In contemplating this wonderful ascending movement let us not forget that the warrant for its continuance rests in ourselves. The false tracks, the regressive forms, which meet us in nature prove at least this: that the line of development which we observe on earth may conceivably end in a disaster which would bear to the course of Life in general just such a relation as the degeneration of the Amazon ants does to life on this globe. We are by no means entitled to sit still and expect that the current of evolution will bear mankind along irresistibly to its goal. With the development of the conscious will _we_ are made responsible for the advance of life in the only sphere which we know and which our actions can affect. Man is, as it were, the growing-point of that progressive life. If his strange passion for the perfection which he has never seen should be smothered in the struggle for mere existence, or corrupted by brutal luxury, then growth will be at an end, atrophy or degeneration will set in. The vision of a nobler, freer, more humane life than is anywhere widely possible on earth at present cannot be realized without the strenuous help of men and women who have learned to subdue the Ego with its fierce egotisms into harmony with the purposes of the divine Whole. But this much we may say—that they will not fight alone. No one ever pursued a high and worthy aim without finding that he had drawn to himself those ‘great allies’ of whom Wordsworth has written so greatly; powers implicit in the nature of the world, and always waiting to be unlocked by the heroic Will. The Power, some of whose workings it has been attempted to trace in the foregoing pages, is a controlling and directive force, making, through countless varieties of being, for one clear and definable end—the realization of life. It may be asked, Are we to regard this divine Power as wholly immanent in matter or as partly transcending it and governing it from without? The nature of the divine principle, so far as we are able to discern it, cannot be fully discussed until we come to consider it in the highest sphere of manifestation yet known to us, that of the human soul. But with the question which has just been raised we are now in some measure able to deal, and the consideration of it may bring this section of our study to a close.