Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
give light without warmth; they are like the full moon in the heavens when
there are no stars appearing. Men cannot live by thought alone; the world
of sense is always breaking in upon them. They are for the most part
confined to a corner of earth, and see but a little way beyond their own
home or place of abode; they 'do not lift up their eyes to the hills';
they are not awake when the dawn appears. But in Plato we have reached a
height from which a man may look into the distance (Rep. iv. 445 C) and
behold the future of the world and of philosophy. The ideal of the State
and of the life of the philosopher; the ideal of an education {ccxxx}
continuing through life and extending equally to both sexes; the ideal of
the unity and correlation of knowledge; the faith in good and
immortality--are the vacant forms of light on which Plato is seeking to
fix the eye of mankind.
* * * * *
VIII. Two other ideals, which never appeared above the horizon in Greek
Philosophy, float before the minds of men in our own day: one seen more
clearly than formerly, as though each year and each generation brought us
nearer to some great change; the other almost in the same degree retiring
from view behind the laws of nature, as if oppressed by them, but still
remaining a silent hope of we know not what hidden in the heart of man.
The first ideal is the future of the human race in this world; the second
the future of the individual in another. The first is the more perfect
realization of our own present life; the second, the abnegation of it: the
one, limited by experience, the other, transcending it. Both of them have
been and are powerful motives of action; there are a few in whom they have
taken the place of all earthly interests. The hope of a future for the
human race at first sight seems to be the more disinterested, the hope of
individual existence the more egotistical, of the two motives. But when
men have learned to resolve their hope of a future either for themselves
or for the world into the will of God--'not my will but Thine,' the
difference between them falls away; and they may be allowed to make either
of them the basis of their lives, according to their own individual
character or temperament. There is as much faith in the willingness to
work for an unseen future in this world as in another. Neither is it
inconceivable that some rare nature may feel his duty to another
generation, or to another century, almost as strongly as to his own, or
that living always in the presence of God, he may realize another world as
vividly as he does this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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