It may be said that “life is a brief space between two eternities――a path between infinity and infinitude.” “Man is a pedestrian who perambulates along the way.” The eternities concern him not so much as the _path_ which stretches between them. In a former day, one of the striking characteristics of the western plain was the _beaten path_ stretching out along the table-land like an elongated, dust colored serpent; and often following this path would be a herd of buffalo winding its way in single file around boulder and ant hill till shut from view by the distant horizon. Thus has man travelled along the beaten path, following the “foot prints of the ages.” Here and there and everywhere do we see signs of those who have gone on before; father, grandfather, great grandfather; yes, even to the toe marks of those primeval ancestors of ours who shambled along the way, nobody knows how many years ago. From the dark recesses of the cave, have our forbears thrown a lasso of blood about our necks, and it seems as if we _must_ follow the old, old way. “Being acorns of the ancestral oak,” we grow similar oak tree tendencies, living over again the life of our progenitors. “There lies in every soul the history of the universe.” (2) Imitation. But there is another reason for this ultra conservative spirit and it is that nature’s chief mode of instruction is by means of _imitation_. To every living thing of wood or field nature seems to say, “Your parents are always right, do as they do for this is the best way to learn the lessons of life.” A man thinks, feels and wills his way through life in a certain manner largely because his father did likewise. Moreover, we not only imitate those who have gone on before, but we counterfeit each other; fashion is another name for world wide mimicry. We imitate our friends and those whom we admire; we talk like them, we walk like them, we live like them. It now appears that we are held to the path of the past by means of _race instinct_ and the _power of imitation_, and we are thus prone to believe that the old way is good enough. It is evident that to get out of the beaten path is dangerous. The wild animal that deserts the habits of the race dies a premature death, and the man who possesses the temerity to struggle through the thicket of new things must, of necessity, shorten his span of life. To follow the “same old rut” is easiest for the teacher; to be loyal to the “grand old party” is safest for the politician. But to the contrary, if every man of every generation had followed the beaten path blindly――without deviation, the human race would now be a horde of simians. Because man has possessed the power of progressive thought, he has developed the spirit of radicalism and has thereby made himself supreme.