rental love sends the child when healthy to school, but when sickly keeps it at home. Our Saviour teaches that in a rude state of society a custom may be left unopposed, because society must make further moral progress before it can understand the evil and develop a wise and effective opposition. * 2. It is also objected that savage races have been found entirely destitute of moral ideas and of knowledge of moral distinctions. If so, they are but children of a larger growth. The objector overlooks the facts that principles are constitutional norms, not inborn ideas; that they presuppose a certain development of the being and some occasion in experience before they influence action: and that they practically influence action before they are recognized or formulated in reflective thought. The fact that a child or a savage denies all knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is entirely compatible with the influence of moral motives and action under their influence, which would reveal the moral nature to any intelligent observer. No evidence sufficient to establish the fact alleged by the objector has ever been adduced. Travelers are commonly untrained to scientific observation and ignorant of the savages' language; they found their conclusions on a brief and superficial acquaintance. Their testimony also is merely negative, to what they have not observed, not to any facts positively incompatible with the existence of moral motives and emotions. Even missionaries who have dwelt among savages may deceive themselves by demanding a kind of evidence not necessary to prove the fact and, in the circumstances, not to be expected. Thus Mr. Moffat denied that the inferior tribes of South Africa had any moral sentiments. Yet in the same volume he relates that one of these natives came to him in great indignation because one of his tribe had stolen his cattle, and dwelt on the aggravation of the offence by the fact that the thief was one whom he had recently helped and befriended in a time of distress. All this is palpable evidence of moral feeling, though Mr. Moffat was not intelligent enough to perceive it. † We have also the testimony of specialists of high authority in anthropology. Quatrefages says: "Confining ourselves rigorously to the region of facts and carefully avoiding the territory of philosophy and theology, we may state without hesitation that there is no human society or even association in which the idea of good and evil is not represented by certain acts regarded by the members of that society or association as morally good or morally bad." Tylor, the author of "Primitive Culture," Matt. xix. 7, 8. † Moffat's Missionary Labors and Scenes in South Africa, says: "Glancing down the moral scale among mankind at large, we find no tribe standing at or near zero. The asserted existence of sav ages so low as to have no moral standard is too groundless to be discussed. Every human tribe has its general views as to what conduct is right and what wrong, and each generation hands the standard onwards to the next. Even in the details of those moral standards, wide as their differences are, there is a yet wider agreement throughout the human race."* * Contemporary Review, April, 1873. See the same conclusion in Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. I., pp. 219, 386; Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities, p. 17; Renouf's Religion of Ancient Egypt, pp. 130, 131. CHAPTER X. THE PERFECT: THE THIRD ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 40. Origin and Significance of the Idea. THE idea of the Perfect arises when we think of an object as constituted in accordance with the truths and laws of reason, and as thus being in its constitution an expression of these truths and laws. I have the idea of a circle as a portion of space inclosed by a line, all the points of which are equally distant from a point within called the center. If I think of a line actually drawn in exact accordance with this idea, I think the figure thus described must be a perfect circle. If I think of a steam-engine constructed in exact accordance with every law regulative of such a structure, I must think of it as a perfect steamengine. The idea of the perfect implies a rational standard within the mind, accordance with which is perfection. Without such standard the idea of perfect and imperfect could not arise; the mind would have no idea for the words to express. Objects might be compared as large or small, agreeable or disagreeable, useful or noxious, but not as perfect or imperfect. This rational standard is possible only because we have knowledge through rational intuition of the truths and laws of reason. The Per fect, therefore, denotes a new reality, our knowledge of which depends on rational intuitions. This is the norm or standard of the creations of thought and their realization by action, in nature and in art, in growth and in construction, in character and institutions. By it we judge as perfect or imperfect a rose and a watch, a solar system and a steam-engine, the character of an individual and the institutions of society. 