298 Evolution and Social Reform: 



condition of the race. He examines the present conditions 

 and decides according to his best judgment whether upon 

 those lines there is still room for expansion. If so, he seeks 

 favorable opportunities for forward movement one step at 

 a time acknowledging that the far future is far beyond 

 his ken. and only conscious of the possibilities of the im- 

 mediate present. Thus his voluntary action, itself a result 

 of development, becomes a factor in that development and 

 itself assists in the trend of the race. His imagination has 

 impressed him with the idea of equality of opportunity, and 

 he seeks to establish that equality. He sees that all prog- 

 ress in the past has been the result of individual progress. 

 He sees that that which encourages the development of the 

 individual not only strengthens him but enables him to be- 

 come a valuable member of the community. That which 

 discourages that development wrecks both the individual 

 and the community. He therefore sees that whatever changes 

 are encouraged or permitted, the freedom of individual action 

 should be preserved so far as that may be jiossible. 



A recent lecturer in this course said that certainty of 

 income was the great desideratum. Certainty is indeed a 

 good thing, but it is not the best thing. It is the something 

 beyond, the contingent, the uncertain, the prize in every 

 package, that inspires to forth-putting, to progress. When 

 the imagination was born, then came the man. There is 

 no pla(!e for the imagination in socialistic schemes. It is 

 that which insi)ires the schemers themselves, which gives 

 all the vitality there is supposed to be in their schemes, but 

 with the success of their schemes the imagination dies. 



What, then, is my scheme ? I have no scheme God for- 

 bid. I do not know whither we are going nor do you, my 

 good brother. We stand in reverent awe in the presence of 

 the transcendent })ower which surrounds and possesses us, a 

 })ower so transcendent that words cannot express or thouglits 

 conceive it. We touch it at every point are a part of its 

 extension, if I may use so crude a word and know that 

 nothing is which is not also a part. We feel the pulses of 

 that life moving not in one only but in all directions, and 

 ever developing greater variety, greater complexity. We 

 surrender ourselves with serene assurance to that power. 

 Do you call this a sublimated Fatalism ? l*erhai)s it is that, 

 but if so it has none of the dangerous featxires of the Fatal- 

 ism of the ])ast. And wlietlier it be Fatalism or not, call 

 it what you will, it is \\w condition in Avhich you and I 

 find ourselves and from which there is no escape. Moreover, 

 why should we deoire to escape '.' Our rearward view shows 



