Does the ideal remain the same all the time? No, the ideal grows and improves as man grows and improves with the years. Perhaps at some time in his life a man thinks that it would be ideal to have a beautiful house, a beautiful estate, good clothes, and all manner of comforts. From that moment this is the path he ought to pursue. But then he arrives at another ideal. He comes to think, 'My surroundings are not important if the people in the town are not happy nor in good surroundings.' From that time he cares less for his own house and his beautiful things, and goes into the town every day and seeks to improve the health and happiness of others. He thinks, 'The poor in the town should be looked after.' This is his new ideal. Before he evolved his new ideal he was only enjoying his beautiful home. He was living up to a lower ideal.
And then later on he may come to say, 'Never mind about my town. I think of my whole country.' The whole nation comes in for consideration: what is beneficial to it, and what are the things that should be improved. His fortune may not be very great. Perhaps his town is not so beautiful as that of someone who is thinking only about his town. But he is thinking about the whole nation, and so his ideal is still greater. It does not matter to him in which town he lives, his life is in the whole country, in the whole nation. He becomes the spirit of the whole nation. That is his ideal.