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 the experience. So also can the efficiency of an individual
or a nation, as compared with other individuals or nations, be determined. The
inefficient are those who repeat the same error or useless act over and over, or
else fail to repeat a chance useful act whose repetition might lead to success.
They are unable to learn their lesson and be guided by experience. Their past
does not sufficiently minister to their present, and through it direct their future.