vi DEVELOPMENT AND HARMONY 369 



thought points to the conception of the Reason as an im- 

 pulse to secure harmony of conceptions, an impulse which 

 can only be finally validated by development. The analysis 

 of the ethical consciousness points to a goal of effort in which 

 the harmony of all conscious life is to be attained. When, 

 further, the postulates of rational thought are carefully 

 examined, they suggest that this harmony is not a mere 

 ideal, but a just description of the goal to which the move- 

 ment of the world tends, and this leads us to infer a power 

 of the nature of Mind operating under conditions towards 

 the effectuation of a world-purpose. But it is precisely to 

 this point that we had been led independently by the 

 synthesis of experience. The theory of evolution began 

 with the biological order. It showed first how all forms 

 of vegetable and animal life might be conceived as issuing 

 from a single origin. This conception is now undergoing 

 extension at both ends. Physical science is extending the 

 principle of development to the inanimate. It is coming 

 to regard not merely the specific forms of matter as variants 

 of a common original, but matter itself as a structure 

 evolved from a more primitive source. On the other side 

 psychology and sociology are busy exhibiting the higher 

 forms of the superorganic world and tracing the phases of 

 development experienced by the individual and the social 

 mind. There are doubtless great gaps remaining in the 

 scheme. In particular, the transition from the inanimate to 

 the animate is not made out, and can only be tentatively 

 imputed to a synthesis on the analogy of better known 

 cases of the appearance of a new kind. But there is no 

 reason to doubt the substantial validity of continuous 

 development as connecting the lowest with the highest 

 orders of being. The principal object of our enquiry has 

 been to determine in what development consists, and here, 

 as the result of a purely empirical synthesis, we were led to 

 the conclusion that it consists in the growth of Mind. To 

 measure this growth we distinguished a succession of 

 phases, and we found that in each phase the transition was 

 effected essentially by the gathering into the scope of pur- 

 poseful mental activity of conditions that were already in 

 operation from without at the lower phase. The highest 



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