92 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



neither angel nor animal, goes the wrong way to 

 work when he either aspires to be the one or 

 sinks to be the other. 



Nevertheless an unlimited perfectibility of the 

 human species is the sentimental hope of those 

 who, taking no serious notice of facts but gladly 

 turning wishes into beliefs and counting the belief 

 more spiritual the more narrow it is and the 

 more fervent its inflaming desire, dream a some- 

 time realization of hope's ideal. It is no doubt 

 good to cherish a splendid ideal, even though it 

 be an ideal less fantastically sublime than per- 

 fection. The pity of it is that as men cannot 

 either live the ideal in present life when every- 

 body would be perfectly good and enjoy perfect 

 truth and happiness, or live without an ideal when 

 there would be no longing for ideal truth and 

 unattainable happiness, they are tossed to and 

 fro in turmoil of restless agitation. Instinct with 

 the organic nisus of life to maintain and increase 

 itself, they crave for more and fuller life, counting 

 the insatiable lust of life a virtue, and scorning the 

 pessimist as a decadent creature who, having no 

 sense of the transcendent nobility of mankind, 

 may properly be shed by the healthy and vigorous 

 growth of its perfecting progress. Meanwhile they 

 take good care not to descend from the pleasing 

 nurture of glorious abstractions and lambent 

 emotion to close appreciation of the not alto- 

 gether glorious concrete beings, themselves per- 

 haps included, who actually constitute humanity. 



