DON QUIXOTE

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To call "Don Quixote" a sad book, preaching a pessimist view of life,
argues a total misconception of its drift. It would be so if its moral
were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to ridicule and
discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; its moral, so far as
it can be said to have one, is that the spurious enthusiasm that is born
of vanity and self-conceit, that is made an end in itself, not a means to
an end, that acts on mere impulse, regardless of circumstances and
consequences, is mischievous to its owner, and a very considerable
nuisance to the community at large. To those who cannot distinguish
between the one kind and the other, no doubt "Don Quixote" is a sad book;
no doubt to some minds it is very sad that a man who had just uttered so
beautiful a sentiment as that "it is a hard case to make slaves of those
whom God and Nature made free," should be ungratefully pelted by the
scoundrels his crazy philanthropy had let loose on society; but to others
of a more judicial cast it will be a matter of regret that reckless
self-sufficient enthusiasm is not oftener requited in some such way for
all the mischief it does in the world.