Those who find it easy to believe that a society is an animal, like those who proclaim that the real is unknowable, but that our knowledge of it is just as good as if it were not unknowable, will have little difficulty in believing that men's actions are not influenced by their purposes; and both will probably subscribe to the doctrine that, first, approximation to the ideal is an unintended result of the brute struggle for mere animal existence; and, next, the purpose which appears to mark the evolution process and to be the cause of progress is semblance only, a mere illusion. Against the first article of this doctrine the final and decisive appeal is and always must be to experience. It makes a general statement with regard to particular facts of experience: like every other statement made in the form of a scientific law, it affirms that a certain proposition will be found, when tested by experience, to be true of every one of a certain class of facts in our experience. It is therefore competent for every man, who chooses to consult his experience, to decide for himself whether the statement is true. In the present case, it is for every man, who has struggled with temptation and has achieved any progress, to say whether he gained the victory without an effort of will, without any desire for better things, without any purpose or resolution to try once more, without any intention not to yield the next time. Are "secret commissions" in trade refused, when refused, unintentionally? or is their refusal due solely to the blind instinct of self-preservation in the struggle for commercial existence? If reform is effected, will it be effected by those who declare that the severity of the struggle for existence makes reform impossible? or by those in whom the ideal of honesty has some operative force and who purpose approximation to that ideal? When the conviction is expressed that public opinion alone will be able to check this form of dishonesty, what is that but an appeal to the common sense and common faith that there are other things which man can will and purpose besides success in the struggle for existence?