74 Social Environment 



wellspring of hope through centuries of 

 struggle. 



The world's idealism, then, is the creative 

 energy at its highest apex pushing into the 

 future. That vital urge which throughout evo- 

 lutionary history expressed itself in higher 

 mutations, now speaks preeminently in the 

 inspiration of the noblest thought. Not from 

 physical appetite, but from a spiritual faculty 

 for righteousness, does this idealism arise. The 

 spur of hunger does not produce a dream of 

 a just order in the brute, nor does the exploi- 

 tation of the brutish man awake within him 

 a vision of the New Jerusalem descending from 

 heaven. There may be a certain figurative 

 sense in which the higher faculties may be said 

 to result from the checking and sublimation of 

 the animal appetites, yet the form that the 

 sublimation takes is none the less a new crea- 

 tion. Dirt does not unfold the flower until the 

 seed of a new life is implanted, and in the same 

 way the grossness of man's carnal nature does 

 not grow into the idealism of religion, poetry, 

 and social striving except as it is imbued with 

 the creative forces of the universe. This is, 

 of course, not an explanation of the phe- 

 nomena. It is simply an acknowledgment that 



