t deal in his
surroundings which is really far from being what it ought to be?" And
who also, we may add, has not enough of the generalizing faculty, often
mistaken for a philosophical one, to extend this condemnation over the
whole of "this best of all possible worlds"? But what is this
"ought-to-be," which has such potency in it that all things confronted
with it lose their worth?

The first answer is, that it is an idea which men, and particularly good
men, carry with them. But a little consideration will show that it
cannot be a mere idea. It must be something more valid than a capricious
product of the individual imagination. For we cannot wisely condemn
things because they do not happen to answer to any casual conception
which we may choose to elevate into a criterion. A criterion must have
objective validity. It must be an idea _of_ something and not an empty
notion; and that something must, at the worst, be possible. Nay, when we
consider all that is involved in it, it becomes obvious that a true
ideal--an ideal which is a valid criterion--must be not only possible
but real, and, indeed, more real than that which is condemned by
reference to it. Absolute pessimism has in it the same contradiction as
absolute scepticism has,--in fact, it is only its practical counterpart;
for both scepticism and pessimism involve the assumption that it is
possible to reach a position outside the realm of being, from which it
may be condemned as a whole. But the rift between actual and ideal must
fall within the real or intelligible world, do what the pessimists will;
and a condemnation of man which is not based on a principle realized by
humanity, is a fiction of abstract thought, which lays stress on the
actuality of the imperfect and treats the perfect as if it were as good
as nothing, which it cannot be. In other words, this way of regarding
human life isolates the passing phenomenon, and does not look to that
which reveals itself in it and causes it to pass away. Confining
ourselves, however, for the present, to the ideal in morality, we can
easily see that, in that sphere at least, the actual and ideal change
places; and that the latter contrasts with the former as the real with
the phenomenal. For, in the first place, the moral ideal is something
more than a mere idea not yet realized. It is more even than a _true_
idea; for no mere knowledge, however true, has such intimate relation to
the self-consciousness of man as his