394 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP, xvi 



readjustment of instinctive processes, and developed to the 

 point where in human life it uses the recorded experience 

 of the past to form a basis of conduct, and a setting for 

 the life and purposes of the individual. But up to this 

 point, though experiences are grouped together, the results 

 are not systematically co-ordinated inter se, nor has life one 

 purpose, plan, or rule, but rather many that contend with 

 one another. It remains for the highest stage to reduce 

 the whole of human experience to a single system, and to 

 make the future of humanity the all-embracing purpose of 

 action. Remote as this ideal organisation of life may be, 

 it is suggested that the trend of theoretical science is 

 towards the discovery of the conditions of human de- 

 velopment, while the trend of the ethical spirit is towards 

 making that development the supreme object of action. 

 In the union of these movements, human thought would 

 seem to come as near as possible to the limiting conception 

 of the correlation of all experience with all action. At 

 any rate, knowledge of the underlying conditions of 

 development would become the basis of a system of 

 conduct designed to promote development. The life 

 of the species would become self-conscious, and its growth 

 self-determined. It remains only to note that the force of 

 instinct or heredity would not disappear, but it would no 

 longer be a force operating outside the system of know- 

 ledge. On the contrary, it would enter into the system 

 and be duly allowed for among the fundamental conditions 

 affecting the possibilities of growth. 



