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.