Everyone's young days are a dream, a delightful insanity, a sweet solipsism. Nothing in them has a fixed shape, nothing a fixed price; everything is a possibility, we live happily on credit. There are no obligations to observe; there are no accounts to be kept. Nothing is specified in advance; everything is what can be made of it. The world is a mirror in which we seek the reflection of our own desires. The allure of violent emotions is irresistible. When we are young we are not disposed to make concessions to the world; we never feel the balance of a thing in our hands - unless it be a cricket bat. We are not apt to distinguish between our liking and our esteem, urgency is our criterion of importance; and we do not easily understand than what is humdrum need not be despicable. We are impatient of restraint; and we readily believe, like Shelley, that to have contracted habit is to have failed.
To be young, is not to be disposed to be a conservative. He could have said it in a succinct sentence but no, Oakeshott lapses into his own nostalgic musings on being young. The first time i read his "On Being Conservative" i was bored by his longwinded illustrations of each point he was making. A second attempt at deciphering his conservative mind was much smoother as i picked out a gem of a passage which i liked. All it takes is a slice of apt writing to perk me up. Likewise for the "basic" political science-y piece by Max Weber:
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders or heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even what is possible today. Only he who has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of it all!' has the calling for politics.
In class, i disagreed with Prof Pellerin over Weber. I saw this is an inspirational text to budding young politicians, while he saw it as Weber writing a cautionary passage as pouring a cold bucket of water over the heads of political science students; that their flames of romantic idealism about politics must go. Much as I can see Pellerin's very poignant point, my personal response is that of being inspired, whether or not i have the calling for politics. But of course, that might be because i'm too young and too idealistic and am still walking around with my rose-tinted glasses over my rose-tinted contact lenses. The prerogative of being young.