als which could be fulfilled, but
only at the expense of a large proportion of natural and
irrepressible human desires. Such, for example, have been the
one-sided ascetic ideals of Stoicism or Puritanism, which in
their attempt to give order and form to life, crush and distort
a considerable portion of it. The same is true of mysticism
which seeks frequently to attain life by altogether denying its
instinctive animal basis. Yet though reason has led men
astray, it is the only and ultimate hope of man's happiness.
It is responsible for whatever success man has had in mastering
the turmoil of his own passions and the obstacles of an
environment "which was not made for him but in which he
grew." It has given point and justice to Swinburne's exultant
boast:

"Glory to man in the highest! For man is the master of things!"

This Career of Reason has taken various parallel fulfillments,
and in each of them man has in varying degrees attained
mastery. Religion arose as one of the earliest ways by
which man attempted to win for himself a secure place in the
cosmic order. Science, in its earliest forms hardly distinguishable
from religion, is man's persistent attempt to discover the
nature of things, and to exploit that discovery for his own
good. Art is again an instance of man's march toward mastery.
Beginning, in the broadest sense, in the industrial arts,
in agriculture and handicrafts, it passes, as it were by
accident, from the necessary to the beautiful. Having in his
needful business fortuitously created beautiful objects, man
comes to create them intentionally, both for their own sake
and for the sheer pleasure of creation.

Finally in morals men have endeavored to construct for
themselves codes of conduct, ideals of life, in which no possible
good should be needlessly or recklessly sacrificed, and in which
men might live together as happily as is permitted by the
nature which is at once their life and their habitation. The
Career of Reason in these various fields we shall briefly trace
and describe. We must expect to find, as in any career, however
successful, failures along with the triumphs, and, as in
any notable career still unfinished, possibility and great
promise. Man's reason and imagination have a long past;
they have also an indefinite future. Man has in the name of
reason made many errors; but to reason he owes his chief
success, and with increasing experience he may be expected
to attain continually