CHAPTER XXII 



THE OPERATION OF THE LAW OF PROENVIRON- 

 MENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



In Chapter IX the fundamental and widely extended im- 

 portance of the law of proenvironment has been sketched, as 

 it is exhibited in plants and in the lower animals. But, as 

 we hope to demonstrate in the succeeding context, this law 

 has received its most striking, most condensed, most varied, 

 and most far-reaching confirmation in the history of human 

 progress, since the time when man began to use his forelimbs 

 as hands, and then evolved language, thereafter writing and 

 mechanical inventions, on to the present day when he pene- 

 trates and maps out the heavens, weighs the earth, communi- 

 cates from side to side of the world in a few minutes, and looks 

 even on the larger molecules of matter. 



The law moreover is seen everywhere in action, not only 

 in the mental and moral fields of human effort, but specially 

 in that field which we term the religious. For man also, as 

 for other highly evolved mental types, the law of proenvir- 

 onment becomes increasingly emphasized as special appen- 

 dages accessory to the brain — in this case the hands — become 

 more and more perfectly modified as environal contact-organs. 



In Chapter IX we have defined the law as ''the capacity 

 of an organism for perceiving and then positively growing or 

 moving toward an environment that is the most satisfying for 

 it'' We hope further to show that, as with many lower ani- 

 mals, man has the capacity in a unique manner to receive 

 into his nerve-cells the resultants of many and varied environal 

 stimuli, to compare or to correlate these with each otlier, and 

 to evolve a compounded resultant that causes him to move or 

 act in a relation that is the most satisfying for him. 



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