xv CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT 347 



past experience of the species, and it is so shaped as to 

 contribute indirectly to the permanent maintenance of the 

 species. But in this early stage the process of shaping is 

 extremely slow, cumbersome, and wasteful, and it is only 

 in the course of a geological period that it can bring forth 

 a more many-sided, fuller life, that is, a higher organisation. 

 For the combination of many higher qualities in one 

 individual can only be a comparatively rare occurrence, and 

 even then, the survival of that individual, and the 

 preponderance of his descendants, is exposed to all the 

 accidents of untoward outward circumstances. Hence it is 

 that orthogenic evolution the development of higher 

 types is of geological slowness, and is only one course out 

 of many that evolution may take. At its best, biological 

 evolution finds the right path only by being constantly 

 turned back from the wrong one. Only when experience 

 is so far systematised that the future is read in the light of 

 the past, does a race begin to move towards the fulfilment 

 of its powers with the certainty of a man who knows 

 where he wishes to arrive, and how to find his way thither. 



5. Psychological Aspects of the 'Third Stage. 



Psychologically, the difference between this stage and 

 the preceding is entirely a matter of improved articulation 

 and wider comprehension. It is not that new faculties 

 are introduced, but that old faculties receive a fresh de- 

 velopment. The old question, whether animals reason, is 

 a question which people will go on putting for ever until 

 they arrive at a definition of reason which will satisfy 

 everybody. How far an animal or a man must be held 

 to understand the grounds of his action before we can say 

 that he acts rationally, is in one sense a question of terms ; 

 in another, a question of degree. We might parry the 

 question whether animals reason by asking whether man 

 reasons, and there would not be wanting plausible grounds 

 for answering the latter question with a negative. What 

 man has ever fully taken into account all the premisses of 

 any practical or theoretical conclusion to which he commits 

 himself ? Philosophy is aware that common action rests 

 upon assumptions of which it is wholly unconscious, and 

 she is also aware that she herself can only analyse out and 



