440 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



relations to the general developmental position of active beings, 

 without any pre-suppositions as to their automatic or voluntary 

 character. It is necessarily assumed that all acts are performed 

 with reference to the acquisition of pleasure or the avoidance of 

 pain ; in other words, that all acts are due to motive, and are the 

 expression of design on the part of the actor. This is as true of 

 the simplest as of the most complex actions of animals, whether 

 consciously or unconsciously performed. The movement of the 

 Amoeba in ingulfing a Diatom in its jelly, is as much designed as 

 the dii^lomacy of the statesman, or the investigations of the stu- 

 dent. And the motive may be the same in all three cases ; viz. : 

 hunger. But as the unconscious acts have been probably dei'ived 

 from conscious ones by organization, a fundamental classification 

 must first recognize their relations to the two necessary terms of 

 consciousness, the subject and the object. All actions may then 

 be divided into two classes ; those which are performed witli the 

 design of securing the pleasure of the subject, and those whose 

 motive is to secure pleasure for the object as distinct from, i. e., 

 opposed to, that of the subject. The tendencies thus defined have 

 been named, in other connections, the appetent and the altruistic, 

 and these names may be preserved as equally appropriate for the 

 present purpose. Actions of the appetent class difl:'er according to 

 the developmental grade of the animal displaying them, or the 

 grade of the organ of the body to which they are proper. In their 

 simplest form they are mechanical movements, following a stimu- 

 lus without the intervention of any rational process ; the end being 

 attained by movements, whose directions are determined by me- 

 chanical or physical laws only. Such acts belong to the lowest 

 type of animals, and are also seen in the organic functions of all 

 animals ; they may be called the ancesthetic division. They may 

 be performed consciously or unconscioasly. Acts of another order 

 are those which, while due to stimuli, are directed by a process of 

 ratiocination. They are higher than those of the i^revious order, 

 because they successfully accomplish their object under changing 

 circumstances, to which they adapt themselves as the others can 

 not. Like them they may be performed in consciousness or in 

 unconsciousness, or in a still higher state of the mind, that of self- 

 consciousness. The last condition is only possible to animals of a 

 high order of intelligence, since it not only demands an exercise 

 of the rational faculty, with reference to objects, but also with 

 reference to itself — the subject. These three groups form the 



