of dreaming, he has seen it, and warmed to the picture of his imagination; if he has been somewhat more thoughtful than the ordinary, his reason has defined it, and adopted it for his vocation; if neither, it has been present as an undertone throughout the rendering of his more inevitable life. He will recognize it when it is named as the desire to do the will of God, or to have as good a time as possible, or to make other people as happy as possible, or to be equal to his responsibilities, or to fulfil the expectation of his mother, or to be distinguished, wealthy, or influential. This list of ideals is miscellaneous, and ethically reducible to more fundamental concepts, but these are the terms in which men are ordinarily conscious of their most intimate purposes. We must now inquire respecting the nature of the thought that determines the selection of such a purpose, or justifies it when it has been unconsciously accepted.

§ 5. What is most worth while? So far as human action is concerned this obviously depends

The Philoso- upon what is possible, upon what is

phy of the Devotee, the

Man of Affairs, and the Voluptuary.

expected of us by our own natures, and upon what interests and concerns are conserved by the trend of events in our

environment. What I had best do, presupposes what I have the strength and the skill to do, what I feel called upon to do, and what are the great causes that are entitled to promotion at my hands. It seems that practically we cannot separate the ideal from the real. We may feel that the highest ideal is an immediate utterance of conscience, as mysterious in origin as it is authoritative in expression. We may be willing to defy the universe, and expatriate ourselves from our natural and social environment, for the sake of the holy law of duty. Such men as Count Tolstoi have little to say of the possible, or the expedient, or the actual, and are satisfied to stand almost alone against the brutal facts of usage and economy. We all have a secret sense of chivalry, that prompts, however ineffectually, to a like devotion. But that which in such moral purposes appears to indicate a severance of the ideal and the real, is, if we will but stop to consider, only a severance of the ideal and the apparent. The martyr is more sure of reality than the adventurer. He is convinced that though his contemporaries and his environment be against him; the fundamental or eventual order of things is for him. He believes in a spiritual world more abiding, albeit less

obvious, than the material world. Though every temporal event contradict him, he lives in the certainty that eternity is his. Such an one may have found his ideal in the voice of God and His prophets, or he may have been led to God as the justification of his irresistible ideal; but in either case the selection of his ideal is reasonable to him in so far as it is harmonious with the ultimate nature of things, or stands for the promise of reality. In this wise, thought about life expands into some conception of the deeper forces of the world, and life itself, in respect of its fundamental attachment to an ideal, implies some belief concerning the fundamental nature of its environment.

But lest in this account life be credited with too much gravity and import, or it seem to be assumed that life is all knight-errantry, let us turn to our less quixotic, and perhaps more effectual, man of affairs. He works for his daily bread, and for success in his vocation. He has selected his vocation for its promise of return in the form of wealth, comfort, fame, or influence. He likewise performs such additional service to his family and his community as is demanded of him by public opinion and his own sense of responsibility.

may

He have a certain contempt for the man who sees visions. This may be his manner of testifying to his own preference for the ideal of usefulness and immediate efficiency. But even so he would never for an instant admit that he was pursuing a merely conventional good. He may be largely imitative in his standards of value, recognizing such aims as are common to some time or race; nevertheless none would be more sure than he of the truth of his ideal. Question him, and he will maintain that his is the reasonable life under the conditions of human existence. He may maintain that if there be a God, he can best serve Him by promoting the tangible welfare of himself and those dependent upon him. He may maintain that, since there is no God, he must win such rewards as the world can give. If he have something of the heroic in him, he may tell you that, since there is no God, he will labor to the uttermost for his fellow-men. Where he has not solved the problem of life for himself, he may believe himself to be obeying the insight of some one wiser than himself, or of society as expressed in its customs and institutions. But no man ever admitted that his life was purely a matter of expediency, or that in his dominant ideal he was

the victim of chance. In the background of the busiest and most preoccupied life of affairs, there dwells the conviction that such living is appropriate to the universe; that it is called for by the circumstances of its origin, opportunities, and destiny.

Finally, the man who makes light of life has of all men the most transparent inner consciousness. In him may be clearly observed the relation between the ideal and the reflection that is assumed to justify it.

"A Moment's Halt-a momentary taste

Of Being from the Well amid the Waste-
And Lo!-the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from-

"We are no other than a moving row

Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show."

Where the setting of life is construed in these terms, there is but one natural and appropriate manner of life. Once believing in the isolation and insignificance of life, one is sceptical of all worth save such as may be tasted in the moment of its purchase. If one's ideas and experiences are no concern of the world's, but incidents of a purely local and transient interest, they will real