RATS AND MEN 359 



This control is real. It is limited, to be sure; no 

 one of us is free to flout the laws of nature or to 

 choose whether he will or will not conform his conduct 

 to them. But the knowledge of these laws and ability 

 to project their operations into the future give to us a 

 technique of control denied to the brutes. I can 

 "make up my mind" to become a physician, and I can 

 deliberately subject myself to the hardships of the 

 rigorous training necessary to qualify for this profes- 

 sion. It is not within my power, as I leave the high 

 school with my diploma, to enter at once into a lucra- 

 tive practice; but it is within my power to imagine 

 myself doing so ten years hence, to determine that I 

 will do so, and to take the first step necessary to cre- 

 ate in myself the capacity to do so. All of these 

 steps and all of the succeeding steps during the 

 long apprenticeship are causally related, and not 

 the least of these causes is the will to achieve, a will 

 that can be strengthened by use and guided by wise 

 instruction as truly and as efficiently as my muscles 

 and "wind" can be trained for a foot race. 



In so far as I do thus consciously participate in the 

 shaping of daily conduct in the light of its future 

 eflPects, I am also a partner in the business of shaping 

 my own inner nature; I am engaged in character- 

 building as a purposeful enterprise. My part in this 

 process is real. I can and do control, to some extent, 

 my own destiny in ways that rats do not and cannot, 

 for I have powers of imagination, of ratiocination, of 



