To disengage reason from the confusion of things, and behold the eternal
forms of the mind; to unveil beauty in the transitory sights of our
eyes, and behold the eternal forms of sense; so to act that the will
within us shall take on this form of reason and our manifest life wear
this form of beauty; and, more closely, to live in the primary
affections, the noble passions, the sweet emotions,--
"Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother,--"
and also in the general sorrows of mankind, thereby, in joy and grief,
entering sympathetically into the hearts of common men; to keep in the
highway of life, not turning aside to the eccentric, the sensational,
the abnormal, the brutal, the base, but seeing them, if they must come
within our vision, in their place only by the edges of true life; and,
if, being men, we are caught in the tragic coil, to seek the restoration
of broken order, learning also in such bitterness better to understand
the dark conflict forever waging in the general heart, the terror of the
heavy clouds hanging on the slopes of our battle, the pathos that looks
down even from blue skies that have kept watch o'er man's
mortality,--so, even through failure, to draw nearer to our race; this,
as I conceive it, is to lead the ideal life.
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