RATS AND MEN 357 



tism should not blind our eyes to the scientific evi- 

 dence that it is a natural, not a mystical, process. 



The experiments performed by the behaviorists on 

 human subjects point in the same direction, and their 

 failure to recognize that the consciousness of the act 

 knits into the causal sequence of events in the same 

 way as do the other bodily processes involved is un- 

 fortunate. The neglect of this factor in the human 

 behavior complex, so far from simplifying the prob- 

 lem, only further befogs the issue, as do also the in- 

 genious devices invoked to explain away that aware- 

 ness which nevertheless always intrudes, however un- 

 welcome. 



Mind as cause is, in fact, the most significant of all 

 of the progressive factors in evolution; it has come to 

 full expression in consciously fabricated purposes^ and 

 ideals only within the (relatively) few thousand years 

 that mankind has occupied the earth. The few cen- 

 turies during which scientific knowledge of nature and 

 the apparatus of social control have been purposefully 



^ Here and in some of my previous writings where the terms "pur- 

 pose" or "apparent purposefulness" have been employed some critics 

 have protested that this is non-behavioristic and an appeal to meta- 

 physical animistic categories. I wish to make clear, if possible, that no 

 such implication is justifiable. In my use of these terms I am speaking 

 mechanistically, whether referring to "apparently purposeful" uncon- 

 scious biological adaptations, where the "end" to be attained is fixed by 

 past racial experience, as in reflex, or to conscious purposes, where the 

 objective sought is clearly envisaged in imagination. In short, my point 

 of view is as behavioristic as that of Tolman (1925) in his recent discus- 

 sion of purpose and cognition. 



