CONCLUSION 339 



gist who interests himself in the psychical aspects of 

 life is the recognition of the gradual evolution of these 

 dynamical changes, and their relative incomplete- 

 ness except in those most cultured and best organized 

 human brains which we may arbitrarily accept as 

 standards of what is possible of attainment. The 

 significance of the incompleteness lies in the decep- 

 tions which the unbalanced and imperfect products 

 of consciousness bring into existence deceptions 

 of sense and of mind which we have a right to pro- 

 claim as such by comparing the actions of inferior 

 minds with the recognized best. For it is inevitable, 

 and might almost have been predicted, that the indi- 

 vidual and race endowed with consciousness should, 

 according to varying organization, have developed 

 excessive regard for the personality so strongly felt, 

 the faults of egotism in many forms before the 

 corrections for this have been developed in the 

 highest grades of cerebral action, i.e. the inhibitions 

 based on superior understanding. 



Many deceptions regarding the nature of human 

 feelings and desires, the craving for immortality, the 

 sharp separation of body and soul, the idea of free 

 will, the food and sex impulses, have their origin in 

 a too narrow range of the experiences of conscious- 

 ness. Just as substances at very high temperatures 

 develop properties quite unsuspected in common 

 thermal conditions, so these feelings and desires 

 assume new aspects when illumined by modern con- 

 cepts of science. A distinction between the material 



