THE EMOTION OF THE IDEAL 151 



the development of the Greek epic endeavouring 

 to cast off in history the brute inheritance of the 

 past of the race. 1 It is thus we behold the passion 

 of the Absolute in the soul of the poet and the 

 artist challenging the world for an ideal which has 

 never yet been realized. 



Every mind of the race possessing the vision of 

 genius has at some moment felt thus the illimitable 

 superiority of the emotion of the ideal to every 

 other human quality. "It is not by anything 

 written since the beginning in textbooks of social 

 science that the world has advanced," said Mr. 

 H. G. Wells on one occasion to the writer. " The 

 human mind has always accomplished progress by 

 its construction of Utopias." This is a true saying. 

 It has been the emotion of the ideal which has 

 brought to the harvest of action the souls of all the 

 leaders of all the causes which have been since the 

 world began. How to organize this illimitable 

 Cause under the conditions of the modern world 

 is the problem before the human spirit. The master 

 fact of the social integration is that the science of 

 power in civilization is the science of the passion 

 for the ideal. The passion for the ideal is the 

 passion of perfection, which is the passion for God. 



1 Rise of the Greek Ebic. 



