Human living may be said to be a continuous striving to represent truly the ideal. There is scarcely an individual, however humble or exalted his position, gloomy and apparently hopeless his outlook on life or rich in material wealth and big with promise his future, who has not known a deep-lying conviction of a higher and sublimer goal to be attained than that held out by material environment. Ideals are the fundamental desire for goodness and righteousness,—man's innate assurance of the existence of a living Principle, who has ordained a higher order of divinity than that manifest in the conundrum of human affairs. History in all its branches, ancient and modern, is virtually one continuous record of this persistent striving, both of nations and individuals, for the fulfillment of ideals. Leading thinkers, men active in all branches of the world's work, have held resolutely before the people a noble ideal to be attained; statesmen have put forth their mightiest efforts with all the dexterity and skill at their command, to complete negotiations which would insure a closer approximation to national or international ideals; individuals have struggled, suffered, and deprived themselves, willingly forsaking material comfort for an ideal; men and nations have fought for an ideal. One has only to look upon the signs of the times to see the mighty impetus given by noble ideals; and yet, if one accepts the testimony of the material senses and the panorama of the world's needs which are being presented by statesmen and press alike throughout the civilized world, the ends achieved have often fallen miserably below human expectations.
Is it not well, therefore, to withdraw from the hurly-burly of human action and reaction to consider honestly and earnestly the reason for the apparent inconsistency between the ideal and the practical? If a child, after months of study and toil, had not succeeded in deducing the correct answer to a mathematical problem, one would naturally conclude that he had not the right understanding of mathematics; and in the same way, when the human race after centuries of strife has not succeeded in demonstrating the perfection looked for in its ideals, is it not reasonable to conclude that mankind has not truly conceived the Principle of those ideals?
The ideal is that which purifies and elevates character, sanctifies purpose, cements fellowship, ennobles endeavor, and unifies men and nations; and idealism is the practice of the ideal. No clearer statement of the divine Principle of true idealism can be found than that given by the master Metaphysician: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Here, with that simple directness which characterized Jesus' teachings, is a definite declaration of the unvarying law which governs all righteous effort. And again he said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. . . . No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Yet is not this just what the human mind has attempted to do? Mortals admit that God is All-in-all, that He is infinite, eternal, immutable, immortal, and that He is the Life of man, while at the same time claiming that man's existence is finite, mutable, and mortal,—and this notwithstanding the Scriptural declaration that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." With such self-evident contradictions and misconceptions of the fundamental Principle of life and righteousness, it is inevitable that these contradictions and misconceptions should be expressed in warped and crooked ideals wrought in human experience. As Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, states in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 260), "The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal. Through many generations human beliefs will be attaining diviner conceptions, and the immortal and perfect model of God's creation will finally be seen as the only true conception of being."
