Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence, the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial palace whence he came, are never out of mind.

In picturing forth these conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.
Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is inadequate and fragmentary.

As the ideal portraits of Christ, from Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty--and must be united in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face--so the poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal manhood, divide the kingdom of character.

"The true man cannot be a fragmentary man," said Plato.

Is he not one-sided who masters the conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in drunkenness and gluttony?
"Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said the accomplished Chesterfield.