and poets; in a word, that the education which is being imparted to humanity by the very structure of the conditions under which it lives grows more severe, prolonged, and exacting as its methods and processes become more clear.  The broadening of the field of observation has steadily deepened the impression of the magnitude and majesty of the physical order by which men are surrounded; and the fuller knowledge of what is in human experience has steadily deepened the impression of the almost tragic greatness of the lot of men.  The disappointments of the race have been largely due to its inadequate conception of its own possibilities; its disillusions have been like the fading of the mirage which simulates against the near horizon that which lies long leagues away.  These disappointments and disillusions, as Browning saw clearly, are essential parts of an education which leads the race step by step from smaller to larger ideas, from nearer and easier to more remote and difficult attainments.

The disappointment which comes with the completion of every piece of work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express entirely the thought and force of the man who has striven to express himself completely in a material which, however masterfully used, can never give its ultimate form to a spiritual conception.  It is not an evidence of failure, but a prophecy of greater achievement.  A world in which the work was as great as the worker, the piece of art as the artist, would be a finished world in more senses than one; a world in which all work is inadequate to contain the energy of the worker, all art insufficient to express the soul of the artist, is necessarily a prophetic world, bearing witness to the presence of a creative force in workers and artists immeasurably beyond the capacity of any perishable material to receive or to preserve.

A rational Idealism is, therefore, not only indestructible in a race which does not violate the laws of life, but is instilled into the higher order of minds by the order of life as revealed by science, history, and the arts.  And this idealistic tendency is not only the poetic temper; it is the hope and safeguard of society.  The real perils of the race are not material; they are always spiritual; and no peril could be greater than the loss of faith and hope in the possibility of attaining the best things.  If men are ever bereft of their instinctive or rational conviction that they have the power ultimately to bring institutions of all kinds into harmony with their higher conceptions, they will sink into the lethargy of despair or the slough of sensualism.  The belief in the reality of the Ideal in personal and social life is not only the joy and inspiration of the poet and thinker; it is also the salvation of the race.  It is imperishable, because it is the product of the play of the imagination on the realities of life; and until the imagination perishes, the vision of the ultimate perfection will form and reform in the heart of every generation.  It is the inspiration of every art, the end of every noble occupation, the secret hope of every fine character.