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We must remember, too, as against the deterrent drag of the majority, the grand uplift of the few; the power never yet measured by which the conscious life of one man can inspire and lift and stimulate the others. Again and again we see the whole race seized and pushed on by some dominant individual life, the currents of whose action vibrate unceasingly through the mass, and stir it to better growth.

When man does by some blessed chance go with the forces of evolution, and uses his conscious power to resist the downpull of old habit, and the opposition of his past-ridden fellows, he becomes an immense accelerating power. By the aid of his racial memory he can see where a new age brings us to the same danger-signals that we ignored in the past, and learn to avoid them. Man’s vast stretch of consciousness, made permanent and accessible to all by the arts, especially the art of literature, gives him the advantage of well-nigh limitless experience.

Our irrevocable past, exposed before us all in the increasing light of knowledge, is not a thing to worship and to follow, but a record of splendour and of warning, of deep humility, of patience, and of hope. Our power to postulate a future, to erect hypotheses on which to work, gives us another advantage over the unconscious products of evolution. We have yesterday to learn from, and to-morrow to plan for, and these two give a far broader basis of action than the passing experience of to-day. Our ability to modify conduct, so painfully proven by our successful repressive measures, will have even greater effect when we work with the upward tendencies, instead of against them.