Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/50

 ; nor have we patience with the idea of even thinking out for ourselves a pleasure-giving jaunt. To accomplish things in a material way, to succeed, is the dominating passion of the age. And there is no success, the specialists say, outside of a bee line to your goal. And a bee line, we say, does not too often require a superfluity of mind—a bee-mind is sufficient. But is there no truth in pragmatism? Is the practical philosopher to be wholly ignored, even when his cynicism, undisguised, is held in check? Often his forthrightness has a seductive air. If we want to be decisive, positive, aggressive in our views, we must not ever look, we are told, at both sides of a question. If you want to be an organizer, a master of men, you must be a one-sided, single-minded fanatic. For once you are accessible to evidence, once you are open to reason, you are lost. The fanatics, the monominds, are the great successes of the world. And be sure to have spunk enough to rise and keep going, when, in your blinkers, you stumble or