58 



imperative, as it is in natural science, may in 

 custom and conduct -engender a personal and 

 collective habit of apprehending in lower cate- 

 gories, and even of contentment in them until 

 strong reason be shown to go higher 1 . A higher 

 order of ideas is put in a lower order of language ; 

 the "6809 6t9 TO /care* " of Heraclitus. The danger 

 of this attitude lies in loss of effort, of aspiration, 

 and even of imagination ; he must stoop on the 

 weary oar who, knowing no anchorage, is ever stem- 

 ming the drift. Notwithstanding is there in history 

 any lesson sadder than this, that where ideals have 

 been loftiest sin and failure have most abounded ? 

 a lesson from which Carlyle learned that " the ideal 

 has always to grow in the real, and often to seek 

 out its bed and board there in a very sorry way." 



Almost to this day then the mechanical arts, 

 presumably concerned rather with the lower cate- 

 gories, have been regarded as base ; and the craft 

 even of the laboratory as unworthy of great souls. 

 Anatomy had to labour against antipathy both eccle- 

 siastical and popular ; chemistry and mechanics were 



1 For example, one man, fixing his eyes on a sublime 

 ideal of holiness, confesses on his knees that he is a miserable 

 sinner; another, surveying men about him, repudiates this 

 imputation : it is a matter of parallax. 



