464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



I believe we need to work further on this problem of evolution until we see 

 that in its consummation organic evolution passes into a form of adjustment in 

 which the inner world with its conscious pattern for changes in the outer world 

 is more important than any form of objective selection which can be discovered. 

 . . . Consciousness is the essential fact in human life, as I have attempted to 

 show. What man does with his environment depends upon consciousness. That 

 phase of individuality which is important enough to change the type of evolu- 

 tion certainly can not be described as non-existent or as merely resolvable into 

 its elements." 



Some day the historian of thought will write it down as one of the curious 

 fallacies of immature science that certain physiologists, biologists and even 

 psychologists were satisfied to call their own personalities mere by-products, 

 without essential significance in the world, just because they did not find con- 

 sciousness capable of description in the regular scientific formulas adapted for 

 the discussion and explanation of external reality. One hardly knows how to 

 find phrases in which to answer those who hold consciousness to be less real and 

 potent than physical forces." 



These writers refuse to limit the idea of causality in such a way as 

 to exclude the conspicuous fact that the mind is a veritable cause. By 

 its peculiar and exclusive power of ideal reconstruction of experience, 

 it becomes a tremendous new force in the world, bending material 

 forces to its will, first picturing then realizing ever higher marks in 

 science, art, literature, justice and the progress of civilization in gen- 

 eral. Consciousness certainly is potent, and if potent, then, according 

 to pragmatism, true and real. 



Thus far, then, it begins to appear that, even granting that con- 

 sciousness may be a product of evolution, nevertheless its potency and 

 hence its reality might become the ground for what may be called a 

 re-discovery of the soul. But there is a tendency not only to recognize 

 the reality and potency of consciousness, but to carry it farther and 

 farther back in the evolutionary process, if not to make it a primitive 

 datum. The old " orthodox " descent, starting with chance variation 

 and natural selection and coming down through simple irritability and 

 Bensory-motor reflexes, till finally consciousness is evolved, no longer 

 satisfies either psychologists or biologists. Many believe that all so- 

 called reflex acts, including instincts, were once conscious acts. The 

 fact that conscious actions tend to become automatic might, however, 

 easily be misunderstood. It does not point to any displacement or 

 impoverishment of consciousness. Such apparent displacement " is 

 for the sake of its own inherent ends, being the conditio sine qua non, 

 of its further extension and enrichment."" Human development does 



" C. H. Judd, " Evolution and Consciousness," Psychological Review, Vol. 

 XVII., 2, pp. 90, 93. 



" C. H. Judd, " Psychology," p. 62. Compare Edward M. Weyer, " A Unit 

 Conception of Consciousness," Psychological Review, XVII., 5, p. 318. 



"Norman Smith, Philosophical Review, Vol. XVII., p. 334, reviewing 

 Mitchell's " Structure and Growth of the Mind." 



