demanded of the grand aim of the
world's existence that it should foster, nay, involve the execution and
ratification of good, moral, righteous purposes. What makes men morally
discontented (a discontent, by the way, on which they somewhat pride
themselves), is that they do not find the present adapted to the
realization of aims which they hold to be right and just--more
especially, in modern times, ideals of political constitutions; they
contrast unfavorably things as they are, with their idea of things as
they ought to be. In this case it is not private interest nor passion
that desires gratification, but reason, justice, liberty; and, equipped
with this title, the demand in question assumes a lofty bearing and
readily adopts a position, not merely of discontent, but of open revolt
against the actual condition of the world. To estimate such a feeling
and such views aright, the demands insisted upon and the very dogmatic
opinions asserted must be examined. At no time so much as in our own,
have such general principles and notions been advanced, or with greater
assurance. If, in days gone by, history seems to present itself as a
struggle of passions, in our time--though displays of passion are not
wanting--it exhibits, partly a predominance of the struggle of notions
assuming the authority of principles, partly that of passions and
interests essentially subjective but under the mask of such higher
sanctions. The pretensions thus contended for as legitimate in the name
of that which has been stated as the ultimate aim of Reason, pass
accordingly for absolute aims--to the same extent as religion, morals,
ethics. Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the
complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized,
that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality. These ideals
which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may
be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy
of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest. Such do not
properly belong to this category. For the fancies which the individual
in his isolation indulges cannot be the model for universal reality,
just as universal law is not designed for the units of the mass. These
as such may, in fact, find their interests thrust decidedly into the
background. But by the term "Ideal" we also understand the ideal of
Reason--of the good, of the true. Poets--as, for instance,
Sch