e truth. For the very condemnation implies the actual presence of
something better. Both of the terms--both the criterion and the fact
which is condemned by it--fall within the same individual life. Man
cannot, therefore, without injustice, condemn himself in all that he is;
for the condemnation is itself a witness to the activity of that good of
which he despairs. Hence, the threatening majesty of the moral
imperative is nothing but the shadow of man's own dignity; and moral
contrition, and even the complete despair of the pessimistic theory,
when rightly understood, are recognized as unwilling witnesses to the
authority and the actuality of the highest good. And, on the other hand,
the highest good cannot be regarded as a mere phantom, without
nullifying all our condemnation of the self and the world.

The legitimate deduction from the height of man's moral ideal is thus
found to be, not, as Carlyle thought, the weakness and worthlessness of
human nature, but its promise and native dignity: and in a healthy moral
consciousness it produces, not despair, but faith and joy. For, as has
been already suggested in a previous chapter, the authority of the moral
law over man is rooted in man's endowment. Its imperative is nothing but
the voice of the future self, bidding the present self aspire, while its
reproof is only the expression of a moral aspiration which has
misunderstood itself. Contrition is not a bad moral state which should
bring despair, but a good state, full of promise of one that is still
better. It is, in fact, just the first step which the ideal takes in its
process of self-realization: "the sting that bids nor sit, nor stand,
but go!"

The moral ideal thus, like every other ideal, even that which we regard
as present in natural life, contains a certain guarantee of its own
fulfilment. It is essentially an active thing, an energy, a movement
upwards. It may, indeed, be urged that the guarantee is imperfect.
Ideals tend to self-realization, but the tendency may remain
unfulfilled. Men have some ideals which they never reach, and others
which, at first sight at least, it were better for them not to reach.
The goal may never be attained, or it may prove "a ruin like the rest."
And, as long as man is moral, the ideal is not, and cannot be, fully
reached, Morality necessarily implies a rift within human nature, a
contradiction between what is and what ought to be; although neither the
rift nor the contradiction