Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/214

Rh we consider life in its whole, with the ideal in it, or only in its part of actual stubborn fact. The mere fact, in itself, must always seem bad; but it must be remembered that this very badness is the shock of contrast with the ever present ideal; and, after all, the optimistic solution has to come from moral energy. Play into fact with aspiration after the ideal and enthusiasm for it, with the firm resolve to transform fact into a semblance of the ideal pattern, and the reward will come in a gentler tolerance of defect and a calmer contentment. “The freer our career in the metaphysical region, the more is our world-view pervaded by sentiment, and the more is it optimistic; but the more ethical, also, is its reaction on our doings and bent. We are not only to reconstruct the actual according to the ideal, but are to console ourselves for the perception of what actually is, by contemplating what ought to be and might be.”

The transition hence to ethics is natural and obvious: the highest ethical maxim is, Serve the Whole. But the Whole here intended is the entire complex of experience, with the active ideal in it. “Work upon fact with recognition of its stubborn reality, but in the light of the ideal,” is what the maxim means. We cannot know that we are free or immortal, but we cannot help assuming we are the one, and hoping we may be the other. And,