Ideal – 理想 [isang]
Etymology
理 (이) [i] – reason, logic;
想 (상) [sang] – idea, thought;
Fragments
The “Ideal,” (理想) in Chinese characters, is comprised of a left side 王 (king) and a right side 里 (village); in other words, king’s village. One side symbolizes the whole, and the other side represents the center. When the whole focuses on one center, then that is ideal. A single man will never achieve that; only with the entirety surrounding the original center will the ideal exist.
It may be hard for Western people to immediately visualize, but that’s the way the Chinese characters are. Each has a deeper meaning, representing one thought. The elements of the ideal (想) are again the 木 (tree) on the left side, and 目 (eye) on the right side – the eye of the tree.” So the eye of the tree also symbolizes the whole. When those two get together, they become one concept, the word “mind.” Then it is not very difficult to understand that when people started using these characters, they unknowingly included all the elements of happiness and the ideal in the concept of the ideal. And on this basis alone, on this combination of outer environment and developing our own environment for this one purpose the ideal can come to exist.
Sun Myung Moon. The Hope Of Youth. Barrytown, New York. July 26, 1974