IX MIND AS AN ORGAN OF WHOLES 251 



achieved over the dominance of the conditions of life, and 

 Mind assumes the sovereignty to which it had been 

 destined from the beginning as the successor to Life and 

 Matter. 



In the exercise of its free and unhampered right of self- 

 determination, Mind on the human level proceeds to create 

 to a large extent the appropriate conditions for its own 

 development. Instead of remaining dependent on the natu- 

 ral environment. Mind builds up a vast social environ- 

 ment for itself. It builds up a far-reaching social structure 

 with institutions of all sorts which are intended to develop 

 and educate the human groups and individuals, intellectually 

 and morally, to facilitate intercourse and co-operation among 

 them, to declare and safeguard their rights, and to protect 

 them against the hostile influences of the animate or inani- 

 mate environment and of other groups of humans. Thus 

 language arises as well as the institutions of marriage and 

 the family, of religion, law and government, and all the other 

 numerous forms into which social beliefs and practices are 

 embodied. The very laws of organic Evolution seem to be 

 modified by this great transformation. In the organic 

 sphere we saw the individual adapting itself or being adapted 

 to the environment as the imperative condition of its sur- 

 vival. Here we see the environment being more and more 

 adapted to the individual. The individual appears as the 

 creator, the environment as the creature, the house it makes 

 for its habitation, so to speak. In the organic sphere we saw 

 the individual inheritance and variations incorporated into 

 the individual organic structure and thus preserved for the 

 future. Here we see social traditions take the place of this 

 individual structural heredity. The human individual does 

 not find himself over-burdened with an impossible structure, 

 with a load of inheritance which would be more than he could 

 bear. The load is mainly shifted on to the ampler shoulders 

 of the social tradition. The human individual has the good 

 luck to find himself born into an environment which largely 

 performs the hereditary function, and all that he is called 

 upon to do is to assimilate this environment, and so to obtain 



