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Idealism : The Cerebian Sop

In a little Art Gallery in Milan, there hangs a painting by an unknown Renaissance artist, the painting of an ancient white-bearded man, who arrayed in flowing white garments, reaches upwards, his thin bony fingers almost touching a bunch of grapes above and, ready to sweep when his fingers touch the Tantulian fruit, is a menacing scythe held by a hidden hand. Below is the faded caption, "Il Sercce" (The Seeker) —or the portrayal of the Idealist.

How many of us to-day live in a Fool's Paradise, a Paradise of our own making, and self-rationalise enough to assert boldly, "It is better to live in a Fool's Paradise than no Paradise at all. There is no philosophy more selfish, more futile than Idealism. The Idealist struts through life with his eyes peering into Utopia and his feet on the necks of his fellowmen. There has never been an Idealist who has made the world a better place and often I am disposed to be cynical and misquote Emerson, "Idealism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains of mediocrity." Too many of us to-day spend our energies in fruitless searching for that Holy Grail of Knowledge and the sooner we recognise that Man can learn no more than he is allowed to, the greatest advance that has yet been made towards that Holy Grail, will be ours.

Idealism is that restless striving for the ultimate, that passionate yearning for self-realisation, and after all a blind groping for what? Ask an Idealist for what he seeks. Butler would say, Utopia. Shelley would say, Truth. Keats would say, Beauty. Annie Besant would say, Christ. When does the seeker know when his fingers grasp the abstract? Perhaps one can smile and say, "That for which we reach across the world is at our elbow, but we reach too far." Bunyan's Faithful was perhaps the most intense Idealist of them all and what philosophy could have been more selfish and futile than his.

There is an old Russian saying, "Two men gaze through a window, one sees mud and the other, a garden." The Idealist sees a garden and sighs with contentment. The thinker would see mud and set to work to plant a garden.

Our world is too full of introspective creation, too full of self-satisfying, smug idealism and too little of creative thinking. There is only one thing that can raise us from the mud into which a retrograde civilisation has brought us, yes, only creative and unselfish endeavour can plant a garden.

G.I.J