MIND IN EVOLUTION 525 



§ 5. The Evolutionary Efficiency of Mind. 



What is true of the everyday human life is true also in 

 history that mind has counted for much, notably in tradi- 

 tional folk-ways and ideals, and in the external registration 

 of ideas in literature and art. The question is whether mind 

 has practically counted in Animal Evolution. 



To this question two extreme answers have been given. 

 According to the thoroughgoing mechanistic school what is 

 called mind has not been in any degree a vera causa in evolu- 

 tion. Thus one of them, Le Dantec, writes that conscious- 

 ness is certainly not an acting partner in the firm of life, 

 it is at most a sleeping partner. 



According to the thoroughgoing vitalist school, mind is the 

 essential driving force in all evolutionary change. Thus 

 Samuel Butler maintained that it was necessary to have a 

 psychological theory of heredity and a psychological theory 

 of the origin of organic novelties, besides recognising at 

 every turn that the organism is a genuine purposeful agent, 

 striving, endeavouring, trying to make the best of things. 

 Dr. W. MacDougall may be cited as a modern animist who 

 thinks, for instance, that the truest description of even 

 individual development is one which recognises the efficiency 

 of an anima animans. 



Can we steer between the Scylla of Montaigne's generous 

 anthropomorphism and the Charybdis of Descartes's simpli- 

 cist automatism? We cannot accept the view that mind 

 is the essential driving force in all evolutionary change, 

 since this depreciates what we may call the physiological 

 driving force inherent in organisms, simply as unified proto- 

 plasmic reaction-systems. We quote again what Spinoza said : 

 "No one has yet learned from experience what the body, 



