xxvi INTRODUCTION 



it was necessary to examine the foundations of knowledge, 

 in order to discover whether the postulates of the empirical 

 view were self -consistent and self-sufficient. For this 

 purpose, before beginning the systematic study of evolu- 

 tion several years were given to an examination of the 

 Theory of Knowledge (1896). Working with the ideas 

 of mechanical causation in this book, I was led to the con- 

 clusion that these ideas themselves imply at the end what 

 might be called an organic conception of reality as a whole. 

 But the organic seemed to me then as distinct from the 

 purposive on the one hand as from the mechanical on the 

 other. Not long after the book was published, however, 

 some new considerations occurred which convinced me that 

 this was an error, and that however much I might object to 

 the form of their reasoning there was an element of sub- 

 stantial truth on this head in the reasoning of the Idealists. 

 The result was to suggest that by mechanical reasoning 

 from a purely empirical starting point a candid thinker 

 would be led to admit an element of purpose in the system 

 of Reality. It thus became important to connect this result 

 with the empirical account of the growth of purpose. 



This is the principal object of the present work, and the 

 result, if the reasoning is sound, is to show a coincidence 

 between the views derived from an analysis of the pre- 

 suppositions of knowledge, and those attained by a com- 

 prehensive review of experience. The analysis suggests 

 the operation of a conditioned purpose. The empirical 

 I account reveals the purpose in operation. Many difficul- 

 ties remain which will be found freely admitted in the text, 

 jbut it is submitted, not in the least as a matter of faith, but 

 as a sound working hypothesis, that the evolutionary process 

 can be best understood as the effect of a purpose slowly 

 working itself out under limiting conditions which it 

 brings successively under control. This would imply not 



