68 INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS 



ness of intelligence is discrimination of multiple 

 and present goods and of the varied immediate 

 means of their realization; not search for the one 

 remote aim. The progress of biology has accus 

 tomed our minds to the notion that intelligence is 

 not an outside power presiding supremely but stat 

 ically over the desires and efforts of man, but 

 is a method of adjustment of capacities and con 

 ditions within specific situations. History, as the 

 i lecturer on that subject told us, has discovered it 

 self in the idea of process. The genetic standpoint 

 makes us aware that the systems of the past are 

 neither fraudulent impostures nor absolute revela 

 tions ; but are the products of political, economic, 

 and scientific conditions whose change carries with 

 it change of theoretical formulations. The recog 

 nition that intelligence is properly an organ of ad 

 justment in difficult situations makes us aware that 

 past theories were of value so far as they helped 

 carry to an issue the social perplexities from which 

 they emerged. But the chief impact of the evo 

 lutionary method is upon the present. Theory 

 having learned what it cannot do, is made respon 

 sible for the better performance of what needs to 

 be done, and what only a broadly equipped intelli 

 gence can undertake: study of the conditions out 

 of which come the obstacles and the resources of 

 adequate life, and developing and testing the ideas 

 that, as working hypotheses, may be used to dimin- 



