v EVOLUTION AND TELEOLOGY 335 



then we may conceive to be dependent on the interaction 

 of an infinity of conditions, and limited accordingly. 



3 . If we go on to ask what kind of value can be supposed 

 to attach to reality as a whole, and of what nature are the 

 conditions which at once determine and limit it, our partial 

 experience does not leave us wholly in the lurch. We have 

 spoken of the value of a thing as the one type that we know 

 of an inherent reason. But within our experience such a 

 reason never operates, as we have also remarked, uncon- 

 ditionally. It implies a mind animated by a purpose, oper- 

 ating on surrounding conditions so as to secure the thing 

 of value. To the surrounding conditions, we ought to add 

 those which go to make up and determine the nature of the 

 purposing mind itself, to give it its bent and tendency. 

 Under these conditions we get a process which is, in a 

 measure, self-determining. In proportion as the purpose 

 dominates it, that is to say, every element concerned is 

 brought into being for the sake of what it effects, and the 

 casual tendency of the process as a whole is itself the 

 cause of the process. The purpose animating the mind is, 

 as it were, the germ out of which the whole organised 

 system of action grows, and it grows by bringing within 

 its tissue, conditions necessary to its end, but it is also at 

 every point limited by the degree in which these conditions 

 are malleable, and the final character of its end must even 

 accommodate itself to these. The conditions determine 

 the end every whit as much as they are determined by it, 

 and at bottom this is true, not only of the instruments 

 with which the purposive intelligence acts, but of the 

 conditions which determine the character and activity of 

 the mind itself, which indeed are responsible for the initial 

 fact, that this or that specific purpose is formed. Further- 

 more in the purposes of experience there are always condi- 

 tions external to the purposive system and indifferent to it 

 until shaped and arranged by the mind. Thus the pur- 

 posive process is never wholly self-determining. 



Now, if we seek to apply this model to Reality as a whole, 

 the first steps are sufficiently clear. We have to conceive a 

 mind operating on conditions under the inspiration of an 



