This is how we formulate the ideal to ourselves in ever-developing completeness; and this is how with pain and effort but with over-compensating joy we carry it into effect. And these experiences of ours in the formulation and working out of our ideal give us the clue to the manner in which Nature on her part works out _her_ ideal. We are the representations and representatives of the whole, and we may assume that the whole works in much the same way as we ourselves work. If this be so we may expect to find that Nature will work as an _artist_ works, that is, out of his own inner consciousness, spontaneously generating and continually creating new and original forms approaching (through a process of trial and error experimentation) more and more closely to that ideal of perfection which he has always, though often unconsciously, before him. And this is how we actually do find Nature working. We find her reaching after perfection of form, now in one direction, now in another; first in plants, next in animals, then in insects, then in birds, then in apes, then in men, here in one type and there in another, never reaching complete perfection anywhere, any more than the greatest artist ever does in any particular, but still reaching perfection in a higher and higher degree, and making the state of the whole of a richer and intenser perfection. We have, therefore, ample evidence that Nature is actuated by an intention to enrich perfection and is continually working towards it. So we have confidence that Nature, hard and exacting though she be, is _only_ exacting in order that the Highest may be attained. We know that Nature is aiming at the Highest and nothing short of the Highest. And all the spirit of daring and adventure in us leaps to the call she makes. And we respond to the call with all the greater alacrity because we feel that the attainment of that Highest is dependent to a large degree upon ourselves. We have a sense of real responsibility in the matter. And for this reason--that though Nature lays down the great constitutional laws within which man, her completest representative, must work; and though Nature as a whole formulates the main outlines of her ideal; yet man _within that constitution_ can make his own laws, and within its main outlines may refine and perfect the ideal.