118 ESSAYS AND LE ITERS
ness, by striipffHnjj against all tliose wlio soiijflit the same personal, family, or national happiness — that illusion has hecome quite impossihle in our time for anyone who will pause — were it but for a moment— from his occuT>ations, and will reflect on what he is, on what the world around him is, and on what he ought to be. So that were I called on to give one single piece of advice — the one I considered most useful for men of our century — I should say hut this to them : ' For God's sake, pause a moment, cease your work, look around you, think of what you are, and of what you ought to be — think of the ideal.*
M, Zola says that people should not look on high, nor believe in a Hii^^her Power, nor exalt themselves to the ideal. Frohably M. Zola understands by the word ' ideal ' either the supernatural — that is to say, the theological rubbish about the Trinity, the Church, the I'ope, etc. — or else the luierp/ained, as he calls the forces of the vast world in which we are plunged. And in that case men woubl do well to follow M, Zola's advice. But the fact is that the ideal is neither sui)ernatural nor 'unexplained.' The ideal, on the contrary, is the most natural of things ; I will not say it is the most explained, but it is that of which man is most sure.
An ideal in geometry is the perfectly straight line or the circle wliose radii are all equal ; in science it is exact truth ; in morals it is perfect virtue. Though these things — the straight line, exact truth, and perfect virtue — have never existed, tliey are not only more natural to us, more known and more explicable than all our other knowledge, but they are the only things we know truly and with complete certainty.
It is commonly said that reality is that which exists ; or, that only what exists is real. Just the contrary is the case : true reality, that which we really know, is what has never existed. Tlie ideal is the only thing we know with certainty, and it has never existed. It is only thanks to the ideal that we know anything at all ; and that is why the ideal alone can guide us in our lives, either individually or collectively. The Christian
