BawbveEN, Psychological Theory of Evoluton. 267 
growth is not symmetrical, but experience is built up at the 
points which happen to be crucial. Whether this or that indi- 
vidual organism in the species or group will be conscious, will 
depend upon whether or to what extent it stands in the focus 
of the organic tension. The first flash of consciousness in the 
lowest type of organism may well have been the last for that 
individual organism. And in great groups of organic forms 
where there is little evolutionary advance the conditions of con- 
sciousness for many individuals may never be fulfilled. As to 
this we can only conjecture, except as we are able to interpret 
the life problems of the lowest and the highest forms in terms 
of a common process. 
The primitive consciousness, then, was an effort conscious- 
ness, which at first, it may be, was predominantly painful. As 
Professor Core says, ‘‘The preliminary to any animal movement 
which is not automatic, is an effort. And as no adaptive move- 
ment is automatic the first time it is performed, we may regard 
effort as the immediate source of all movement. Now, effort 
is a conscious state, and is a sense of resistence to be overcome. 
When an act is performed without effort, resistence has been 
overcome, and the mechanism necessary for the performance of 
the act has been completed. The stage of automatism has been 
reached. But at the inception of a new movement resistance 
is necessarily experienced.’’’ All progressive evolution, you 
may say, has its origin in the ‘‘strenuous life.” 
The situation which will call forth consciousness in the 
lower animal is altogether determined by its needs either as an 
individual or as representing the species., Consciousness devel- 
opsin connection with the crucial problems which it has to solve 
in order to maintain its existence, in order to survive. These 
vital needs and crucial problems will be connected with such 
conditions as the changes in the seasons; the periodicity of the 
appearance of vegetable food; the irregular production of ani- 
mal food; the struggle for existence between animals them- 
selves; the separation of feeding and breeding areas; glacial 
1 Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, p. 498, 