41. Ideals. I. When the mind imagines a perfect object, that creation of the imagination is called an ideal. I have distinguished imagination and fancy. When the mind in its creation proceeds in harmony with rational truth and law and thus expresses the deepest reality and true perfection of the object, the creative power is called the imagination and its product is an ideal. When the mind creates capriciously, without regard to truth, law and reality, the creative power is called the fancy and its product is a conceit or fancy. II. In creating its ideals the imagination uses only the material given in perceptive intuition, but combines it in accordance with the principles and laws of reason. Cicero says Zeuxis had five of the most beautiful women of Crotona as models from which to make up his ideal of perfect beauty.* Ideals are not obtained by copying observed objects. The qualities of observed objects are used as material; the ideal is attained, not by imitation but by creation. The ideal thus created may be itself imperfect, that is, not the true ideal. The error, however, as in ethical mistakes, is not in the principles but in the judgment that applies them. Taste is improved by culture, as are the delicacy and correctness of moral judgments. Theliability to mistake is greater than in morals, because in æsthetics we are one remove further from the principles which we apply. 66 III. The ideal is usually nearer to perfection than the object of it observed in experience or expressed by art. A great artist is above nature and comes down upon it from his ideals. An imitator is beneath nature and tries in vain to lift himself up to it. Says Cicero: We can conceive of statues more perfect than those of Phidias. Nor did the artist when he made the statue of Jupiter or Minerva contemplate any one individual from whom to take a likeness; but there was in his mind a form of beauty gazing on which he guided his hand and skill in imitation of it." Goethe says, "The Greek artists in representing animals have not only equaled, but even far surpassed nature. . . . They turned to nature with their own greatness. . Our artists proceed to the imitation of nature with their own personal weakness and artistic incapacity, and fancy they are doing something. They stand below nature. But whoever will produce anything great must so improve his culture that, like the Greeks, he will be able to elevate the mere trivial actualities of nature to the level of his own mind, and really carry out that which in natural phenoremains mere intention." ‡ mena . But must not an artist be true to nature? Yes; and he is the * De Inventione, II. 1. † Orator, c. 2 and 3. Conversations with Eckermann, pp. 341, 342. more true to nature for approaching it from his ideal. A photograph is an exact copy of the man; but it is a copy of him when he is brought to a full stop, when his attitude and face are least expressive, and all his lineaments stiffen and shut him in, as an oyster shuts itself in its shell. A portrait is idealized; and for that very reason it is more true to nature; for it presents the man in his best expression, which best reveals all that is worth knowing in him as a man. So nature is the expression of ideals in the mind of God. In getting the ideal we get the real significance and deepest truth of nature. IV. Ideals are possible only by virtue of the reason. Ideals are not found by observation but are creations of imagination according to the standard of reason. It is because man is rational that he is impelled to seek and enabled to find a perfection which exists neither in himself nor in the objects about him, but which is the standard by which he judges both himself and outward things. And it is because nature itself expresses the thoughts of the reason which is supreme in the universe, that man finds suggestions of his own ideals in nature and discovers all things arranged in a Cosmos progressively revealing the Ideal which is perfect and eternal in the mind of God. V. The practical importance of ideals is the same with the practical importance of the imagination. Invention alike in the fine arts and the industrial, is primarily the creation of an ideal. An attempt to realize anything in invention without an ideal must fail. The attempt would be like that of a child to arrange blocks while as yet it has not attained the ideal of a house or of any geometrical figure; it becomes a mere hap-hazard juxtaposition. Ideals are important in discovery. The hypothesis, which is the first step in the Newtonian method, is simply the creation of an ideal. Without ideals criticism is impossible; criticism is always the comparison of the actual with the ideal. One cannot say, It is a beautiful morning, or, It is a shocking bad hat, or, It is a love of a bonnet, without an ideal with which the object criticised is compared. Without ideals we should have no knowledge of progress; for without them there would be no standard by which to determine whether any movement is progressive or retrogressive. The expectation of the progress of man, which is so powerful in modern Christian civilization, would have no significance if man could not in the light of reason project his vision to an ideal to be realized in the future beyond all that man has ever been or has ever attained in the past. What science tells us of higher and lower orders of plants and animals is meaningless, |