In Praise of Standards

Some men profess to look first at examples, some at the exemplar. The difference of air about the two has often been commented on; that they get along together for the most part as well as they do is due to the fact that the former do admit the existence of an exemplar, and that the latter do concern themselves with the production and improvement of the examples. The first standpoint has been subtly expressed in the linesThough Plato no doubt was a corker, yet our philosopher Is that it's must be ready for dinner when dinner is ready for we;whereas the others would be chiefly concerned to adapt the dinner hour to their own needs. They will still be able to go amicably in to dinner because both will at least agree that dinner is desirable. They will agree on the existence of standards, wherever they are to be found, and a world to be conformed to them and indeed demanding their embodiment. And to that extent, a wide one, they present us with the classical ideal. For the classical world, now or two thousand years ago, is a world which recognises standards, standards of thought and action, to be discovered, recognised, accepted, and imposed both on individual and communal life. That ideal is not particularly non-Christian, not particularly Christian; it transcends these categories. And like other ideas which transcend categories, it is realised as the same yet very differently in each. The armies of Constantine and Julian, they too had standards, the cross and the eagles, and the demands made on each by the ideals thus represented were very different yet in a tray the same

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