174 TH E STORY OF THE LIVING MACHINE. 



conscious of hunger, and this leads to efforts on 

 his part to obtain food. His efforts to obtain 

 food may lead to migration or to the adoption of 

 new kinds of food or to conflicts with various 

 kinds of rivals, and all of these efforts are potent 

 factors in determining the direction of develop- 

 ment. Consciousness, again, may lead certain 

 animals to take pleasure in each other's society, 

 or to recognize that in mutual association they 

 have protection against common enemies. Such 

 a consciousness will give rise to social habits, and 

 social habits are a very potent factor in determin- 

 ing the direction in which the inherited variations 

 will tend ; not, perhaps, because it effects the vari- 

 ations themselves, but rather because it deter- 

 mines which variations among the many shall be 

 preserved and which rejected by natural selec- 

 tion. Consciousness may lead the antelope to 

 recognize that he has no chance in a combat with a 

 lion, and this will induce him to flee. The//^/'/of 

 flight would then develop \hz power of flight, not 

 because the antelope desired such power, but 

 because the animals with variations which gave 

 increased power of flight would be the ones to 

 escape the lion, while the slower ones would die 

 without offspring. Thus consciousness would 

 indirectly, though not directly, result in the length- 

 ening of the legs of the animal and in the strength- 

 ening of his running muscles. Beyond a doubt 

 this factor of consciousness has been a factor of 

 no little moment in the development of the higher 

 types of organic machines. We can as yet only 

 dimly understand its action, but it must hereafter 

 be counted as one of the influences in the evolu- 

 tion or the living machine. 



But, after all, these are only questions of the 



