It is
simple, because many understand the word "badge," who might not even
understand the word "recognition." It is sensuous, because it is visible
and tangible; it is incarnate, as all the good Gods have been; and it is
passionate in this perfectly practical sense, which the man with an eye to
business may some day learn more thoroughly than he likes, that there are
men who will allow you to cross a word out in a theoretical document, but
who will not allow you to pull a big button off their bodily clothing,
merely because you have more money than they have. Now I think it is this
sensuousness, this passion, and, above all, this simplicity that are most
wanted in this promising revolt of our time. For this simplicity is
perhaps the only thing in which the best type of recent revolutionists
have failed. It has been our sorrow lately to salute the sunset of one of
the very few clean and incorruptible careers in the most corruptible phase
of Christendom. The death of Quelch naturally turns one's thoughts to
those extreme Marxian theorists, who, whatever we may hold about their
philosophy, have certainly held their honour like iron. And yet, even in
this instant of instinctive reverence, I cannot feel that they were
poetical enough, that is childish enough, to make a revolution.
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