274 Habit and Instinct. 



matter how elaborate and far-reaching, exists as such for 

 consciousness. It must be of the conscious order or it is 

 not experience at all. And it is out of conscious experience 

 that individual consciousness as a complete whole of 

 related elements is developed. The related elements 

 themselves therefore must be conscious elements, and can 

 be nothing else. And if this truth be not grasped, I 

 repeat, all attempts at solving the problems of mental 

 evolution are inevitably foredoomed to failure. 



Within the individual organism, then, there is developed 

 during the progress of conscious organic evolution, an 

 organ, the cortex of the brain, whose function it is, from 

 the biological point of view, to subserve the purposes of 

 conscious adjustment and adaptation ; its functioning has 

 a mental aspect, and its development is somehow linked 

 and associated with the development of mind ; and, so far 

 as this mental development is concerned, every step and 

 stage of the evolutionary process lies within the mental 

 world of conscious experience. Thus, in the conscious 

 animal we have a mental system in association with an 

 organic system, an imperium mentale in imperio corporate. 

 Two points have now to be noticed ; first, that, so far as 

 the race is concerned, continuity of mental development is 

 conditioned by organic heredity; secondly, that in its 

 initial stages and for a prolonged period, mental develop- 

 ment is conditioned by organic development, of which it 

 is an adjunct, and to which it is subservient. Concern- 

 ing the first of these points, nothing further need now be 

 said; but to the second particular attention must be 

 directed. 



The raison d'etre of consciousness in its earliest be- 

 ginnings is to enable the incipiently conscious organism 

 to extend its adjustment to the environment further than 

 is possible under merely organic conditions. Every step 





