But the conservation of what happens is obviously not a perpetuation. History is not the staying of events, for time forbids that they stay. The conservation is rather a utilization, a kind of employment or working over of material. Through it discriminations and selections are made and connections discovered; the moving panorama is converted into an order of events which can be understood, because consequences are seen in the light of their antecedents and antecedents are seen in the light of the consequences to which they lead. There is thus a genuine incorporation of what has happened into what does happen, of yesterday into to-day, so that yesterday becomes a vital part of to-day and finds its enlargement and fulfilment there. We can thus write our own biographies. It is possible for us to discover what mistakes we have made and what ends we have attained. Our history appears thus to be a utilization of material, a realization of ends, a movement with purpose in it. Selection is characteristic of it very profoundly. Other histories, of other men, of times, of peoples, of institutions, we write in the same way because in the same way we discover and understand what has happened in their case. Such a destroying, conserving, utilizing, selective, and purposeful movement in time, history appears to be when we restrict it to the domain of human knowledge. It seems, however, idle so to restrict it. For other things besides our knowledge grow--animals and plants, and the stars even. They, too, have a history, and it may be that their history, being also an affair in time, is not unlike in character to our own growth in knowledge. Or perhaps it were even better to say that both they and our knowledge illustrate equally what history is, discovering time itself to be the great historian. All time-processes, that is, appear to be, when we attentively consider them, processes which supplement, complete, or transform what has gone before. They are active conservations and utilizations of the past as material. They save what has happened from being utterly destroyed, and, in saving it, complete and develop it. Time is, thus, constantly rounding out things, so to speak, or bringing them to some end or fulfilment. That is why we call its movement purposeful.