, as Plato thought, the only
reality, the truth which outlasts us all? But this may seem a subtle
evasion rather than a frank answer. Let us rather say that idealism is
one of the necessary modes of man's faith, brings in the future, and
assumes the reality of that which shall be actual; that the reality it
owns is that of the rose in the bud, the oak in the acorn, the planet in
its fiery mist. I believe that ideal character in its perfection is
potentially in every man who is born into the world. We forecast the
future in other parts of life; why should we not forecast ourselves?
Would he not be thought foolish who should refuse to embark in great
enterprises of trade, because he does not already hold the wealth to be
gained? The ideal is our infinite riches, more than any individual or
moment can hold. To refuse it is as if a man should neglect his estate
because he can take but a handful of it in his grasp. It is the law of
our being to grow, and it is a necessity that we should have examples
and patterns in advance of us, by which we can find our way. There is no
falsehood in such anticipation; there is only a faith in truth instead
of a possession of it. Will you limit us to one moment of time and
place? will you say to the patriot that his country is a geographical
term? and when he replies that rather is it the life of her sons, will
you point him to human nature as it seems at the period, to corruption,
folly, ignorance, strife, and crime, and tell him that is our actual
America? Will he not rather say that his America is a great past, a
future whose beneficence no man can sum? Is there any falsehood in this
ideal country that men have ever held precious? Did Pericles lie in his
great oration, and Virgil in his noble poem, and Dante in his fervid
Italian lines? And as there are ideals of country, so also of men, of
the soldier, the priest, the king, the lover, the citizen, and beside
each of us does there not go one who mourns over our fall and pities us,
gladdens in our virtue, and shall not leave us till we die; an ideal
self, who is our judgment? and if it be yet answered that this in truth
is so, and might be borne but for the errors of the idealizing
temperament, shall we not reply that the quack does not discredit the
art of medicine, nor the demagogue the art of politics, and no more does
the fool in all his motley the art of literature.

Must I, however, come back to my answer, and meet those who aver tha