THE DEFENCE 207 



anywhere go wrong in the long run ; and yet, knowing 

 the evil of man's heart and how finitude infects his world, 

 there is nothing that has not to be set right. Nay, Idealism 

 plants its contradictions at the heart of both religion and 

 morality. Religion, it holds, implies that the ideal, its 

 God, is eternally real, and at the same time that the con- 

 sciousness of God has to be realised in the human spirit, 

 and that God himself is present in the process. Morality, 

 it maintains, postulates a good that is absolute, an ideal 

 which alone is in the full sense real ; and yet it represents 

 the good as in course of being attained, real only while in 

 process, and the process as endless. Finally, in the sphere 

 of politics, Idealism is content neither with public order nor 

 with private freedom ; it will neither make the State Sub- 

 ordinate to the individual, nor the individual to the State ; 

 it is neither Socialism nor Individualism. Yet it will cur- 

 tail none of the rights of either. It will even make the 

 evolution of the one depend upon the evolution of the 

 other, and in its account of progress, deepen the significance 

 of both the State and the individual. Its attitude towards 

 the several items of political life is the same towards 

 private property for instance. It asserts the sacredness of 

 property as private in a way that, provided it said no more, 

 would please the most ardent owner of it ; and yet it 

 derives the sacredness, the privacy and the rights of pro- 

 perty from the State, in a way that, provided it said no 

 more, would meet the wishes of the most aggressive 

 Socialist. 



It is no marvel, therefore, that idealists find it difficult 

 to make themselves understood, nor that their doctrine 

 should be open to a cross fire from all the points of the 

 compass. Some critics find it resolve all things into a 



