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About University of Oregon monthly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1897-???? | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1902)
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON MONTHLY 187 it from its course with your hand. But there is no question of its ultimate tide level. Dam its waters as you choose, but- sooner or later it will rise above your power to restrain, and dashing jits bonds asunder rush downward to the sea. Thus it is with truth. To the finite mind limited in experience and knowledge, truth is but relativ e/a thing of degree. But year by year, age by age, man develops toward perfection, and with each step up the slope of civilization his horizon widens, his ideals advance, and his conception of the unity of all things becomes clearer. In the light of limited knowledge men lay down tenets which they call truths and make creeds and moral codes which they consider infallible. But laws become invalid, moral codes obsolete; creeds must be revised and constitutions amended to keep pace with the increasing intelligence of man. When her institutions were best adapted to the needs af th e. world, Spain was the richest and most powerful of nations. But arrested in her development by the very methods that made her great, she stands today, a Fifteenth Century nation'in a Twentieth Century world; a monu ment to dead institutions, a warning to all governments that stagnation means decay, that life and power are dependent upon progress, upon an eternal search for truths. W hat justification have governments, religions, all institu tions? Only this, that they help men onward in their search for the Holy Grail. For an impelling force, moving all things towards an unseen goal, is the inheritance of every age, the birth right of every individual. Harmony with its laws means freedom, power, righteousness; out of harmony means sin and death. The appeal of all nature, all science, all experience is to us as individuals. Are we doing our part in- the growth of the race? Are we moving forward with the current of life? Do our years mark milestones in the struggle of humanity toward perfection? Do we forgej that we have a place in this mighty evolution that no one else can fill; and, forgetting, shall we also reap the pen alty of inexorable law? Ah, call it what you will—ambition, morality, character, re ligion—yet every man feels in his soul a yearning for the infinite, a craving for nobler things, a desire for a greater freedom and a
