the senses generally. We are not bound to accept more than we choose from them."[1]
It is in Sandra Belloni that Meredith is most expository on the subject, and in connection with the Pole sisters. He says of them,—[2]
"It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is
to say, they supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession
of the Nice Feelings, and exclusively comprehended the Fine
Shades." They had "that extraordinary sense of superiority to
mankind which was the crown of their complacent brows.
Eclipsed as they may be in the gross appreciation of the world by
other people, who excel in this or that accomplishment, persons
that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with the Fine
Shades carry their own test of intrinsic value."
Here, however, the sentimental fallacy is shown to be
the reverse side of the refusal to see what is, and to consist
in the assertion of what is not. This is a logical corollary,
since merely to disregard the unpleasant is a passive
state until reinforced by the active process of manufacturing
the desirable. Actually to manufacture the desirable
is a constructive work, and the occupation of the enterprising
idealist. The sentimentalist manufactures only
in fancy, and, being a sentimentalist, does not know the
difference. His imagination, that marvelous power of
visualizing the absent or non-existent, is perverted by being
turned inward and forced to rest content with its hollow
fabrication, instead of being directed outward upon
a plastic world waiting its formative touch. As the urge
- ↑ Sandra Belloni, 220.
- ↑ Ibid., 4. He enlarges on this result of an effete civilization, hinting that "our sentimentalists are a variety owing their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding. The pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this training. He does. But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of high German romances."
