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.
XII
Such, then, is the vast conception with which we have been dealing. Goodness, to be personal, must express perpetual self-development. All the moral aims of life may be summed up in the single word, "self- realization." Could I fully realize myself, I should have fulfilled all righteousness, and this view is sanctioned by the Great Teacher when he asks, "What shall a man give in exchange for his life?"—his life, his soul, his self. If any one fully believed this, and lived as if all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had opportunities of self-development, he might be said to have insured himself against every catastrophe. Little could harm him. Whatever occurred, instead of exclaiming, "How calamitous!" he would simply ask, "What fresh opportunities do these strange circumstances present for enlarged living? Let me add this new discipline to what I had before. Seeking as I am to become expanded into the infinite, this experience discloses a new avenue thither. All things work together for good to them that love the Lord."
REFERENCES ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT
Bradley's Ethical Studies, essay vi.
Green's Prolegomena of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. ii.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. iv.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. iii.
Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, pt. i. ch. vii.
Dewey in Philos. Journal, Dec., 1893.