Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/30

28 with the welfare of an individual, but only as the individual is a member of a large group or species. It implies no direct attention to the lives of particular individuals. It is analogous to the growth a teacher causes in the lives of the members of a large class in lecturing to them. He speaks to all and not to particular individuals. The same change of interest and the same kind of brain change take place in all who adequately attend. But with the creation of man’s body this arbitrariness must cease. There must henceforth be no response such as will make hereditary, through a change in body structure, the interest of a class. Such would be but a continuation of lives on an instinctive plane, the lives of animals. Thinking beings could not be developed in this way.

With the creation of the human brain this arbitrariness ceases. Henceforth when a man on the basis of inherited brain structure and its correlated interests expresses an interest chosen or preferred by himself, the reaction of the superhuman spiritual reality is still automatic, but the resulting automatic structure is not inherited. There is a correlated brain change favoring the becoming habital of the preferred interest, good or bad, save as the higher spiritual reality checks or furthers it in particular cases. For the development of this habit man is chiefly responsible. In this way there begins to appear specifically human interests, and human life and human history begins. Thus human history may be regarded as a process in which men are both individually and cooperatively ever trying on both mentally and overtly every kind of interest which is able to be suggested, and is ever proving both mentally and pragmatically these interests, selecting some from among them and organizing them as the lives that will best satisfy them, as their highest good.

As a dynamic, growing part of a world-whole of spiritual realities various stages in man’s growth can be assumed. His growth takes place as his interests manifest themselves in acts and ideas, as that of plants goes on by means of the changing leaves it puts forth. When leaves cease to function in growth they fall. Then growth ceases until a change in the environment takes place and new leaves are put forth. Then growth continues. Just so, the life of man advances through and in connection with his acts and ideas until a change in the environment makes these out of date. Then these disappear, and growth of the checked interest ceases until the interest is made over in response to the needs of the new environment. Then growth continues through new acts and ideas. It is impossible to remember the acts and