Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/17

Rh independence. Though there was nothing idly freakish in his nature, or resentful of authority and precedent, there was a strong disposition to take his own course, to depart from beaten tracks, and to seek difficulties for the joy of overcoming them. This drives to a deep romantic streak in his nature, the attitude towards risk and danger exhibited both on the physical and intellectual planes. Though eminently capable of comradeship, and more destitute of cruder selfishness than any man I have ever known, he was, in the truest sense, an individualist, believing that whatever value lay in life was realised by strong, free, adventurous action, facing danger and risking failure. It was in no sense that he "courted" danger; he was never reckless, but for him a life that was interesting and even useful to himself or others involved a pitting of one's strength and wits against more or less unknown forces in acts of struggle. To him this was life, physical, intellectual, moral, and this alone. For beings who only wanted safety and comfort, well, even for them he had no active contempt (for contempt or any sort of malice were alien to him), but their sort of life was unmeaning to him. I make no doubt but that, had circumstances driven that way, he might have been a great soldier, as great in strategy as in fight. He could never have been a great politician, though his intellectual interests ran very strongly towards the practical application of his social theories, for two