[What Is and What Might Be by Edmond Holmes]@TWC D-Link book
What Is and What Might Be

CHAPTER VI
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This is what has happened in Utopia.

There, where competition is unknown, where prizes are undreamed of, where the growth of the child's natural faculties, and the consequent well-being of his soul, is "its own exceeding great reward," the communal instinct has grown with the growth of the child's whole nature, and has generated an ideal social life.
At the end of the last section I asked myself what was the ethical ideal of the life of self-realisation,--the positive ideal as distinguished from the more negative ideal of emancipating from egoism and sensuality.

I will now try to answer this question.
Emancipation from egoism and sensuality is effected by the outgrowth of a larger and truer self.

This larger and truer self, as it unfolds itself, directs our eyes towards the ideal self--the goal of the whole process of growth--which is to the ordinary self what the full-grown tree, embodying in itself the perfection of oakhood, is to the sapling oak, or what the ripe peach, embodying in itself the perfection of peachhood, is to the green unripened fruit.

The ideal self is, in brief, perfect Manhood.


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