There are hells into which we can fall, as well as heavens to which we can climb, when we take with absolute seriousness the invitations and avowals … - R. W. K. Paterson

Self-distrustful and suspicious of life, the plebeian is nevertheless not wholly deaf to the fancies which rap and knock at his soul, though he forbids them entry. Focusing on what he regards as hard practical matters—his income, work, health, social position, housing, and the extent and security of his physical possessions—he nevertheless dimly feels that he has been cheated of something he cannot precisely define because it springs from values—sacrifice, endurance, commitment, responsibility, faith, a cleaving unto what is truly good and beautiful—which disturb him by the very magnitude of the horizons they unroll, and in which, fearfully, he cannot bring himself to believe. They demand from him a reversal in the whole course on which he has set his life, and it is safer and easier for him to thrust these ambiguous and uncertain promises and challenges into the far off limbo of his paraconscious, into the studiously forgotten regions of his self where they will not perpetually remind him of how little he has in fact gained and how much he may have lost. Yet here they are, and too often emerge as unwelcome visitants, for example when he reads of or perhaps actually meets some other human being who has surrendered material security for a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge, artistic creation, or adventure.

It is rare to find the ideal of the patrician standing alone, not joining hands, albeit unavoidably and sometimes most reluctantly, with the ideals of very different human types. Even Plato’s Guardians, who have had the vision of The Good, are presented first of all as ideals rulers of earthly men, although Plato will soon openly declare that the commonwealth of which they are master is ‘set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, to found one in himself, and whether it exists or ever will exist is no matter, for this is the only commonwealth in who politics he can ever take part’.

Although he [the plebeian] cannot deny that selfless courage and unswerving rectitude—indeed all the qualities of the patrician—exist as dreams in men’s minds, his mission is to destroy any belief that they have ever influenced, or ever could influence, the motive, character, and conduct of actual men and women. Whenever such ideals are put before us, he wants us to react to them as simply unbelievable.