174 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



the record of moral and religious experiments, and 

 their success or failure according as the experimenters 

 conformed to the laws of the spiritual forces with 

 which they had to do ? 



We need not fear that our old fundamental beliefs 

 will be lost. Their very age shows that they have 

 been thoroughly tested in the great experiment of 

 human history and found sure. Modified they may 

 be ; they will be used for higher purposes and the 

 building of better characters than ours. They will 

 not be lost or discarded. We too often think of nat- 

 ure as building like man, with huge scaffoldings, which 

 must later be torn down and destroyed. But in the 

 forest the only scaffolding is the heart of oak. 



We have seen that the sequence of functions in 

 animal development has culminated in man's rational, 

 moral nature. He alone has the clear perception of 

 the reality of right, truth, and duty. The pursuit of 

 these has made him what he is. His advance, if there 

 is any continuity in history, depends upon his making 

 these the ruling motives and aims of his life. He 

 must continually grow in righteousness and unselfish- 

 ness, if he is not to degenerate and give place to some 

 other product of evolution. Moreover, as these moral 

 faculties are capable of indefinite, if not infinite, de- 

 velopment, they must dominate his life through a fut- 

 ure of indefinite duration. For the length of the 

 period of dominance of a function has always been 

 proportional to the capacity of that function for future 

 development. These can never, so far as we can see, 

 be superseded, for no rival to them can be discovered. 

 We have found in them the culmination of the se- 

 quence of functions. 



