does it not remain true that a being who never says "I
ought," who acknowledges and manifests no responsibility, to whom
goodness does not appeal, and in whom these feelings cannot be
awakened, is either not yet or no longer man? But far more than
this, if the character of the individual is to be judged by his
tendency more than his present condition, by the way in which he is
going more than his momentary position, is not the race to be judged
and defined by a tendency, gradually though very slowly becoming
realized, and a goal, toward which it looks and which it is surely
attaining, rather than by its present realization? As we rise
higher in the animal kingdom the characteristics of the successive
higher groups are more and more slow of attainment and difficult of
realization, just because of their grander possibilities. And this
is true and important above all in the case of man. His
possibilities are beyond our powers of conception, for, if you will,
man is yet only larval man.

We have followed the sequence of functions to its culmination in a
mind completely dominated by righteousness and unselfishness,
however far above our present attainments this goal may be. We have
found that all attempts to reverse this sequence end in death or
degeneration. Failure to advance, especially in higher forms,
results in extinction or retrogression. We cannot stand still. Each
higher step is longer and more important than any preceding; each
last step is essential to life. Righteousness in the will is the
last step essential to man's progress. And if a sound mind in a
sound body is important or necessary, a sound will, resolutely set
on right, is absolutely essential. Failure to attain this is ruin.

And man can to a great extent place himself so that his surroundings
shall aid him to take this last, essential, upward step. He does
this by the choice of his associates. If he associates himself with
men who are tending upward, he will rise ever higher. If he choose
the opposite kind of associates he must sink into ever deeper
degradation; he has thereby chosen death. For his associates, once
chosen, make him like themselves. And thus natural selection makes
for the survival of those men who resolutely choose life. And
thoughtless or careless failure to choose is ruin. The man has
preferred degradation; it is only right that he should have it to
satiety.

But man is not, and never can be, pure spirit. He may "let the ape
and