impressively
illustrated in a great group of modern realistic works is due largely
to the weakness and extravagance of the idealistic movement. When
sentiment is exchanged for its corrupting counterfeit, sentimentalism,
and clear and definite thinking gives place to vague and elusive
emotions and fancies, reaction is not only inevitable but wholesome;
the instinct for sanity in men will always prevent them from becoming
mere dreamers and star-gazers.

The true Idealist has his feet firmly planted on reality, and his
idealism discloses itself not in a disposition to dream dreams and see
visions, but in the largeness of a vision which sees realities in the
totality of their relations and not merely in their obvious and
superficial relations. It is a great mistake to discern in men nothing
more substantial than that movement of hopes and longings which is so
often mistaken for aspiration; it is equally a mistake to discern in
men nothing more enduring and aspiring than the animal nature; either
report, standing by itself, would be fundamentally untrue. Man is an
animal; but he is an animal with a soul, and the sane view of him
takes both body and soul into account. The defect of a good deal of
current Realism lies in its lack of veracity; it is essentially
untrue, and it is, therefore, fundamentally unreal. The love of truth,
the passion for the fact, the determination to follow life wherever
life leads, are noble, artistic instincts, and have borne noble fruit;
but what is often called Realism has suffered quite as much as
Idealism from weak practitioners, and stands quite as much in need of
rectification and restatement.

The essence of Idealism is the application of the imagination to
realities; it is not a play of fancy, a golden vision arbitrarily
projected upon the clouds and treated as if it had an objective
existence. Goethe, who had such a vigorous hold upon the realities of
existence, and who had also an artist's horror of mere abstractions,
touched the heart of the matter when he defined the Ideal as the
completion of the real. In this simple but luminous statement he
condensed the faith and practice not only of the greater artists of
every age, but of the greater thinkers as well. In the order of life
there can be no real break between things as they now exist and things
as they will exist in the remotest future; the future cannot
contradict the present, nor falsify it; for the future must be the
realisatio