152 ESSAYS I.V PHILOSOFJIY 



ideal ; in the ideal, not only as vaguely rendered in 

 the visions of poetry or the solemnities of religion, 

 but far more as framed into organic epics of the 

 mind, and turned upon action with all the force of 

 systems, by metaphysical invention. Nor let it be 

 supposed that our knowledge of the purely poetic 

 character of speculation will paralyse its power over 

 conduct. Though void of literal truth, its ethical 

 truth is real ; the conduct that it means is absolutely 

 right. "A noble man," to borrow Lange's own 

 words, " is not the least disturbed in his zeal for 

 his ideals, though he be and must be told, and tells 

 himself, that his ideal world, with all its settings 

 of a God, immortal hopes, and eternal truths, is a 

 mere imagination and no reality ; tJiese are all real 

 for life, just because they are psychic ideals ; they exist 

 in the soul of viaii, and woe to him who casts doubt 

 upon their power ! " 



Having thus cleared up the " Standpoint of the 

 Ideal," Lange next turns to the view it affords of 

 practical philosophy. He touches first upon the 

 question of the worth of life, where his settlement 

 is this : Neither pessimism nor optimism is an ab- 

 solute truth ; the problem of evil, if we push for its 

 radical solution, belongs to the transcendent world, 

 of which we can know nothing. But applied to 

 the world of experience, the doctrine of the Ideal 

 gives an optimistic or pessimistic result, according as 



