154 THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 



have to deal with the nature and the interaction of these 

 factors within the realm of consciousness ; and conscious- 

 ness, however we may account for it, is a fact which must 

 not only be acknowledged to exist, but recognized as 

 complicating the issues of life, and indefinitely deepening 

 their importance. We may derive consciousness from 

 natural conditions after the manner of the Materialist, or 

 we may attribute to it some ' ' higher " and more mysterious 

 origin, or we may even hesitate to seek for its origin at 

 all, and simply accept it as a unique datum : in all cases alike 

 it retains its own character and its own functions. These 

 functions are what they are, whatever their history, and the 

 problem of their nature remains the same, however they 

 be derived. 1 Is consciousness nothing but a mirror in 

 which man's physical activities are reflected, so that he not 

 only lives, but carries with him a record of his life ? Or 

 is it something more than a passive mirror, and does the 

 record which consciousness keeps of its life and its activities 

 react upon that life and those activities, and change its 

 inherited and environing constituents, so as to give them 

 a new meaning and efficacy, and a place within that higher 

 order of being which we call rational or spiritual? 



On the answer that is given to these questions depends 

 the whole meaning of heredity and of circumstance for 

 man as a rational being. And upon the meaning that is 

 given to heredity and circumstance depends, in turn, the 

 very possibility of his having a rational life, with its 

 characteristic cognitive, moral, and religious activities. 



1 The problem of the nature of a thing is not the same as that of its 

 origin, especially if it be a thing that grows ; and it is much more 

 important. A_thingthat grows is, moreover, exj3lajned_more_ fully by 

 what it becomes than by what it arises from. 



