1 68 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP, ix 



of the correlating activity which constitutes the function of 

 consciousness and in that sense a change of quality. The 

 turn by which the mind becomes aware of its life as a unity 

 is what we call the dawn of self-consciousness, and dis- 

 tinguishes the human from the animal mind. The turn by 

 which the mind of humanity reduces the structure of its 

 thought to its elements to reconstruct its view of reality 

 from the foundations is a quite comparable advance in self- 

 knowledge. Finally, each c turn ' of consciousness reveals 

 a deeper plane of reality. The world, which is for the 

 lowest intelligence nothing but a disconnected series of 

 sense-stimuli, becomes first a network of related objects, 

 then an order of beings persisting through change, and like 

 amid unlikeness, and lastly, a system of forces and prin- 

 ciples, mechanical, spiritual or other, whose interplay 

 determines the superficial changes of the shallower plane. 



If we conceive the critical movement carried to its com- 

 pletion, we shall have reached a central point from which, 

 in outline, the genesis, the development, the conditions of 

 Mind in man lie open to view, and with them its poten- 

 tialities and, we may say, its future. The entire history 

 of Mind may be said to lead up to this point, at which it 

 becomes, as we have put it, self-conscious. The question 

 that now arises is how far this self-knowledge yields self- 

 control, how far, that is to say, having gained this point of 

 view, the Mind could not only forecast but shape its future. 

 To answer this question we must turn from the develop- 

 ment of thought to that of action. 



