IMAGERY IN SOCIAL GROWTH 351 



patched-up pensioners of progress grotesquely fash- 

 ioned in protective patterns of the dead that flour- 

 ished on the lifeless body of this red-blooded past. 

 When at last they crawled away into the obscurity of 

 ineffective action, the ground was cleared for a new 

 life, more independent and self-sustaining. 



VII. Science and the New Democracy 



After twenty centuries or more, this new life ma- 

 tured, not as a mere renaissance of the old, but as a 

 veritable social mutation; it was a new physical growth 

 in a new environment, using different material agencies 

 under the guidance of a new mental imagery. 



The great impetus came with the new concept of 

 nature-growth contained in the doctrine of evolution. 

 When this concept finally ripened into conviction, as it 

 were overnight, the old garment of thought which, like 

 a larval envelop had encased the mind, was ruptured 

 and cast aside. It had served its purpose. Man was no 

 longer a mere imitator of a past that was dead and gone 

 forever; or the slave of a fickle imagination, but the 

 master of it. He forfeited, indeed, his claim to a ficti- 

 tious kingdom, but gained his rightful place as master 

 builder in the great kingdom of terrestrial life. In the 

 revelation of evolution, man had a new birth of physi- 

 cal and mental freedom. He entered a new world of 

 boundless possibilities, free from baseless terrors and 

 self-imposed restrictions; free to experiment with his 

 treasures, and to appropriate therefrom to his own 

 pleasure and profit; free to taste what is evil and to 

 avoid it; free to seek out the good and to make it a part 

 of himself. 



