mething more than the disease and decay of certain faculties; it
involves the deformity of arrested development, and failure to enter
into that larger world of truth which is open to those races alone
which live a whole life. It is for this reason that the drama must
always hold the first place among those forms which the art of
literature has perfected; it is for this reason that Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Goethe, consciously or unconsciously, chose those
forms of expression which are specially adapted to represent and
illustrate life in action; it is for this reason, among others, that
these writers must always play so great a part in the work of
educating the race. Culture is, above all things, real and vital;
knowledge may deal with abstractions and unrelated bits of fact, but
culture must always fasten upon those things which are significant in
a spiritual order. It has to do with the knowledge which may become
incorporate in a man's nature, and with that knowledge especially
which has come to humanity through action. It is this deeper knowledge
which holds a lighted torch aloft in the deepest recesses of the soul,
or over those abysses of possible experience which open on all sides
about every man, which is to be found in the pages of Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Goethe, and of all those great artists who have seen
men in those decisive and significant moments when they strike into
the movement of history, or, through their deeds and sufferings, the
order of life suddenly shines forth.

Chapter XXII.

The Interpretation of Idealism.

Idealism has so often been associated in recent years with vagueness
of thought, slovenly construction, and a weak sentimentalism, that it
has been discredited, even among those who have recognised the reality
behind it and the great place it must hold in all rich and noble
living. It is the misfortune of what is called Idealism, that, like
other spiritual principles, it attracts those who mistake the longings
of unintelligent discontent for aspiration, or the changing outlines
of vapory fancies for the firm and consistent form and shape of real
conceptions deeply realised in the imagination. Idealism has suffered
much at the hands of feeble practitioners who have substituted
irrational dreams for those far-reaching visions and those penetrating
insights which are characteristic of its true use and illustration in
the arts. The height of the reaction so vigorously and