230 GENERAL EVOLUTION. 



tion requires, events, objects, or cliaracteristics, are returned to 

 consciousness in the order in which they cohere most firmly in 

 the mind, which may or may not be that in which they entered it. 

 The liking for or dislike to the object, are equivalent to an attrac- 

 tion to or repulsion from it. Thus experience is begotten : as its 

 material increases, new combinations are formed, new relations 

 observed, and in the highest tyipes of mind, laws are discovered. 

 No one can deny memory to animals ; it is the medium of their 

 education by man, and has been as well the means of their edu- 

 cation by nature. Impressions cause a re-arrangement of cer- 

 tain elements of structure which give the form to consciousness 

 when it arises again. It is also probable that these arrangements 

 are not the same as those which represent classifications and con- 

 clusions, but that nevertheless the arrangement or organization 

 of these is determined by the simpler arrangements caused by 

 perceptive stimuli. Experience produces these combinations in 

 the bioplastic aggregations of all animals, be they in the form of 

 ganglia, brains, or less specialized forms. Nowhere in the human 

 organism are the effects of effort and use so strikingly witnessed 

 as in the increase of brain power ; and familiarity with the educa- 

 tion of the lower animals shows that this is the case with them 

 also, though in a lesser degree than in man. 



If, then, we grant the p^ropositions, first, that effort and use 

 modify structure ; and second, that effort and use are determined 

 by mind in direct ratio to its development, we are led to the con- 

 clusion that evolution is an outgrowth of mind, and that mind is 

 the parent of the forms of living nature. This is, however, to 

 reverse a very usual evolutionary hypothesis, viz. : that mind is 

 the product and highest development of the universe of matter 

 and force. The contradiction is, however, not so absolute as at 

 first appears. By mind, as the author of the organic world, I 

 mean only the two elements, consciousness and memory. But it 

 is the view of some thinkers that consciousness is a product ; that 

 it is not only a correlative of force, but a kind of force. To the 

 latter theory I can not subscribe ; when it becomes possible to 

 metamorphose music into potatoes, mathematics into mountains, 

 and natural history into brown paper, then we can identify 

 consciousness with force. The nature of consciousness is such 

 as to distinguish it from all other thinkable things, and it 

 must be ranged with matter and force as the third element of the 

 universe. 



