SOCIAL VALUE OP IDEALISM 429 



ita component members in a strong and solid union. The 

 individual, firmly attached by multitudinous ties to his corpora- 

 tion, and through his corporation to his fatherland, considers 

 himself as a part of the whole to which he is thus attached ; the 

 interests of the whole are his interests, and the pride which he 

 naturally feels in the corporation to which he belongs reacts 

 on his own life, and imparts to it a value that it did not possess 

 before. The possession of an ideal — ^that is the secret. For it 

 is the possession of an ideal which alone can raise the individual 

 above himself, and permit of his seeing a new horizon beyond 

 that of his own interests and pleasures. The possession of an 

 ideal which surpasses and transcends the individual life imparts 

 a value to that life, and binds its holder to it. And the more 

 an ideal surpasses and transcends the individual life, the more 

 influence wiU it exert. The ideal of patriotism is capable of 

 inspiring a man with attachment to life by filling his mind with 

 other than purely personal thoughts, and by inspiring him with 

 pride ia the nation to which he belongs. But it is essentially a 

 temporary ideal, beiag limited to the duration of the life of 

 the individual. It is obvious that the religious ideal, which 

 dominates, for those who beUeve in it, not only this earthly hfe, 

 but eternity, cannot fail to exercise a correspondingly strong 

 influence.^ 



' It is obvious that we have no iatention of discussing the objective 

 validity of any religious belief, a question wholly foreign to our research. 

 We would further point out that when we speak of the ideal of the Super- 

 Man as transcending the individuaUty, and yet inherent in it, we mean 

 that a Super-Man or genius finds in the pure creation of his genius a suffi- 

 cient stimulus to hfe, a sufficient justification of it. Did not Schopenhauer, 

 from an opposite point of view, consider the value of art as residing m 

 the fact that it releases us, if only for a few moments, from the tyranny 

 of desire ? That is to say, Schopenhauer considered it as transcending 

 the individuality, although necessarily inherent in it, since every work 

 of art is a personal creation. Nietzsche, whose conception of art is so 

 opposed to that of Schopenhauer, nevertheless agrees in considering art 

 as an ideal in itself, transcending the bounds of individual life ; and 

 Nietzsche regards it as the great stimulant of life : " Die Kunst ist das 



