BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 75 



in which the main direction is the raising of the max- 

 imum level of certain qualities of living beings, such 

 as efficiency of organs, co-ordination, size, accuracy 

 and range of senses, capacity for knowledge, memory 

 and educability, emotional intensity, — qualities which 

 in one way or another lead to a more efficient 

 control by the organism over the external world, and 

 to its greater independence. 



A direction towards more mind is visible; and this 

 development of greater mental powers has been in 

 all the later stages the chief instrument of acquiring 

 control and independence. More and more of mat- 

 ter is embodied in living organisms, more and more 

 becomes subservient to life. 



Thus, while in physics and chemistry we see a 

 tendency towards the extinction of life and activity, 

 in biology we see a tendency towards more life and 

 more activity; and this latter tendency is accom- 

 panied and largely made possible by the evolution 

 of greater intensity of mental process — of something, 

 that is to say, of which we cannot as yet take account 

 in physics and chemistry. 



The biologist may well ask himself the question 

 — "Is it not possible that this evolving mind, of 

 whose achievements on its new level in man we are 

 only seeing the beginning, may continue to find more 

 and more ways of subordinating the inorganic to 

 itself, and that it may eventually retard or even 

 prevent the attainment of this complete degradation 

 of energy prophesied by physico-chemical science? 



