VISIONS AND IDEALS
The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible
world is sustained by the invisible, so men and women, through
all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished
by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity
cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and
and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which
it shall one day see and know.
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are
the makers of the afterworld, the architects of heaven. The world
is beautiful because they have lived; without them, laboring hu-
manity would perish.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his
heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of
another world, and he discovered it; Copernicus fostered the vis-
ion of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he re-
vealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stain-
less beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music
that stirs in your heart, and the beauty that forms in your mind,
the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them
will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of
these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be
built.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Shall man-
kind's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratifica-
tion, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance?
Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain:
"Ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your
Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
The greatest achievement was at first and the a time a dream.
The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in
the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are
the seedlings of realities.
Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long
remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it.
You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a
youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in
a unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of
refinement. But he dreams of better things: he thinks of in-
telligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives
of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision
of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him;
unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time
and means, small though they are, to the development of his la-
tent powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind
become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become
so our of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his
life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of oppor-
tunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes
out of it forever. Years later we see this youth as a full-
grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind
which he wields with world-wide influence and almost unequaled
power. In his hands he hold the cords of gigantic responsibil-
ities; he speaks, and lo! lives are changed; men and women hang
upon his words and remold their characters, and, sunlike, he
becomes the fixed and luminous center around which innumerable
destinies revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He
has become one with his Ideal.
And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not
the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mix-
ture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which
you, secretly, must love. Into your hands will be placed the
exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which
you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment
may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your
Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling
desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful
words of Stanton Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts,
and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long
has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find
yourself before an audience--the pen still behind your ear,
the ink stains on your fingers--and then and there shall pour
out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep,
and you shall wander to the city--bucolic and open-mouthed;
shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the
studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'I have
nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the master,
who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep.
You shall lay down the saw and the plane and take upon yourself
the regeneration of the world."
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only
the apparent effects of things and the things themselves, talk
of luck, of fortune, and chance. Seeing a person grow rich, they
say, "How lucky s/he is!" Observing another become intellectual,
they exclaim, "How highly favored s/he is!" And noting the saint-
ly character and wide influence of another, they remark, "How
chance aids him/her at every turn!" They do not see the trials
and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily en-
countered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of
the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have
put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might
overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision
of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heart-
aches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck"; do
not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleas-
ant goal, and call it "good fortune"; do not understand the pro-
cess, but only perceive the result, and call it "chance."
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results,
and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
Chance is not. "Gifts," powers, material, intellectual, and
spiritual possesions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts
completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
The Vision that your glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you
enthrone in your heart--this you will build your life by, this
you will become.