teams in a hotly contested
event. The fine work of art is to the one who has never experienced the
appeal which comes through beauty, only so much of canvas and variegated
patches of color. Paul says that Jesus was "unto the Greeks,
foolishness." He was foolishness to them because nothing in their
experience with their own gods had been enough like the character of
Jesus to enable them to interpret Him.

THE FUTURE ALSO DEPENDS ON THE PAST.--To the mind incapable of using
past experience, the future also would be impossible; for we can look
forward into the future only by placing in its experiences the elements
of which we have already known. The savage who has never seen the
shining yellow metal does not dream of a heaven whose streets are paved
with gold, but rather of a "happy hunting ground." If you will analyze
your own dreams of the future you will see in them familiar pictures
perhaps grouped together in new forms, but coming, in their elements,
from your past experience nevertheless. All that would remain to a mind
devoid of a past would be the little bridge of time which we call the
"present moment," a series of unconnected _nows_. Thought would be
impossible, for the mind would have nothing to compare and relate.
Personality would not exist; for personality requires continuity of
experience, else we should be a new person each succeeding moment,
without memory and without plans. Such a mind would be no mind at all.

RANK DETERMINED BY ABILITY TO UTILIZE PAST EXPERIENCE.--So important is
past experience in determining our present thinking and guiding our
future actions, that the place of an individual in the scale of creation
is determined largely by the ability to profit by past experience. The
scientist tells us of many species of animals now extinct, which lost
their lives and suffered their race to die out because when, long ago,
the climate began to change and grow much colder, they were unable to
use the experience of suffering in the last cold season as an incentive
to provide shelter, or move to a warmer climate against the coming of
the next and more rigorous one. Man was able to make the adjustment;
and, providing himself with clothing and shelter and food, he survived,
while myriads of the lower forms perished.

The singed moth again and again dares the flame which tortures it, and
at last gives its life, a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child fears
the fire, and does not the second time seek