The Natural History of the Categories 283 



prospective — which is not subject to plain statement under 

 natural law ? ^ 



This is a very common criticism of all thoroughgoing 

 statements of mental evolution. It rests on the mistaken 

 view, just pointed out, that a statement of the historical 

 career of a thing can ever be an adequate statement of its 

 nature ; in other words, that the origin of the categories of 

 thought can tell what these categories will do — what their 

 function and meaning is in the general movement of reality. 

 Consciousness is entitled to a hearing in terms of its behav- 

 iour solely. The behaviour, attitudes, etc., represented by 

 * prospective' thought are there just as its behaviour repre- 

 sented by its history is there. Who would venture to say 

 that consciousness of a relation in nature is in no sense a dif- 

 ferent mode of behaviour from the relation itself in nature ? 

 The real point is in what I have already tried to put in evi- 

 dence : that such a construction involves the assumption 

 that reality in its movement defines all her own changes 

 in advance of their actual happening. The very series of 

 changes which constitute the basis in experience for the 

 growth in consciousness of the category of change are the 

 basis also for the new aspects of reality (say consciousness) 



1 It is this supposed necessity that leads Mr. Huxley to hold that evolution 

 cannot explain ethics, i.e., the supposed necessity that the validity of ethical 

 values must be adequately found in the terms of their origin ; for, says he, the 

 pursuit of evil would have as much sanction as that of good, for both are in us, 

 and they would have the same origin (^Evolution and Ethics, esp. p. 31). But 

 to say, as we do, that the appeal made by the word ' ought ' is a * prospective ' 

 appeal, as opposed to the description of the * is,' which is * retrospective,' does 

 not require us to say that the impulse to recognize either is not a product of 

 evolution. My discussion of Professor Royce's attempt {International Journal 

 of Ethics, July, 1895) to show the psychological origin of the antithesis between 

 'ought' and 'is,' may be referred to (^Ibid., October, 1895, '^o'^' reprinted in 

 the volume Fragments in Philosophy and Science, Scribners, 1902, pp. 70 ff.)- 



