n of the full possibilities of the present. The present is
related to it as the seed is related to the flower and fruit in which
its development culminates. There are vast changes of form and
dimension between the seed and the tree hanging ripe with fruit, but
there is no contradiction between the germ and its final unfolding.

A rigid Realism, however, sees in the seed nothing but its present
hardness, littleness, ugliness; a true and rational Idealism sees all
these things, but it sees also not only appearances but
potentialities; or, to recall another of Goethe's phrases, it sees the
object whole.

To see life clearly and to see it whole is not only to see distinctly
the obvious facts of life, but to see these facts in sequence and
order; in other words, to explain and interpret them. The power to do
this is one of the signs of a great imagination; and, other things
being equal, the rank of a work of art may, in the last analysis, be
determined by the clearness and veracity with which explanation and
interpretation are suggested. Homer is, for this reason, the foremost
writer of the Greek race. He is wholly free from any purpose to give
ethical instruction; he is absolutely delivered from the temptation to
didacticism; and yet he reveals to us the secret of the temperament
and genius of his race. And he does this because he sees in his race
the potentialities of the seed; the vitality, beauty, fragrance, and
growth which lie enfolded in its tiny and unpromising substance. If
the reality of a thing is not so much its appearance as the totality
of that which is to issue out of it, then nothing can be truly seen
without the use of the imagination. All that the Idealist asks is that
life shall be seen not only with his eyes but with his imagination.
His descriptions are accurate, but they are also vital; they give us
the thing not only as it looked standing by itself, but as it appeared
in the complete life of which it was a part; he makes us see the
physical side of the fact with great distinctness, but he makes us see
its spiritual side as well. As a result, there is left in our minds by
the intelligent reading of Homer a clear impression of the spiritual,
political, and social aptitudes and characteristics of the Greek
people of his age,--an impression which no exact report of mere
appearances could have conveyed; an impression which is due to the
constant play of the poet's imagination upon the facts with which he