The standpoint of faith is childlike. Faith does not reason, and may not do so if it wishes to remain faith. The child can comprehend nature and man's relation to it only by the language of faith, and there are large classes of people who, for a long time, will be accessible to no other language but this. But faith must decrease in the same ratio as mankind outgrows intellectual childhood. In the same measure, the worth of the philosophical solution of certain problems must increase; and among the most important of these problems must be reckoned that of bridging the chasm between the individual and the world, which has grown wider with the awakening of consciousness. It lies in the nature of self-conscious thought to reach out beyond itself, just as it lies in the nature of sense-perception to regard this "beyond" as the world to come. Hence the endless longing which seeks the ruler of the world to come, and despairs without him; until the supposed right to a future life is perceived to be the right to the Only Whole, and an end is set in the attainment of this whole. For the thinking man an aimless life has no meaning; there is only one means of bridging the chasm; namely, that mankind shall set itself an end. A final destruction of life upon the earth must surely come, whether it be in the shape of a sudden catastrophe or as the result of a slow process. But such an end can no more be regarded as the "end" in the philosophical sense than death can be regarded, in the same sense, as the "end" of the individual life. By the development of ideas, which are concepts of reason in distinction from concepts of the understanding, we arrive at a notion of the ideal as end. In the ethical ideal, there is contained more than the empiricist can offer. The enthusiasm with which the true artist starves for his art, or the martyr perishes for his conviction, can never be fully explained from the empirical standpoint. One does not even need to be an idealist in order to act thus; but the materialist or the realist who possesses true love of beauty and a heart framed for great deeds, merely deceives himself when he refuses to acknowledge the All-embracing which therein overwhelms him. Sociology and the History of Civilization can only point out how man has attained to the ideas of the Beautiful and the Good; what these are and wherefore their influence is so powerful,--the real worth of the Beautiful and the Good,--thought by concepts alone can show. The Idea of Man, as he has already developed and may yet develop, is, as far as our knowledge reaches, the highest of human thoughts. We are therefore formulating no metaphysical theory in personifying mankind, and pointing out that the perfecting of which it is capable is the great end which it has set itself. We know, by our knowledge of human nature, that mankind will always endeavor to be happy, and that it will approach nearer perfection the more real and general its happiness becomes.