Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/361

No. 4.] man's consideration of his conduct, it can play its part only in the guise or rendering which his past manner of life and his position at the moment enable him to give it. The ideal as an operative factor in the resolution of his problem is, in a word, necessarily his idea, however it may first have come to him. And this fact entails two consequences the first, as regards the content or elements of meaning comprised in the ideal itself, and the second, as regards the nature of the service which the ideal is adapted to perform.

In the first place, then, the ideal is less a pattern of what a man is to become, less a forecast of what he is to achieve and enjoy, than an idealized reminscence of what, as he now first becomes clearly aware, he once was and of what he once could count upon in his relations with his fellows. If he is unhappy now, he once was happy. If his faith in his strength and judgment is shaken, he once had no such doubt. If now he is defeated and discouraged he once was eager for the labors and risks of life. If he is shunned, and even his very physical life enfeebled by his present sense of isolation, he once was recognized and cherished as a member of the common body. And if now his unruly desires or his protest in behalf of another have set him at variance with his group, time was that he found in the judgments and the customs of the groups a wisdom that he was never moved to question. And in the second place, all this is not mere vain reminiscence. In the ideal form, reminiscence is generalized and therefore serves, not to sadden and embitter but to compose, encourage and arouse. Even the memory of a great defeat, as we know, can keep alive the nationalistic hope and effort of a people. But this very excellence of generality disqualifies the ideal as a guide to the specific revival and reinstatement that are to follow. The ideals which ethical theory presents as its ultimate principles of conduct are not properly standards of measurement, or ends by which conduct ought to be determined. For the individual who conceives them and looks to them, they are expressions of renewed interest in living and a more conscious will to heed as genuine and significant the distinctions of quality which life presents. Ideals are, in a word, expressions of nothing less than