But at least the thoughts of
our day have become turned rather to the future than the past, a
result which has attended the wider comprehension of development. To
call development the discovery of our century would, however, be
absurd. Aristotle bases his whole philosophy upon it, and it was
already venerable in his time. Yet the many writers who have expounded
the doctrine during the last fifty years have brought the thought of
it home to the common man. It has entered into daily life as never
before, and has done much to protect us against the sadness of
destructive change. Perceiving that changes, apparently destructive,
repeatedly bring to light meaning previously undisclosed, we more
willingly than our ancestors part with the imperfect that a path to
the perfect may be opened.
Is not this, then, the great conception of change which we now need to
study as self-development? I believe not. One essential feature is
omitted. In the typical example which I have just reviewed, the growth
of an elm from its seed, we cannot say that the seed expands itself
with a view to becoming a tree. That would be to carry over into the
tree's existence notions borrowed from an alien sphere. Indeed, to
assert that there has been any genuine development from the seed up to
the finished tree is to use terms in an accommodated, metaphoric, and
hypothetical way.
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