Scale of Striving

Enthusiasm for a common cause is total and never runs down. Great collective movements, the homeland and loyal belonging stir the strongest response, and each step of the effort opens the next. A shared undertaking gets its passion and tireless hands from them.

Everything aims at the decisive stroke that settles the whole. Intensity is sought and half-measures are refused. Societies are pushed through their turning points by people like this.

Gains and losses are weighed in detail and over the long run. Nothing is absolute, martial glory included, and risk is insured before it arrives. They keep an enterprise solvent across the years.

Life is kept to a modest, personal scale. Grand theories and the fate of the world stay at a distance, troubling thoughts are set aside, and the rule is to let others live. They form the steady middle of a society.