THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 45 



penetrates behind the associations, to explain their 

 possibility and their origin by his doctrine that the 

 rational elements have their seat, not directly in the 

 mind of each man, but in the eternal and universal 

 Mind to which he gives the name of God. In 

 neither view is a prio)-i consciousness admitted in 

 the individual person as individual, nor in the human 

 mind at all, as specifically human. In fact, by the 

 associative agnostic method, which would build these 

 elements up outright in the course of evolution from 

 what seems to be their assumed non-existence, they 

 are all put as if explicable by evolution. But as our 

 analysis has shown, they are all, on the contrary, 

 prerequisites to the existence of evolution as well as 

 to our conceiving of it. Legitimately, they are like- 

 wise inexplicable by the pantheistic method of seat- 

 ing them a priori in God, to be thence gradually 

 imparted to minds as they are slowly created by 

 the process of psychic evolution ; for this ignores 

 the fact that a priori cognition, by virtue of its 

 pertinent proofs, is an act in the mind of each par- 

 ticular conscious being, be the development of the 

 ?nere experience of such being as low as it may. 

 The proper interpretation of a priori consciousness, 

 at the juncture where it is established, is at most, 

 and at next hand, as a human, not a divine, original 

 consciousness, and, indeed, as a consciousness inte- 

 rior to tlie individual mind. 



