Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/773

Rh stress of competition are met in life by the survival of those adequate to meet these conditions. Thus "in creatures sore bestead by the environment" when instinct and impulse fail, reason rises to insure safety. At last with the civilized man reason comes to be a chief element in guiding the choice of life.

With greater power to know and hence to choose safely, greater complexity of conditions become possible, and the multifarious demands of modern civilization finds some at least who can meet them fairly well. To such the stores of human wisdom must be open. To others right choice in new conditions is possible only through following the footsteps of others. The multitudes of civilized men, like the multitudes of animals, are saved to life by the instinct of conventionality. The instinct to follow those whose footsteps are secure is one of the most useful of all impulses to action. In the same connection we must recognize authority as a most important source of knowledge to the individual. But its value is proportioned to the ability of the individual to use the tests wisdom must apply to the credentials of authority. But instinct, appetite, impulse, conventionality, and respect for authority all point backward. They are the outcome of past conditions. "New occasions bring new duties." New facts and laws must be learned if men are to remain adequate to the life which their own institutions, their self-realization, and their mutual help have brought upon them. To the wise and obedient the most complex life brings no special strain nor discomfort. It is as easy to do great things as small, if one knows how. But to the ignorant, weak, and perverse, the growth of civilization becomes an engine of destruction. The freedom of self-realization involves the freedom of self-perdition. Hence appears the often discussed relation of "Progress and Poverty" in social development. Hence it comes that civilization, of which the essence is mutual help or altruism, under changing conditions seems to become one vast instrument for the killing of fools.

In the specialization of life, conditions are constantly changing. Every age is an age of transition, 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 to |maintain their disobedience. All instincts, appetites, impulses to action, even many conditions of the nature 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 brought obedience in the past. And so with the most enlightened man, the same necessity for