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Religious Instruction 287
Everywhere Rousseau’s words hold true,
" The child gets high principles to direct him,
but he is forced by his surroundings to act
according to petty principles, every time he
wishes to put the high ones into practice. He
goes on to say people have innumerable " ifs
"
and " huts," by which the child has to learn
that great principles are only words, that the
reality of life is something quite different.
The dangerous thing is not that the ideal
of Christianity is high; it comes from the fact
that every ideal in its essence is unattainable.
The nearer we get to it the more lofty it is.
This is the characteristic of every ideal. But
the demoralising feature in Christianity as an
ideal is, that it is presented as absolute, while
man as a social being is obliged to transgress
it every day. Besides he is taught in his re-
ligious instruction, that as a fallen being he
cannot in any case attain the ideal, although
the only possibility of his living righteously in
temporal things, and happily in the world to
come, depends on his capacity for realising it.
In this net of unsolvable contradictions,
generation after generation has seen its ideal
of belief obscured. Gradually each new gen-
eration has learned not to take its new ideal
seriously. As to the cowardly or braggart
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