12 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



by the conditions of its genesis. It becomes self -deter- 

 mining, is guided, that is to say, by values which belong 

 to its own world, and finally it begins to master the 

 very conditions which first engendered it. In the end, 

 when we have fairly taken the measure and grasped the 

 conditions of its growth, we are led to regard the develop- 

 ment of mind not as a side product of natural selection 

 but as the central fact of the history of life upon the 

 earth. 



5. The development which we have to trace falls into two 

 main divisions. In examining the emergence of intelli- 

 gence as a factor in the life of the lower organisms, in 

 measuring its growing importance in the behaviour of the 

 higher mammals, and in estimating the qualitative changes 

 which mark the transition from animal to human mentality, 

 we are dealing in the main with the functions or capabilities 

 of the individual mind. But as soon as we begin to follow 

 the track of the higher developments of mind in man the 

 nature of the enquiry changes. The forces to be considered 

 are now social rather than psychological, or, more accurately, 

 are matter of social rather than individual psychology. 

 We have to do not with the emergence of any new faculty, 

 not with any essential change in the structure of the brain 

 or in the sum of hereditary dispositions or capacities, but 

 rather with the social product to which the individual mind 

 contributes its mite, which is gradually built up by millions 

 of individual workmen in the course of ages and which 

 undergoes profound modifications within the limits of 

 recorded history. This branch of our enquiry, that is to 

 say, is concerned with what we may call the social mind, 

 understanding by that term, the Order formed by the 

 operation of mind on mind, incorporated in a social 

 tradition handed on by language and by social institutions 

 of many kinds, and shaping the ideas and the practice of 

 each new generation that grows up under its shadow. The 

 enquiry into the growth of this tradition is rather socio- 

 logical than psychological. It is an enquiry into institu- 

 tions, into creeds, into social relations, rather than an 

 enquiry into the consciousness of individual human beings. 

 The opposition must not be exaggerated. There are 



