IV.
We have said that the new factor introduced with man is a voluntary co-operation in the process of evolution, a conscious upward striving toward a higher condition, a pressing forward toward an ideal. Man contrary to all else in nature is transformed, not in shape by external environment, but in character by his own ideals. Now this capacity of forming ideals and the voluntary pursuit of such ideals, whence comes it? When analysed and reduced to its simplest terms, it is naught else than the consciousness in man of his relation to the infinite and the attempt to realise the divine ideal in human character.