asserted must be examined.  At no time so much as in our own, have such general principles and notions been advanced, or with greater assurance.  If, in days gone by, history seems to present itself as a struggle of passions, in our time—­though displays of passion are not wanting—­it exhibits, partly a predominance of the struggle of notions assuming the authority of principles, partly that of passions and interests essentially subjective but under the mask of such higher sanctions.  The pretensions thus contended for as legitimate in the name of that which has been stated as the ultimate aim of Reason, pass accordingly for absolute aims—­to the same extent as religion, morals, ethics.  Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized, that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality.  These ideals which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest.  Such do not properly belong to this category.  For the fancies which the individual in his isolation indulges cannot be the model for universal reality, just as universal law is not designed for the units of the mass.  These as such may, in fact, find their interests thrust decidedly into the background.  But by the term “Ideal” we also understand the ideal of Reason—­of the good, of the true.  Poets—­as, for instance, Schiller—­have painted such ideals touchingly and with strong emotion, and with the deeply melancholy conviction that they could not be realized.  In affirming, on the contrary, that the Universal Reason does realize itself, we have indeed nothing to do with the individual, empirically regarded; that admits of degrees of better and worse, since here chance and speciality have received authority from the Idea to exercise their monstrous power; much, therefore, in particular aspects of the grand phenomenon, might be criticized.  This subjective fault-finding—­which, however, only keeps in view the individual and its deficiency, without taking notice of Reason pervading the whole—­is easy; and inasmuch as it asserts an excellent intention with regard to the good of the whole, and seems to result from a kindly heart, it feels authorized to give itself airs and assume great consequence.  It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in States, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.  For in this merely negative fault-finding a proud position is taken—­one which overlooks the object without having entered into it, without having comprehended its positive aspect.  Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is always discontented.  The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the grave experience of life, has been led