xvn STAGES OF CORRELATION 411 



crete, and its relations are used intelligently in the service 

 of desire. In the third stage the mind dissects out the 

 threads of common quality that bind the moving show of 

 perception, and by their aid grasps the permanent inexperi- 

 ence, and subordinates action to large and general purposes. 

 Finally, in the fourth stage, it works down to the principle 

 whereby these great fragments of knowledge and of purpose 

 are pieced together into a rational system, comprehending 

 in a synthesis of thought and action the summed experi- 

 ence and purpose of the race. The first stage is a correla- 

 tion of massive results, the second of articulate complexes 

 in the perceptual order, the third of transperceptual 

 affinities, and the fourth of the processes of correlation. 

 In the first we have consciousness of the present, in the 

 second conscious reference to past and future, in the third 

 the self-consciousness of the individual, and in the fourth 

 that of the race. Impulse and feeling, perceptual judg- 

 ment and desire, conceptual inference and will, critical 

 reason and ethical spirituality mark the successive steps. 

 In each stage, as the sphere of experience grows, that of 

 heredity is transformed. In the first stage it is rendered 

 plastic and general instead of being relatively par- 

 ticular and rigid. In the second, it begins to fuse 

 with experience as the basis of action. In the third, 

 it tends to disappear as a separate force, being partly 

 formulated into rules of life, partly fused with tradition, 

 and partly overlaid thereby. Meanwhile, Experience 

 in the form of recorded history is extending over the 

 ancestral line through which heredity acts, and thus in the 

 fourth stage we come to the point in which the whole 

 field at first covered by unconscious physical forces is 

 now overrun by experience and thought. Race experience, 

 race maintenance, and race-future are still the determining 

 factors, but all now fall within the scope of the Reason, and 

 purposes equally with methods are transformed accordingly. 

 It is not the maintenance of the type, but its perfection, 

 which is sought : not mere adaptation to circumstances, 

 but the domination of the rational spirit in the world. 



NOTE. It should be superfluous to say that the above division of in- 

 tellectual growth into stages is of a hypothetical character, and is not 



