tion becomes even more striking when we consider the spiritual endowments of man. What the sun is to the plant world, that, and more, the ideal is to the better nature of man.

One day I was passing a flower garden, in which was a large bed of blooming carnations. This bed. of carnations was really inside of a building-inside of what we call a greenhouse. The season was late winter or early spring, and the air outside was damp and cold. I stopped and looked in. The tall, slender stems were all about the same height, and the hundreds-perhaps thousands of exquisite flowers, white and pink and red, were all about the same size. It was a beautiful sight. As I looked I noticed that all the flowers were turned on one side —all tilted in the same direction, and all at the same angle.

For a moment I was puzzled. Then I observed that the roof of the building was of glass on one side. On that side the sun smiled in. The flowers were all turning their faces towards the sun, to smile back at him. There was evidently a close kinship between the smile of the sun and the nature of the flowers.

In the very nature of man the Creator has planted a longing after himself—a longing that will not be satisfied without the ideal presence and ful

ness.

"If we will but listen attentively," says Max Muller, "We can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable—a longing after the Infinite, a love of God."

He then refers to the derivation that the ancients gave to the word man-"anthropos"-"he who looks up."

"Certain it is," he continues, "that what makes man to be man, is that he alone can turn his face to heaven; certain it is that he alone yearns for something that neither sense nor reason can supply."

Many a man feels his powers striving upward without understanding the reason. Everyone now and then seems to hear a voice calling from the heights. It is the call of the ideal. Even in our most careless hours we are conscious of an obligation to do our best; and when we do our best we are keenly aware that our success is due to the effort we make to do still better. We are in debt to the ideal. We are in debt to the ideal not only for endowment and inspiration, but also for every real success; for we succeed in real truth only when we look towards the ideal.

Failure to contemplate the ideal means failure to realize all excellence. Failure to answer the call of the ideal would be unnatural and ungrateful. Suppose that when the soil gives food and warmth and moisture to the seed, the seed should give no sign of life; it would mean no vegetable kingdom. Suppose that when the spring breezes come, with the freshening April showers and the smile of glorious sunshine, the tree refused to put forth a leaf, and the bud in the flower stem refused to unfold; it would mean a world robbed of wealth and beauty. Suppose that when fire is touched to wood there should

F

be no ignition; that when light is flashed into the camera there should be no sensitive plate; that when the harp is swept with tingling fingers there should be no answering thrill in the silver strings—no answering note of throbbing joy: man would be robbed and nature would be shamed. And suppose that when the human soul, akin to God, is touched with the fire of the Ideal there should be no thrill of answer, no throb of effort?

Such indifference would mean death-death to beauty and truth and goodness. Man is always conscious of imperfection in achievement, but he must ever aim at the highest; he must aim at perfection.

Ideals, true ideals, are always above us, and always must be so. A great scholar and teacher, who lately died at the University of Virginia, put the truth into these beautiful words:

"The ideal is ever higher than achievement. It flies before the real like a shadow, never to be overtaken; it is the unattained and unattainable Continually receding as we approach, it expands at last to the infinite, to God; for the true, the absolute, and the complete is God himself."1

Thus we see that while the ideal eludes our finite grasp, it nevertheless leads upward. While we try to grasp it we continually rise higher. "It is the mysterious ladder by which the soul mounts from the finite to the infinite."

The ideal must be better than our best, higher than our highest, otherwise it could not keep us

1. Noah Knowles Davis.

looking continually upward and forward. If we could overtake the ideal today we should straightway feel satisfied and should plan for no progress tomorrow. No great man ever accomplishes all he aims to do; and no man was ever great who did not aim high. No good man was ever perfect; but no man was ever as good as he might have been if he aimed not at perfection. The ideal is always perfect. It is by striving towards it that just men are finally made perfect.

It must be obvious that before we reach the end of ethics we enter upon religion. The two certainly have a common borderland. And both have tremendous civic value. Civics is the ethics of social groups, the religion of good citizenship. Those who have followed the ideal most faithfully have in all ages approached nearest to the gates of worship. Socrates, for example, believed that the voice which warned him against the unsuitable and the unethical was the voice of God. To Plato the highest good was not pleasure, not knowledge alone, but the greatest possible likeness to God. Thus even the pagans have acknowledged their debt-their religious obligation to the Ideal.

We are in debt to the ideal. No value in life can be more serviceable and practical than an ideal that stimulates every purpose and every act. To the good citizen it becomes a second conscience.

CHAPTER XXVIII

OPPORTUNITY

"There's a place and means for every man alive." -Shakespeare.

Opportunity has been defined as "an equal chance given to the members of each generation to become unequal."

This statement is interesting in at least two respects. In the first place it is interesting as effective rhetoric. In the second place it is interesting in its content. It is made up of two truths and one untruth. The untruth consists in the positing of "equal chance." No generation has ever given an equal chance to each of its members; no generation ever can do so.

It is doubtful whether any two persons have ever had exactly equal chances. It would be very difficult to guarantee such a thing, even if every member of society should agree to it and should bend effort accordingly. Nature might disagree.

The two truths are: (1) that the members of each generation do have a chance, individually and collectively; (2) that the members of each generation do tend to become unequal. They are continually becoming unequal in achievement as well as in purposes and associations.

It is not necessary for all men or for any two men to have exactly equal chances in life. If it were necessary, then every life would be foredoomed to