CHAPTER III.
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS.
Sure, if I find the Holy Grail itself,
It too will fade, and crumble into dust.
The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffle me —
The remedy I recked of tortured me.
I lean no more on superhuman aid.
We are yet without an ideal, and as we come
nearer to our task, its difficulties increase. We have
described above the remarkable position in which
every moral idealist finds himself. He says that
his moral doctrine is to be more than a mere bit of
natural history. He wants to find out what ought
to be, even if that which ought to be is not. Yet when
some man says to him: “Thy ideal is thus but thy
personal caprice, thy private way of looking at
things,” he does not want to assent. He wants to
reply: “My ideal is the true one. No other rational
ideal is possible.” Yet to do this he seems to need
again some external support in reality. He seems to
require some authority based upon facts. He must
somewhere find his ideal in the world of truth,
external to his own private consciousness. He must
be able to say: “Lo, here is the ideal!” He must
