is absolute. There might seem for this reason
to be no way of bringing optimism and ethics together, of reconciling
what is and what ought to be.

My answer to these difficulties must at this stage be very brief and
incomplete. That the moral good, if attained, should itself prove vain
is a plain self-contradiction. For moral good has no meaning except in
so far as it is conceived as the highest good. The question. "Why should
I be moral," has no answer, because it is self-contradictory. The moral
ideal contains its justification in itself, and requires to lean on
nothing else.

But it is not easy to prove that it is attainable. In one sense it is
not attainable, at least under the conditions of human life which fall
within our experience, from which alone we have a right to speak. For,
as I shall strive to show in a succeeding chapter, the essence of man's
life as spiritual, that is as intelligent and moral, is its
self-realizing activity. Intellectual and moral life is progress,
although it is the progress of an ideal which is real and complete, the
return of the infinite to itself through the finite. The cessation of
the progress of the ideal in man, whereby man interprets the world in
terms of himself and makes it the instrument of his purposes, is
intellectual and moral death. From one point of view, therefore, this
spiritual life, or moral and intellectual activity, is inspired at every
step by the consciousness of a "beyond" not possessed, of an unsolved
contradiction between the self and the not-self, of a good that ought to
be and is not. The last word, or rather the last word _but one_,
regarding man is "failure."

But failure is the last word but one, as the poet well knew. "What's
come to perfection perishes," he tells us. From this point of view the
fact that perfection is not reached, merely means that the process is
not ended. "It seethes with the morrow for us and more." The recognition
of failure implies more effort and higher progress, and contains a
suggestion of an absolute good, and even a proof of its active presence.
"The beyond," for knowledge and morality, is the Land of Promise. And
the promise is not a false one; for the "land" is possessed. The
recognition of the fact to be known, the statement of the problem, is
the first step in its solution; and the consciousness of the moral ideal
not attained is the first step in its self-actualizing progress. Had man
not come so far, he would not ha