ted as a philosophical conclusion, but
all high-minded men and women accept it as a rule of life. Idealism is
wrought into the very fibre of the race, and is as indestructible as
the imagination in which it has its roots. Deep in the heart of
humanity lies the unshakable faith in its essential divinity, and in
the reality of its highest hopes of development and attainment. The
failure of noble schemes, the decline of enthusiasms, the fading of
visions and dreams which seemed to have the luminous constancy of
fixed stars, breed temporary depressions and passing moods of
scepticism and despair; but the spiritual vitality of the race always
reasserts itself, and faith returns after every disaster or
disillusion.

Indeed, as the race grows older and masters more and more a knowledge
of its conditions, the impression of the essential greatness of the
experience we call life deepens in the finer spirits. It becomes clear
that the end towards which the hopes of the world have always moved is
farther off than it seemed to the earlier generations; that the
process of spiritual and social evolution is longer and more painful;
that the universe is vaster and more wonderful than the vision of it
which formed in the imagination of thinkers and poets; in a word, that
the education which is being imparted to humanity by the very
structure of the conditions under which it lives grows more severe,
prolonged, and exacting as its methods and processes become more
clear. The broadening of the field of observation has steadily
deepened the impression of the magnitude and majesty of the physical
order by which men are surrounded; and the fuller knowledge of what is
in human experience has steadily deepened the impression of the almost
tragic greatness of the lot of men. The disappointments of the race
have been largely due to its inadequate conception of its own
possibilities; its disillusions have been like the fading of the
mirage which simulates against the near horizon that which lies long
leagues away. These disappointments and disillusions, as Browning saw
clearly, are essential parts of an education which leads the race step
by step from smaller to larger ideas, from nearer and easier to more
remote and difficult attainments.

The disappointment which comes with the completion of every piece of
work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the
work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express
entir