The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Cold-blooded goodness

From ‘Cold-blooded Goodness‘, The Spectator, 26 June 1915:

A young person of either sex who is wholly without sentimentality has not as a rule much heart. On the other hand, where practicality so overruns the character as to destroy all the finest feelings, it may still leave the capacity for sympathy not uninjured, but certainly undestroyed. No good child ever lived who did not wish for approbation, but certain good people do grow out of it. Indifference to it is a cold, unlovable virtue; but some quite kind and lovable people are indifferent to the opinion even of those they really like. It goes, we think, with an overweening desire for independence, a quality always unsocial and rather inhuman. All these temptations may quite well be no temptations to warm-hearted people; but, speaking generally, those who have never felt them ‘belong to the cold-blooded good.

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