THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 357 
zation becomes an engine of destruction. The freedom 
of self-realization involves the freedom of self-perdition. 
Hence appears the often-discussed rela- 
tion of “ progress and poverty ” in social 
development. Hence it comes that civ- 
ilization, of which the essence is mutual help or altru- 
ism, seems to become one vast instrument for the kill- 
ing of fools. In the specialization of life conditions are 
constantly changing. Every age is an age of transi- 
tion, and transition brings unrest because it impairs the 
value of conventionality. With the lowest forms of life 
there is no safety save in absolute obedience to the laws 
of the world around them. This obedience becomes 
automatic and hereditary, because the disobedient leave 
no chain of descent. All instincts, appetites, impulses 
to action, even certain forms of illusions, point toward 
such obedience. Whether we regard these phenomena 
as variations selected because useful, or as inherited 
habits, their relation is the same. They survive as 
guarantees of future obedience because they have en- 
forced obedience in the past. With the most enlightened 
man, the same necessity for obedience exists, and the 
instincts, appetites, and impulses of the lower animals 
remain in him, or disappear only as reason is adequate 
to take their place. And, in any case, there is no alle- 
viation for the woes of life “save the absolute veracity 
of action, the resolute facing of the world as it is.” 
The intense practicality of all this must be recog- 
nised, The truths of science are approximate, not ab- 
solute. They must be stated in terms 
of human consciousness, and they can 
never be dissociated from possible human 
action. Knowledge which can only accumulate, without 
being woven into conduct, has never been a boon to its 
possessor. As food must be formed into tissues, so must 
Intellect points 
forward. 
Practicality of 
sensations. 
