398 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



which diverse elements affecting the organism are so 

 correlated as to secure suitable results. Such correlation 

 among ourselves involves the condition of consciousness. 

 Consciousness is known to each of us only by introspec- 

 tion, only therefore within himself. But we do not 

 hesitate to impute it to other human beings and to 

 attribute to them modifications of consciousness similar 

 to those which we each know in ourselves on the ground 

 of similarity of behaviour. We found that among 

 animals processes exist which proceed from causes and 

 perform functions closely corresponding to those which 

 among ourselves involve consciousness in various forms, 

 and we decided to characterise such processes in terms of 

 consciousness, without implying thereby that if we had 

 a sense which could directly acquaint us with what 

 passes within the animal we should find it exactly like 

 the conscious state that we know in ourselves. We also 

 speak freely of conscious processes as causes of behaviour 

 without postulating a theory of the relation between the 

 conscious and the physical. Every conscious process 

 may, for anything that has here been said, have a physical 

 side or concomitant, and it may be only through its 

 physical side that it operates on physical processes. But 

 even so the physical state involving consciousness is 

 distinct from all others in its causes and effects, and it is 

 the nature of this distinction which we have been pointing 

 out. When we speak of any form of consciousness as a 

 link in causation, then we refer to the operation of that 

 process, be it physical or psychophysical, in which, among 

 ourselves, that form of consciousness is an integral 

 factor. 1 



The function of conative consciousness in general is 

 to effect fresh correlations within the life of the individual, 

 correlations which could not be achieved by hereditary 



1 That the psychical element is a true cause, i.e., that psychical energy 

 exists, is, however, my belief. I have worked out the reasons in my own 

 fashion in Development and Purpose, Part II. Ch. IV. The impossibility 

 of a mechanical view of mind and the weakness of the presumptions on 

 which it rests is ably shown by Dr. McDougall in his Mind and Body, 

 however much the Animistic theory in the form which he proposes may be 

 subject to criticism. 



