When at any time I seek to perfect myself, does my attainment of any
grade of improvement prevent or further another step? All will agree
that it simply opens a new door. Perhaps I am seeking to withdraw from
habits of mendacity, and beginning to tell the truth. Then every time
I tell the truth I shall discover more truth to tell. And will this
process ever come to an end? I have nothing to do with "evers." I can
only say that each time I try it, advance is more possible, not less
possible. In the personal life there is, if I may say so, no provision
for checkage. As I understand it, in the animal life there is such
provision. In my first chapter I was pointing out the difference
between extrinsic and intrinsic goodness; and I said that the table's
entering into use and holding objects on its top tended to destroy it,
though we might imagine a magic table in which every exercise of
function would be preservative. Now in the personal nature we find
just such a magical provision. Each time a person normally exerts
himself he makes further exertion in those normal ways more possible.
And if this is true of all personal action within our experience, what
right have we to set a limit to it anywhere? It may not be suitable to
say that I know myself infinite, but it is certainly true that I
cannot conceive myself as finite. I can readily see that this body of
mine has in it what I have called a provision for checkage. Every time
the blood moves in my veins it leaves its little deposit. Further
motion of that blood is slightly impeded. But every time a moral
purpose moves my life, it makes the next move surer. It is impossible
to draw lines of limitation in moral development.
XII
Such, then, is the vast conception with which we have been dealing.
Goodness, to be personal, must express perpetual self-development. All
the moral aims of life may be summed up in the single word, "self-
realization." Could I fully realize myself, I should have fulfilled
all righteousness, and this view is sanctioned by the Great Teacher
when he asks, "What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"--his
life, his soul, his self. If any one fully believed this, and lived as
if all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had opportunities of
self-development, he might be said to have insured himself against
every catastrophe. Little could harm him. Whatever occurred, instead
of exclaiming, "How calamitous!" he would simply ask, "What fresh
opportunities do these strange circumstances present for enlarged
living? Let me add this new discipline to what I had before. Seeking
as I am to become expanded into the infinite, this experience
discloses a new avenue thither. All things work together for good to
them that love the Lord."
REFERENCES ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT
Bradley's Ethical Studies, essay vi.
Green's Prolegomena of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. ii.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. iv.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. iii.
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