The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-01-01
THE IDEAL IN DAILY LIFE.


in Alsatia, when the plain was covered
with mist to recognize by certain signs
that there must be sunshine on Saint
Odile or Champ-du-Feu. An hour later
l was treading sun-warm paths, beneath
the cloudless blue The people of Geneva
do the same thing when saturated with
the mists of Lake Menan, they climb the
heights of the Saleve. Nothing could be
more beautiful. Slowly you emerge
from the grey cloud. which has been
growing more and more diaphanous, into
the warm brightness Of the sun and the
spring. At your feet like milky sea-
rolls the fog making Islands Of the sum-
mits.
This spectacle is symbolical. 1t offers
an image of what happens to man, when
leaving behind him the cold plains OF
reality, as he might leave a wlntry
scene he makes for the regions or the
IDEAL and forgets for a time that he Is
a prisoner or, rather remembers for
time that he is free.
To dream, therefore, Is not bad. What
is bad is idle dreaming. and spending
ones life in that ethereal bath NOW
there are people for whom the ideal is a
perpetual summer holiday, in which con-
temptation takes the place altogether OF
action. 1t is the life of wonder and ad-
miration, the sublime idleness of the
heights, coupled with a sensitive shc)nk-
ing from returning to ordinary condl-
tions. That is frankly dangerous
To dream is good. We must indulge
in dreaming sometimes, call to our as
sistance under the whip of brutal drill
cuties and necessities. 1t Is good
spirit which suggests to us dreams of
beauty, of happier future. 1t is on
the contrary, an evil spirit which pro-
duces that sort of intoxication compare
BILE to the effects of opium or morphine,
in which careless of others, man seeks
selfish oblivion of the actual world, and
that vague grading of the imagination
among it's own nerveless creations. That
is no longer ideaIism, but a harmful
phantasma goria.
The ideal. as the world itself informs
u.s. the old world handed down to US
from the Greek thinkers, means the Wis
ion of that which should be. 1t is the
vision of a superior humanity, contem-
plated by the eyes of the spirit Let
us own that even in that form, it might
sometimes be dscouraging. We are not
unacquainted with an idealsm so alb
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