class in various parts of the earth. It is possible for even the humblest of us to understand genius, just as it is possible to view a mountain from all sides and get a clear idea of it bulk and its dominion. But the hasty traveler contents himself with a glance, a ``How superb,'' and a quick passing on; and most of us are hasty travelers in the scenic land of intellectuality. Jane saw that he was a great man. But she was deceived by his frankness and his simplicity. She evoked in him only the emotional side of his nature, only one part of that. Because it--the only phase of him she attentively examined--was so impressive, she assumed that it was the chief feature of the man. Also, young and inexperienced women--and women not so young, and with opportunity to become less inexperienced but without the ability to learn by experience--always exaggerate the importance of passion. Almost without exception, it is by way of passion that a man and a woman approach each other. It is, of necessity, the exterior that first comes into view. Thus, all that youth and inexperience can know about love is its aspect of passion. |
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