their functioning imply the pre-existence
of certain primordial ideas.

These ideas are at once the eternally receding horizon and the
eternally receding starting-point--the unfathomable past and the
unfathomable future--of this procession of souls. The crux of the
whole situation is found in the evasive and tantalizing problem of
the real nature of these primordial ideas. Can "truth," can "beauty,"
can "goodness" be conceived of as existing in the universe apart
from any individual soul?

They are clearly not completely exhausted or totally revealed by
the vision of any individual human soul or of any number of
human souls. The sense which we all have when we attempt to
exchange our individual feelings with regard to these things is that
we are appealing to some invisible standard or pattern which
already exists and of which we each apprehend a particular facet
or aspect.

All human intercourse depends upon this implicit assumption; of
which language is the outward proof.

The existence of language goes a long way in itself to destroy that
isolation of individual souls which in its extreme form would
mean the impossibility of any objective truth or beauty or nobility.
Language itself is founded upon that original act of faith by which
we assume the independent existence of other souls. And the same
act of faith which assumes the existence of other souls assumes
also that the vision of other souls does not essentially differ from
our own vision.

Once having got as far as this, the further fact that these other
visions do vary considerably, though not essentially, differ from
our own leads us by an inevitable, if not a logical, step to the
assumption that all our different visions are the imperfect
renderings of one vision, wherein the ideas of truth, beauty and
nobility exist in a harmonious synthesis.

There is no reason why we should think of this objective synthesis
of truth, beauty, and goodness as absolute or perfect. Indeed there
is every reason why we should think of it as imperfect and
relative. But it is imperfect and relative only in its relation to its
own dream, its own hope, its own prophecy, its own premonition,
its own struggle towards a richer and fuller manifestation. In its
relation to our broken, baffled, and subjective visions it is already
so complete as to be relatively absolute. To this objective ideal of
our aesthetic and emotional values, I have given the name "the
vision of the immo