The ideal of Greece was beauty--then personal beauty--in form and character. Under the reign of this ideal came her noblest achievements. But the Greek brain was erratic; the Greek heroes were soon deified. The artist came, and when the marble statue became the ideal and also the idol, the Greek philosopher became a sophist, and Greece fell a prey to a more practical race.
The ideal of Rome was power, force and the glamour of Patrician splendor. That the lower orders might fight more bravely for the further aggrandisement of the holy city, they were fed on barley buns and flattered with an imaginary freedom, but the ideal of Rome was force.
The ideals of Venice and Genoa were wealth, luxury and art, and their palaces and cathedrals--still the wonder and admiration of the world--became their realised dreams; but only these, and the folly of the Doge, remain to us.
The ideal of Spain--in her greatness--was royal splendor, propped by the spiritual authority, with subject colonies to furnish places for favorites and revenues for the State.
The ideals of Britain were trade, the factory, the shop, the ship, and the "old family"--to occupy the easy seats. But these British ideals developed individual enterprise, and soon it was discovered that in Britain there were people. Save for a few brief periods in Attica, from the fall of Israel to the rise of Britain the _people_ cut little figure in recorded history.
The ideal of America, say up to the passing of Lincoln, was personal liberty, and under this sentiment she produced some of the noblest characters that ever stood erect and wore the image of God. But the gates were turned in, millions came from afar, the earlier sentiments were perverted, great wealth became the master motive, and dollars have become the national ideal.
All these countries have succeeded, if Mr. Oseba's arguments are valid, in some measure in developing the "master motive," or in realising the national ideal.
"Well, my children," said Oseba, "the force of Zelania as a social leader is also in her ideals, and as the conspicuous happiness and prosperity of a people are the best evidence of a benign rule, the appreciation of her ideals has proved their utilitarian virtues.