together with a precarious tenure of life. Mortality has its
compensations: one is that all evils are transitory, another that better
times may come.

[Sidenote: Human nature formulated.]

Human nature, then, has for its core the substance of nature at large,
and is one of its more complex formations. Its determination is
progressive. It varies indefinitely in its historic manifestations and
fades into what, as a matter of natural history, might no longer be
termed human. At each moment it has its fixed and determinate
entelechy, the ideal of that being's life, based on his instincts,
summed up in his character, brought to a focus in his reflection, and
shared by all who have attained or may inherit his organisation. His
perceptive and reasoning faculties are parts of human nature, as
embodied in him; all objects of belief or desire, with all standards of
justice and duty which he can possibly acknowledge, are transcripts of
it, conditioned by it, and justifiable only as expressions of its
inherent tendencies.

[Sidenote: Its concrete description reserved for the sequel.]

This definition of human nature, clear as it may be in itself and true
to the facts, will perhaps hardly make sufficiently plain how the Life
of Reason, having a natural basis, has in the ideal world a creative and
absolute authority. A more concrete description of human nature may
accordingly not come amiss, especially as the important practical
question touching the extension of a given moral authority over times
and places depends on the degree of kinship found among the creatures
inhabiting those regions. To give a general picture of human nature and
its rational functions will be the task of the following books. The
truth of a description which must be largely historical may not be
indifferent to the reader, and I shall study to avoid bias in the
presentation, in so far as is compatible with frankness and brevity; yet
even if some bias should manifest itself and if the picture were
historically false, the rational principles we shall be trying to
illustrate will not thereby be invalidated. Illustrations might have
been sought in some fictitious world, if imagination had not seemed so
much less interesting than reality, which besides enforces with
unapproachable eloquence the main principle in view, namely, that nature
carries its ideal with it and that the progressive organisation of
irrational impulses makes a rational life.

*** End