What constitutes Fitness in External World? 259 



the physical environment are the control-factor in the 

 selective process, we find the further result that the pres- 

 ervation of the fact selected depends upon its having 

 already been assimilated to the organized habits of the 

 individual. As knowledge it becomes part of a system ; 

 it is added to the platform from which subsequent selec- 

 tions are made ; and it thus carries forward the ' sys- 

 tematic determination ' of thought. In this way the 

 organism gradually reproduces in its oiun platform of 

 determination tJic very criteria of selection at first enforced 

 only by tJie environment. We should expect to find in 

 consciousness some general colouring due to the attitude 

 which the platform of systematic determination requires - 

 an attitude of welcome, of hospitality, of indorsement, in 

 short, of belief- -toward those facts which have passed 

 through the selective processes, have been added to the 

 organization of knowledge, and have acquired the cachet 

 of familiarity. 



We need not stop to argue that it is right to apply the 

 term ' belief ' to this sense of the internal fitness of experi- 

 ences after their selection ; the implied converse proposi- 

 tion, i.e., that belief is a motor or active attitude, has been 

 ably argued by Bain, James, and others. It is also advo- 

 cated in the writer's Feeling and Will. But whatever we 

 call it, there is the fact and that is what I wish to 

 emphasize under whatever name that even in our know- 

 ledge of nature the individual gradually builds up inter- 

 nally the criteria of selection ; and as his experience 

 extends ever more widely afield from the brute resistances, 

 strains, and contacts with things, he becomes a more and 

 more competent judge for himself of the value of varia- 

 tions in his thoughts. Here is what is essential in it all : 



