210 IDEALISM AND POLITICS 



mind is stayed on Thee." Yet the conviction becomes 

 more and more profound that in comparison with the 

 antagonism of right and wrong no contrast means much, 

 and the ardour of the good man's resistance to sin flames 

 always higher. 



Observation of the moral life of man, taken by itself, 

 brings out similar apparent incompatibilities. Morality is 

 both the being and the becoming of the good. It both 

 demands the absolute and sets it in process. For Kant, 

 for instance, there was nothing either in the world or out 

 of it which absolutely must be, be in its own sole right, 

 except the moral good. In this he rightly interpreted the 

 moral consciousness, for always to that consciousness 

 "righteousness is as the everlasting mountains" : "Heaven 

 and earth may pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the 

 law." It is the moral order that gives to the natural order 

 stability and meaning 



" Stern Daughter of the voice of God ! 

 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 



And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and 

 strong." 



Nevertheless the moral order is sustained only by the con- 

 tinued process of willing the right. Arrest this process, 

 and there is neither good nor evil any more ; for they are 

 not natural phenomena reporting themselves to the intelli- 

 gence, but have their meaning and reality only in the 

 medium of the self-conscious will. Thus, the good which 

 is eternal is ever brought anew into being. It is always 

 real, never real, realised without end. 



If in a similar way we passed the actual fact of human 

 cognition, or of man's social and political life, under review, 



