THE EMOTION OF THE IDEAL 149 



the possessor never satisfied with the world as it 

 is, and that it drives him through every degree of 

 effort to endeavour to realize his ideal. Evoked 

 under suitable conditions in the mind of the young, 

 it is able to render the successive generations of 

 men upon whom it acts fixed of purpose, capable 

 of the most surprising labours, and sufficient to 

 otherwise impossible measures of self-subordination 

 and self-sacrifice. 



It is in this cause of the emotion of the ideal 

 that we have undoubtedly the springs of all power 

 in the modern conditions of the world. It is no 

 exaggeration but a sober statement of fact to say 

 that it is capable of sweeping out of civilization in 

 a single generation any institution, or any order of 

 society, or any inheritance of the past. Although 

 it has never been organized in the science of civiliza- 

 tion on a vast scale in modern conditions it has been 

 the cause which every leader of men has employed 

 in the past. Every deep-seeing mind of the race 

 from the founders of its first religions, from Plato 

 in his groping after the meaning of the soul in the 

 Phaedrus, from the prophets of Hebraism and 

 the leaders of Christianity down to the seers of the 

 current age has felt the illimitable significance of 

 the emotion of the ideal in the development of the 

 world. It is the characteristic cause of the social 



