Our life and progress may be aptly compared to the passage of collections of particles through a fine sieve. The particles that will not crumble are inevitably cast out, while those that succeed in passing through it are rendered finer in the process. It would perhaps be apter still to say, that we are passing continually through a series of sieves, some coarse, some fine, and that the particles which survive the ordeal, though refined in their passage, are perpetually losing something they possessed before. Whether this be an advantage or a disadvantage to them depends on the nature of that which is lost. Those who survive the longest, in spite of constant paring and shaping, fitting them for still finer passages, must have had their sieves carefully graduated for them, each preceding sieve fitting them for the next in order of progression. Just as it is not the loudest things that have the most substance, so it is not the largest things that contain the most power. We are told that there is sufficient force holding together the particles composing a single drop of water to make a whole flash of lightning. In the same way, there may be more force concentrated in a small portion of the nervous system than is diffused throughout all the rest of the body. And our progress through the sieves may be a condensation of great forces into our small compass. Leaving the matter of mere size of body out of the question, one man of coarse organisation (A) may possess more physical strength than a man of fine organisation (B). But B may rule the world while A is a nonentity. B may, by means of his superior mental capacity, subdue the powers of Nature to his will, and thus be master of a force compared to which A’s physical strength is as a drop in the ocean. B’s complex nervous system is the storehouse of a tremendous energy. Now, though we have been shaped in the past by sieves over which we have had no control, we are nevertheless conscious of having acquired some power of selecting and shaping the sieves of the future. Whether or no our action in the matter is predetermined by the shape already given us, the fact that we possess this power is indubitable. In our age it would seem that we have arrived at a sieve that is either exceptionally small or of an exceptional shape. Numbers of particles are just now being rejected, not necessarily suddenly, but often subsequent to unusually protracted, painful, and futile efforts at forcing a passage through. The question arises, Is this state of affairs inevitable? Have we not power to graduate our sieves more effectually? And granting this power of selection and modification, is it not possible that the sieve through which we are endeavouring to force ourselves may be ill-shapen, and calculated therefore to occasion needless destruction and deformity?