Personality Studies in Personal Development

Surmounting the generally-accepted arts and science of our highly developed age is a super-art, recorded by plato but no means universally practiced since his day- The Art of living. Man, nature's final effort in the scheme of evolution, the unchallenged conqueror of the world, is less efficient in many habits of life than the animals which centuries ago vanished in his path of progress. The only species of God's creatures that is capable of standing erect, of raising an issue, and of rendering a decision, man, is just beginning "to respect that gleam of light that flashes across his mind," and to force it to have a positive parts in his own making. Robert Browning says that we can no more calculate the progress of the race by citing isolated flights of genius than we can estimate the light of the sky by taking the intensity of a single star. "Not until the host comes forward can we say that civilization is in the infancy of its forward march." With our experts declaring that the average man is using only ten per cent of his intellectual power with corresponding wastage in his physical, financial, and social resources, the body politic has not yet reached what Browning would regard as the adolescent stage.