Word: ideality
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...ideal scrub is exceedingly primitive in his habits. His hands are indifferently employed for many purposes for which the artificial appliances of civilization have long been in use, while the flowing bowl - especially if it contain water for purposes of ablution - is spurned with magnificent consistency. The contents of his fingernails would give interesting and engrossing employment for a couple of days to the average chemist. His hair, if it chance to be curly, is allowed to curl unchecked over his manly brow; if nature has made it straight, it wanders forlornly about in every direction until some compassionate barber...
Such is the ideal scrub. Many a good fellow, whose purse will not permit him to choose his tailor, is wrongfully confounded with him. Many a man who swells with as much self-satisfaction as the fabulous frog is nearer to him than he ever imagined. Many approach him more or less nearly at one point or another, but a scrub is a perfect scrub only when he is physically, mentally, and morally in need of a good scrubbing...
...While matter divides and subdivides itself till it is finally lost in the endlessness of the process, the ideal is one and absorbs the diversity of the material into itself...
...matter, but the "wholes amid which alone the spirit feels at home, and the atoms or points with which science has to do." It is only by an honest synthesis in our minds of the results of the analysis of science that we can reach the glory of the ideal...
...everything merely as an end. Both views are true when taken together; the relation of one part of the universe to another is that of the parts of a great painting which are true in themselves, but lack something unless united. Upon this view rests the belief in the "ideal element which is the life of all things," and which, "taking up into itself all the results of our analysis, assumes a grandeur and a glory that had never been possible before." Here, then, is the gain of History, that in this age, "by the combination and utilization...