PROGRESS AS REALIZATION.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly."
"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
In the process of development nature goes from
potentiality to higher and higher actuality; what is
in its being as tendency becomes real. We may not
suppose the movement that of spontaneous energy
toward accidental results, but rather the progressive
realization of what is in the entire rational scheme
of the universe.
From the nebular mass sprang worlds and suns greater and less, substance and form in infinite variety, plant life in progressive orders, animal life in ascending types. Conscious existence gradually became responsive to the multitude of nature's impressions. The broken rays of light displayed their rainbow hues to the growing power and delicacy of the eye; sound revealed its keys, qualities, and harmonies to the increasing susceptibility of the ear. Mind, as it developed, realized in its consciousness new laws and ever greater wonders of the outer world. On the objective side the laws were, the tinted sky and the murmuring stream were, before mind became cognizant of them in their perfection and beauty. Any serious contemplation of the great law of development, in its full meaning,
