I 4 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



machine, the work of human hands, it exhibits, like the 

 human body itself, a complex dovetailing of various parts, 

 such that when the whole is put in motion some definite 

 result is produced, and in the production of this result 

 every part of the machine, like every organ of the human 

 body, performs some specific function, thus contributing 

 to the whole. But in the machine, though each part 

 performs this function, its motions do not directly depend 

 upon the result that does, as a fact, come about from 

 them, and though the machine when perfect acts as a 

 whole, yet the movement of each part is dependent on its 

 own structure and on the behaviour of those which are 

 immediately in contact with it, not on the unity and en- 

 tirety of the machine. This particular wheel is turned 

 by cogs fitting in, let us say, to a ratchet. If the ratchet 

 moves the wheel turns. It does not matter whether the 

 machine as a whole is in order or out of order, whether 

 it is doing the work for which it was made or doing 

 nothing at all ; given that the wheel is in place and that 

 the ratchet is moving, the wheel will turn. It has no 

 regard to the performances of any other part. It has no 

 concern with the effects that it produces by turning. It 

 turns in response to the force immediately impressed 

 upon it. These conditions hold generally of mechanical 

 aggregates. Every element in such an aggregate acts 

 uniformly in response to the force immediately operating 

 upon it and without relation to the contemporaneous 

 behaviour of any other part or to the result which will in 

 fact accrue from its action. 



Now, whenever Mind is at work, these conditions are in 

 appearance reversed. It may be only appearance, but 

 even so it will have its importance as bearing upon the 

 methods of correlation. Let us then examine the 

 difference. Mind, as studied from outside, in its functions, 

 is most clearly recognisable in the purposive act. Now 

 the purposive act, again studied not from within but from 

 without, is an act apparently directed by relation to its 

 result. It chooses means to ends, rejects those that 

 are unsuitable, varies its behaviour in accordance with 

 circumstances, surmounts, destroys, or circumvents 



