III
THE HIGHEST IDEAL
THE living spirit of the ages is made up
of ideals more or less visionary in their
inception, more or less unattainable in their
plenitude. And in nations, as in individuals,
they are subject to the law of growth
and decay—the law that governs the seed
in the soil, the star-dust in the planetary
system—as well as to the law of conservation.
Like matter itself, an ideal is mutable, but indestructible. It does not die; it only undergoes a change. It expresses itself in art and literature and religion only after it has attained a certain degree of common conception. An idealist is ahead of his time only in the sense that he is articulate. The same is true of a nation. For even primitive people, even effete races have a message for those above or below them. The heritage of the Ideal, however small can not be exhausted.
That is why in periods of awakening, or of cataclysmic change, the light often comes
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