XVIII. 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN EVOLUTION.* 



I. PRELIMINAKT. 



The evidence of what is termed "design " in the structure of 

 beings exhibiting life, is often appealed to by one class of think- 

 ers, as proving the intervention of a personal Deity in the crea- 

 tion of such ; and the same feature exhibited in the movements 

 of living creatures is regarded by metaphysicians of a similar class 

 as an indication of their possession of a power of choice, or "free 

 agency," at least in the case of man. The opposing school, of 

 whom Professor Bain may be selected as an example, believes that 

 designed acts are Avithout an element of freedom, but are simply 

 performed in obedience to stimuli of various kinds, motion fol- 

 lowing stimulus as inevitably as effect succeeds cause in the non- 

 living world. The evolutionists attempt to explain design in 

 structure through the operation of the Darwinian law of the 

 "survival of the fittest," showing that only those beings whose 

 organization displays that adaptation to use in relation to its sur- 

 roundings, which is termed "design," could possibly continue to 

 exist. It is justly urged against this reasoning that it attempts 

 no explanation of the origin of such structures. Another school 

 of evolutionists have therefore maintained that such structures are 

 due to the effect of effort, i. e., stimulus or use, exerted by the 

 living being on its own body, and that the design thus displayed 

 is an expression of the intelligence at some time possessed by itself. 



So long as there is any probability of the last explanation 

 proving valid, it will be important to examine into the questions 

 of metaphysics which it necessarily involves. The investigation 

 is indeed but the necessary projection of those which have re- 

 sulted in satisfying the great majority of biologists of the reality 

 of evolution, or of the fact of the descent of existing living beings, 



* A lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Pliiladelphia, February, 18V4. 



