The Vision of Perfection.
These writers are also, by virtue of the faculty of discerning the
interior relations of appearances and events, the expositors of that
ultimate Idealism which not only discovers the possibility of the
whole in the parts, of the perfect in the imperfect, but which
discovers the whole, the complete and the perfect, and brings each
before us in some noble form. The reality of the Ideal as Plato saw it
is by no means universally accepted as a philosophical conclusion, but
all high-minded men and women accept it as a rule of life. Idealism is
wrought into the very fibre of the race, and is as indestructible as
the imagination in which it has its roots. Deep in the heart of
humanity lies the unshakable faith in its essential divinity, and in
the reality of its highest hopes of development and attainment. The
failure of noble schemes, the decline of enthusiasms, the fading of
visions and dreams which seemed to have the luminous constancy of
fixed stars, breed temporary depressions and passing moods of
scepticism and despair; but the spiritual vitality of the race always
reasserts itself, and faith returns after every disaster or
disillusion.
Indeed, as the race grows older and masters more and more a knowledge
of its conditions, the impression of the essential greatness of the
experience we call life deepens in the finer spirits. It becomes clear
that the end towards which the hopes of the world have always moved is
farther off than it seemed to the earlier generations; that the
process of spiritual and social evolution is longer and more painful;
that the universe is vaster and more wonderful than the vision of it
which formed in the imagination of thinkers and poets; in a word, that
the education which is being imparted to humanity by the very
structure of the conditions under which it lives grows more severe,
prolonged, and exacting as its methods and processes become more
clear. The broadening of the field of observation has steadily
deepened the impression of the magnitude and majesty of the physical
order by which men are surrounded; and the fuller knowledge of what is
in human experience has steadily deepened the impression of the almost
tragic greatness of the lot of men. The disappointments of the race
have been largely due to its inadequate conception of its own
possibilities; its disillusions have been like the fading of the
mirage which simulates against the near horizon that which lies long
leagues away. These disappointments and disillusions, as Browning saw
clearly, are essential parts of an education which leads the race step
by step from smaller to larger ideas, from nearer and easier to more
remote and difficult attainments.
The disappointment which comes with the completion of every piece of
work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the
work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express
entirely the thought and force of the man who has striven to express
himself completely in a material which, however masterfully used, can
never give its ultimate form to a spiritual conception. It is not an
evidence of failure, but a prophecy of greater achievement. A world in
which the work was as great as the worker, the piece of art as the
artist, would be a finished world in more senses than one; a world in
which all work is inadequate to contain the energy of the worker, all
art insufficient to express the soul of the artist, is necessarily a
prophetic world, bearing witness to the presence of a creative force
in workers and artists immeasurably beyond the capacity of any
perishable material to receive or to preserve.
A rational Idealism is, therefore, not only indestructible in a race
which does not violate the laws of life, but is instilled into the
higher order of minds by the order of life as revealed by science,
history, and the arts. And this idealistic tendency is not only the
poetic temper; it is the hope and safeguard of society. The real
perils of the race are not material; they are always spiritual; and no
peril could be greater than the loss of faith and hope in the
possibility of attaining the best things. If men are ever bereft of
their instinctive or rational conviction that they have the power
ultimately to bring institutions of all kinds into harmony with their
higher conceptions, they will sink into the lethargy of despair or the
slough of sensualism. The belief in the reality of the Ideal in
personal and social life is not only the joy and inspiration of the
poet and thinker; it is also the salvation of the race. It is
imperishable, because it is the product of the play of the imagination
on the realities of life; and until the imagination perishes, the
vision of the ultimate perfection will form and reform in the heart of
every generation. It is the inspiration of every art, the end of every
noble occupation, the secret hope of every fine character.
Idealism in this sense, not as the product of an easy and ignorant
optimism turning away from the facts of life, but as the product of a
large and spiritual dealing with those facts, is the very soul, not
only of noble living, but of those noble expressions of life which the
greater writers have given us. They disclose wide diversity of gifts,
but they have this in common,--that, in discovering to us the
spiritual order of the facts of life, they disclose also those ideal
figures which the race accepts as embodiments of its secrets, hopes,
and aims. It is a significant fact that, in portraying the Greek of
his time, Homer has given us also the ideal Greek and the Greek
ideals. His insight went to the soul of the persons he described, and
he struck into that spiritual order in which the ideal is not only a
reality, but, in a sense, the only reality.
Cervantes, in the very act of destroying a false Idealism,
conventionally conceived and treated, made one of the most beautiful
revelations of a true Idealism which the world has yet received.
Shakespeare's presentation of the facts of life is, on the whole, the
most comprehensive and impressive which has yet been made; in the
disclosure of tragic elements it is unsurpassed; and yet what a host of
ideal figures move through the plays and invest them with a light
beyond the glow of art! In the Forest of Arden and on Prospero's
Island there live, beyond the touch of time and the vicissitudes of
fate, those gracious and beautiful spirits in whom the race sees its
noblest hopes come true, its instinctive faith in itself justified.
These spirits are not airy nothings, woven of the unsubstantial
gossamer of which dreams are made; they are born of a deep insight
into the possibilities of the soul, and a rational faith in their
reality. Prospero is as real as Trinculo, and Rosalind as true as
Cressida. These ideal persons are not necessarily fortunate in their
surroundings or happy in their lot; they are simply perfect in their
development of a type. They are not abnormal beings, rising above
normal conditions; they are normal beings, rising above abnormal
conditions. They stand for wholeness amid fragments, for perfection
amid imperfection; but the very imperfection and fragmentariness by
which they are surrounded predicts their coming and affirms their
reality.
In the rounded and developed nature there must be a deep vein of the
Idealism which grows out of the vision of things in their large
relations--out of a view of men ample enough to discern not only what
they are at this stage of development, but what they may become when
development has been completed. Nothing is more essential than the
courage, the joy, and the insight which grow out of such an Idealism,
and no spiritual possession is more easily lost. The spiritual
depression of a reactionary period, the routine of work, the immersion
in the stream of events, the decline of moral energy, conspire to
blight this noble use of the imagination, and to chill the faith which
makes creative living and working possible. The familiar companionship
of the great Idealists is one of the greatest resources against the
paralysis of this faith and the decay of this faculty.