strife. And therefore it is that, in the first moment of his new insight, the pessimism comes to him. “This warfare cannot be ended,” he despairingly says. But has he thus uttered the final word? For he has not yet added the reflection that we are here insisting upon. Let him say: “Then I too have an end, far-off and unattainable though it seems, and so my will is not aimless. I desire to realize these aims all at once. Therefore I desire their harmony. This is the one good that comes up before my fancy as above all the various conflicting individual goods of the various separate aims. This Higher Good would be attained in a world where the conflict ceased. That would be the Ideal World, where all possible aims were pursued in absolute harmony.”
Barren at first sight this reflection may appear. It may have been unexpected, but we shall certainly be disposed at first to call it fruitless. For here are the aims, and they do conflict. In the actual world there is ceaseless warfare. Only the wager of battle can decide among the opposing ethical faiths. But now, if some idealist comes who says that his insight gives him the higher ideal of Harmony, then one may reply that his ideal is, in its confessed nature, a mere fantasy of his benevolent imagination. Such harmony never can be realized, unless indeed some day, by the aid of bigger battalions, some one of the ideals overcomes all the rest. Yet is our idealist so lightly to be answered? Can he not at once reply: “My Ideal is thus defined, and fantastic though it be, far-off though it seems, it is still an ideal towards which I can direct my efforts. For
