It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you. - Ford Madox Ford

Old Campion had once said that he believed – he positively believed, with shudders – that Christopher desired to live in the spirit of Christ. That had seemed horrible to the general, but Mark did not see that it was horrible, per se.… He doubted, however, whether Christ would have refused to manage Groby had it been his job. Christ was a sort of an Englishman and Englishmen did not as a rule refuse to do their jobs.… They had not used to; now no doubt they did. It was a Russian sort of trick. He had heard that even before the revolution great Russian nobles would disperse their estates, give their serfs their liberty, put on a hair shirt and sit by the roadside begging.… Something like that. Perhaps Christopher was a symptom that the English were changing. He himself was not. He was just lazy and determined – and done with it!

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

But the fellow talked like a cheap novelist. - Or like a very good novelist for the matter of that, if it's the business of a novelist to make you see things clearly.