Prospero is as real as Trinculo, and Rosalind as true as Cressida.

These ideal persons are not necessarily fortunate in their surroundings or happy in their lot; they are simply perfect in their development of a type.

They are not abnormal beings, rising above normal conditions; they are normal beings, rising above abnormal conditions.

They stand for wholeness amid fragments, for perfection amid imperfection; but the very imperfection and fragmentariness by which they are surrounded predicts their coming and affirms their reality.
In the rounded and developed nature there must be a deep vein of the Idealism which grows out of the vision of things in their large relations--out of a view of men ample enough to discern not only what they are at this stage of development, but what they may become when development has been completed.

Nothing is more essential than the courage, the joy, and the insight which grow out of such an Idealism, and no spiritual possession is more easily lost.