Page:Ancient Ideals.djvu/27

Rh assertive individuality appears among the Hebrews and the Greeks. From the times of their advent as races, their choice and endeavors conform, with the one race, to ever larger thoughts of divine righteousness, with the other to ever clearer conceptions of the beautiful and good.

More palpably race individuality declares itself in the form and manner and extent of actual accomplishment; for what the land affords, what it suggests, what it with- holds, what it subjects the race to, is enough to render the works and institutions of its dwellers different from those of other peoples. Environment continually conditions the plastic process through which in the course of years the actual achievement of a race — its religion, knowledge, ethics, social institutions, art — becomes distinctively its own, a reflection of itself.

The ideal and the aim becoming ever clearer are not the whole of human progress ; and individuality is, as it were, the differentiating aspect of the more positive and complete conception, personality. Person- Human growth consists in two ceaselessly com- ality; plementing modes, — desire, and action entered „ upon in consequence of it. The action results Growth. in some realization, w^hich represents a growth of personality and in turn becomes an element of further desires leading to further acts. And although untoward circumstances and human weakness may thwart achieve- ment, no endeavor falls to the ground ; but according to its strength and correspondence to the best the man con- ceives, greatens the personality of him who has striven. All endeavor for the best reaches spiritual attainment. Even as this is true of each man, is it true of the races of mankind from generation to generation. The complete story of human progress is the story of ideal conception and of endeavor, and the unfailing realization of ideals in the growth of human beings with ideals uplifted and enlarged. This makes the narrative of the enlargement and greaten- ing of human life ; it is a history of the growth of human