332 ADAPTIVENESS AND PURPOSIVENESS 



we may abandon the possibility of either philosophy or 

 science. Our life is at its highest efficiency when it is 

 most dominated by purpose, when there is least of '' the unlit 

 lamp and the ungirt loin ". 



At a slightly lower level, however, we recognise analogous 

 facts. We prepare for months to build a rockery in our 

 garden, collecting stones and tree-roots and such like in 

 a way that perplexes our next-door neighbour, who is not 

 in the secret, who shakes his head at the absence of purpose 

 in our behaviour. But all that we do is actuated by a pur- 

 pose, so simple that we may call it perceptual, to form in 

 the outer world an actual counterpart of a pleasing picture 

 which had formed itself, as we say, in our mind. If this 

 perceived purpose is not real, nothing is real. A mental 

 anticipation with its associated desire determines our be- 

 haviour. 



We feel no difficulty in the fact that the curious can 

 give, if he will, a tolerably complete physiological account 

 of our various activities in making the rockery — the collect- 

 ing, the carrying, the digging, and the building. For we 

 know that however complete such an account may be either 

 at the chemico-physical level, or at the physiological level, 

 it never comes near being a complete scientific account until 

 it recognises the end which serves " as a point of connection 

 for a plurality of causes ", something which cannot be 

 measured or weighed — the vision of the rockery as desira- 

 ble. Not only may a teleological interpretation be put 

 upon our behaviour ; it must be put upon it, if we are to 

 give a scientific description. 



There are many difficulties in our way when we begin 

 to draw conclusions as to the purposes of others, but there 

 is certainty in regard to our own. We have direct experi- 



