labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense
and the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point
of knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or,
in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy their
thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of the
ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality and
thought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation in
knowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, working
towards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And its
presence is real, although the process is never complete.

In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of the
truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not only
always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinction
between truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in the
effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong is
present in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of the
intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except by
reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge;
as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. The
ideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it is
always sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actual
achievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable being
of things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is no
starved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of the
principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an
ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is
an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be
even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth.

Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and real
things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point the
sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellect
much more power than it has. They regard mind as