keeping of nature. Gradually through our advancing years and the care
of those around us we catch sight of what we might be. Detecting in
ourselves possibilities, we make out their relation to a plan not yet
realized. We accordingly take ourselves in hand and say, "If any
personal good is to come to me, it must be of my making. I cannot own
myself till I am largely the author of myself. From day to day I must
construct, and whenever I act study how the action will affect my
betterment,--whether by performing it I am likely to degrade or to
consolidate myself." And to this process there must be no end.

Obviously, nothing like this could occur if our actual condition were
our ideal condition. Self-development is open only to a being in whom
there are possibilities as yet unfulfilled. The things around us have
their definite constitution. They can do exactly thus and no more.
What shall be the effect of any impulse falling on them is already
assured. If the condition of the brutes is anything like that which we
disrespectfully attributed to them, then they are in the same case;
they too are shut up to fixed responses, and have in them no
unfulfilled capacities. It is the possession of such empty capacities
which makes us personal. Well has it been said that he who can
declare, "I am that I am," is either God or a brute. No human being
can say it. To describe myself as if I were a settled fact is to make
myself a thing. My life is in that which may be. The ideals of
existence are my realities, and "ought" is my peculiar verb. "Is" has
no other application to a person than to mark how far he has advanced
along his ideal line. Were he to pause at any point as if complete, he
would cease to be a person.