Mental Evolution. 493 



to the learned and eminent Professor , and vice rersd. 



And so, too, no doubt, does the system of ideas of the white 

 man (who introduces firearms and firewater, and preaches 

 the gospel of forgiveness and temperance) appear to the 

 poor savage. Each in his degree wonders how this falsity, 

 this incongruity, can have had a natural genesis. But in 

 each case the falsity and the incongruity is not within the 

 system itself, but between different systems. 



Once more, I repeat that if the individual nature of the 

 systems of ideas be not adequately grasped, the nature of 

 mental evolution will not be apprehended. States of con- 

 sciousness can only be determined by other states of con- 

 sciousness; and states of consciousness are for the indi- 

 vidual subject, and for him alone. Conceptual ideas are 

 states of consciousness; and "falsity to nature" means, 

 and can only mean, incongruity with the environing states 

 of consciousness in the individual mind. For the savage 

 there is no falsity to nature in his fetishism. The idea 

 presents no incongruity with his system of ideas ; no more 

 incongruity than filed teeth, flattened head, or pierced nose 

 do to his standard of beauty. It is with our system of 

 ideas (i.e. mine or yours) that his fetishism is false and 

 incongruous. The falsity or incongruity, I repeat, is not 

 within the system itself, but between different systems. 



It may still, however, be said Only one interpretation 

 of nature can be true ; all others must be false. And the 

 falsity is not merely incongruity with other ideas in other 

 systems of thought or belief ; it is falsity to the plain and 

 obvious facts of nature. 



We may freely admit that only one interpretation of 

 nature can be true. But who is to determine which ? "Who 

 can decide the question between monist and materialist ? 

 "Who dare arbitrate between the bishop and the professor ? 

 The criterion of fitness in this case, as in others, is survival ; 

 and who can say what existing interpretation of nature (if 

 any) shall outlive all its competitors ? Who can say what 

 will be the nature of the further evolution of any existing 

 philosophical creed ? The elimination of the false is a slow 



