sions are the only material out of
which that conception can be formed. Life itself is a flying impression,
and had we no personal and instant experience, importuning us at each
successive moment, we should have no occasion to ask for a reality at
all, and no materials out of which to construct so gratuitous an idea.
In the same way present demands are the only materials and occasions for
any ideal: without demands the ideal would have no _locus standi_ or
foothold in the world, no power, no charm, and no prerogative. If the
ideal can confront particular desires and put them to shame, that
happens only because the ideal is the object of a more profound and
voluminous desire and embodies the good which they blindly and perhaps
deviously pursue. Demands could not be misdirected, goods sought could
not be false, if the standard by which they are to be corrected were
not constructed out of them. Otherwise each demand would render its
object a detached, absolute, and unimpeachable good. But when each
desire in turn has singed its wings and retired before some disillusion,
reflection may set in to suggest residual satisfactions that may still
be possible, or some shifting of the ground by which much of what was
hoped for may yet be attained.

[Sidenote: Discipline of the will.]

[Sidenote: Demands made practical and consistent.]

The force for this new trial is but the old impulse renewed; this new
hope is a justified remnant of the old optimism. Each passion, in this
second campaign, takes the field conscious that it has indomitable
enemies and ready to sign a reasonable peace, and even to capitulate
before superior forces. Such tameness may be at first merely a
consequence of exhaustion and prudence; but a mortal will, though
absolute in its deliverances, is very far from constant, and its
sacrifices soon constitute a habit, its exile a new home. The old
ambition, now proved to be unrealisable, begins to seem capricious and
extravagant; the circle of possible satisfactions becomes the field of
conventional happiness. Experience, which brings about this humbler and
more prosaic state of mind, has its own imaginative fruits. Among those
forces which compelled each particular impulse to abate its pretensions,
the most conspicuous were other impulses, other interests active in
oneself and in one's neighbours. When the power of these alien demands
is recognised they begin, in a physical way, to be respected; when an
adjustmen