VALUES AND FINAL CAUSES 93 



so far as it is disclosed by her action in the past, needs no 

 demonstration. 



The highest animal is not one whose nervous system 

 is more completely organized for reaction upon a limited 

 environment, and in whom consciousness no longer occurs, 

 but the one whose nervous system affords the greatest 

 possibilities of new adaptations, of new relations among 

 nerve-paths, and so of the most complex and intense con 

 sciousness. 1 



By the word highest the writer embraces both kinds 

 of aim, that is to say the aim which is conformable to human 

 values, and the actual result of natural process. The actual 

 result of natural process is increased complexity of structure 

 and increased intensity of consciousness ; and it is to those 

 qualities that the human mind attaches the highest value. 

 The word intensity is rightly chosen, for it cannot be 

 shown that the result of evolution (or natural process) has 

 been that any larger proportion of the whole aggregate 

 of our impulses has emerged into consciousness. The 

 increase in the number which remain submerged may be, 

 and probably is, equally great. 



An essential preliminary in any inquiry which has for 

 its subject the teleology of natural processes is to take 

 stock of all the relevant factors, as far as they can be ascer 

 tained, at two different epochs, which are sufficiently 

 remote to eliminate the disturbing effects of transient 

 fluctuations. We are apt to compare our own time with 

 the middle ages, and, by doing so, to obtain a very different 

 result from what would have been given us had we com 

 pared the tenth century with the best period of the Roman 

 Empire, or with Athens under Pericles. Our self-love 

 extends to the period in which we live, and both exaggerates 

 its merits and masks its faults. The dislike with which 

 contemporary innovations are received raises a presumption 

 that we should claim as decided a superiority over the 

 future, could it be revealed to us, as we do over the past. 

 For these and for many other reasons the evidence is never 



1 W. McDougall, Mind, July, 1898, p. 376, 



