Southwest-sentinel. [volume] (Silver City, N.M.) 1883-189?, 1894-01-09
Ideals in Life.

A0eais IN Lites
1t is the greatest function of
art to make clear to the eye and SO
to the thought of men those ideals
Of character and life which are
the invisible ends towards which
society moves, and the inspiration
of all that is best and truest.
There never was a greater mistake
than the impression that idealism,
while very attractive and at times
very beautiful, has the visionari-
ness of the dream in it, and that
it belongs, not to actual life, but
to a kind Of faint and vague zone
of vision which encircles it. It is
constantly assumed that there is
an antagonism between the real
and the ideal, and that TO pursue
the ideal with the exalted devo-
tion of the great artists is in some
way to lose hold upon the real and
to substitute dreams for realities.
AS a matter of fact, the only value
of what is called the real is its
power to suggest and predict the
ideal. The chief value of any at
tainment in character does not
lie in the attainment itself, but in
the promise of a rounded, SYM
metrical and perfect development
at the end. This fragmentary and
broken life of ours never yet sat
isfed any human soul; that which
is satisfying in it is the promise it
contains that some day "the arc
will come full circle" as Brown
ing says, and that these broken
bits of perfection will find COM
pletion in entire perfection.
The ideal does not stand in op-
position to the real, but is, as the
greatest of modern thinkers long
ago pointed out, the fulfllment of
the real. 1t Is reality come to
perfection. AS such it supplies
the greatest motive force in socie-
ty, for it continually holds before
men the vision of that which they
are pursuing and slowly bringing
into being through their imper-
feet but aspiring activities. Art
is great and real only as it holds
this ideal before us. 1t is impos-
sible for the artist to portray any
bit of nature with entire sincerity
and adequate power without sug-
gesting, what every bit of nature
suggests, a beauty above itself,
and a power higher than that
which is manifested in natural
processes. The Madonnas and
the Christs of art are all attempts
to realize more or less successful
ly the ideal womanhood and moth
erhood, and the ideal sonship aud
divinity in humanity, in which,
men have always believed in one
form OF another, but which find
their authoritative illustration in
the story of the Gospel.
At this Christmas season the
world looks again into the manager
where was born the one perfect
human life, the one ideal Of char
acter and action which has been
disclosed to human view, and in
which humanity finds realized all
the things for which it hopes. If
it be true, as all experience tells
us, that the most effective teaching
is that which comes through living
example and not by precept, that
men learn patriotism from the
heroic careers of Washington and
Lincoln, rather than from textbooks,
how inevitable was the taking on
of the human form by the Divine
and how sublimely she shining of
the infinite through the finite has
lighted all the dusty ways of work
and toll and suffering, from the
first Christmas to that which we
this year celebrated Men have not
yet realized in themselves kind
red perfection, and, in the nature
of things, they cannot realize it.
When an ideal is perfectly realized
by humanity in this earthly and
educational stage, Immediately a
new ideal becomes necessary, for
men must always see before them
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