BawDeEN, Psychological Theory of Evolution. 263 
strain of adjustment and readjustment.’ Consciousness occurs 
wherever new experience is being acquired. All organic struc- 
ture has been built up in and through consciousness. Con- 
sciousness always develops at the point at which the organism 
is adjusting itself to its environment or at which its various 
organs are becoming adjusted to one another within the organ- 
ism. Hence consciousness is a moving or shifting area of ten- 
sion gyrating from point to point according to the needs of the 
adjustment. The process of consciousness consists in the inter- 
action of old and new habits until a new coordination arises 
which solves the problem and adapts the organism in the new 
situation. Consciousness arises in tension, but tends always to 
the restoration of the organic equilibrium. It always points to 
something beyond itself, to the new coordination, the new uni- 
fied experience, the new act. The law is, that attention is de- 
veloped at or in the point of difficult adjustment. Attention 
‘always goes to the weakest point, since it is always there that 
the readjustment must take place. Soon anew habit is built 
up at the weak point and then attention is directed elsewhere. 
The nervous system may be viewed as an equating mech- 
anism which serves to keep up the tension which is the condi- 
tion of consciousness and to restore the equilibrium when ex- 
perience takes the form of habit or automatic action. It isa 
special organ of control which serves to mediate between the 
organism and its environment by means of the sense organs and 
muscles. The adjustment between the environment and the 
organism asa whole is not the entire problem of adaption, how- 
ever. There is also a constant mutual adjustment of organs 
within the organism. We may say that there is all the time 
going on a competition among the organs of the body each for 
complete domination of the entire organism. The whole body 
would be an eye or an ear or a nose, or a leg, or a hand, ora 
mouth. This tendency is seen in its extreme form in halluci- 
1 For statements of the dynamic or equilibrium theory of consciousness, 
cf. Dewey, Monist, Apr. 1898, 335 f; CARuUs, Soul of Man, 194f; HERRICK, 
Journ. of Compar. Neurol., VI, 13 f; VII, 156, 160; VIII, 21 f. 
