ve known the further difficulty, or
recognized the higher good. To say that the moral ideal is never
attained, is thus only a half-truth. We must add to it the fact that it
is always being attained; nay, that it is always present as an active
reality, attaining itself, evolving its own content. Or, to return to
the previous metaphor, the land of promise is possessed, although the
possession always reveals a still better beyond, which is again a land
of promise.

While, therefore, it must always remain true that knowledge does not
reach absolute reality, nor morality absolute goodness, this cannot be
used as an argument against optimism, except on the presupposition that
mental and moral activity are a disease. And this is a contradiction in
terms. If the ideal is in itself good, the process whereby it is
attained is good; if the process in itself is evil, the ideal it seeks
is evil, and therefore the condemnation of the actual by reference to it
is absurd. And, on the other hand, to postulate as best the identity of
ideal and actual, so that no process is necessary, is to assume a point
of view where both optimism and pessimism are meaningless, for there is
no criterion. As Aristotle teaches us, we have no right either to praise
or to blame the highest. A process, such as morality is, which is not
the self-manifestation of an actual idea, and an ideal which does not
reveal its potencies in its passing forms, are both fictions of
one-sided thought. The process is not the ideal, but its manifestation;
and the ideal is not the process, but the principle which is its source
and guide.

But if the process cannot be thus immediately identified with the ideal,
or "man take the place of God," or "human self-consciousness be confused
with the absolute self-consciousness," far less can they be separated.
The infinitely high ideal of perfect knowledge and perfect goodness,
implied in the Christian command, "Be ye perfect as your Father in
heaven is perfect," is an ideal, just because the unity of what is and
what ought to be is deeper than their difference. The recognition of the
limit of our knowledge, or the imperfection of our moral character, is a
direct witness to the fact that there is more to be known and a better
to be achieved. The negative implies the affirmative, and is its effect.
Man's confession of the limitation of his knowledge is made on the
supposition that the universe of facts, in all its infinitely rich
comp