can bring moral deliverance; and he who will not take upon himself the burden of the evil of others, and even accept it also as if it were his own guilt, can never get rid of his own. But for him who does accept this responsibility for all evil … the very principle that makes him, so to speak, throw down the barrier between his own life and that of others … also gives him a consciousness of unity with that power of goodness which is ' above all, in all, and through all.'"[1]
Thirdly, we have our ideal interests, the interests which are concerned with what Plato calls the world of absolute justice and beauty and temperance. Their achievement is the central problem of our life. It involves at any rate humility, the renunciation of all hostile interests, loyalty to the uttermost, and in some form or other the love of God.
Our material and social interests find their completion in these ideal interests, which by permeating our whole personal life give to it unity and coherence. "The simplest act of social duty," says Bosanquet, "taught by habituation to the growing citizen, say courage or soberness, has in it a motive, or we may say really implies an awakening and a yearning of the soul, which first expresses itself in loyalty to society and in good citizenship, but which can find no final satisfaction till it completes itself in the knowledge and thought of God, in union with whom alone the individual comes to be that which he really is."[2] "Man's final ends," says Laurie, "are ideals—always
