ii6 'THE COMING OF MAN 



"back-numbers." We have already quoted Huxley's defini- 

 tion of a liberally educated man. 



Says William James, the Pragmatist: " In all ages the man 

 whose determinations are swayed by reference to the most 

 distant end has been held to possess the highest inteUigence. 

 The tramp who lives from hour to hour; the Bohemian whose 

 engagements are from day to day; the bachelor who builds 

 for a single life; the father who acts for another generation; 

 the patriot who thinks of a whole community and many gen- 

 erations; and finally the philosopher and saint whose cares 

 are for humanity and eternity — these range themselves in an 

 unbroken hierarchy."^ 



James' patriot, to say nothing of philosopher and saint, 

 seems to me to have caught and been persuaded of a vision 

 and promise so grand, dim, distant, hazy and uncertain in 

 outline, to be investing so largely in uncertain because distant 

 " futures," that he must be walking far more by faith than 

 by sight. But we will let that pass. Any description of a 

 great life is always cold, inadequate and unsatisfactory. We 

 are really stirred by the idea of fitness only when we see it 

 incarnated and embodied in a Lincoln or Socrates or any one 

 of Heine's " apostolic succession of great souls." 



But these men have a far higher use. Nature trained man 

 to the discovery and practice of fitness largely through tribal 

 pressure and compulsion. Then she set him free to follow his 

 own conscience as a moral person, who cannot be forced into 

 the highest stage of progress. He can be drawn or attracted 

 by loyalty to a hero worthy of the name. 



The dominant forms pass away, the fittest endure, strive 

 and progress. Nature seems to look upon the dominant as a 

 necessary but temporary nuisance and evil of which she makes 

 the best use she can. She turns such to account by making 

 them police the road or stimulate and exercise the fit. Then 

 she weeds them out and kills them off. No dominant form is 

 ever the ancestor of anything higher, or of any descendant 

 worth our attention. No one of our ancestors has ever been 



3 127:101. 



