xvin ORGANISATION AND EVOLUTION 429 



is to find progress not in the laws of inheritance except 

 in so far as these may be used by intelligence for 

 its own purpose but rather in the organisation of life 

 culminating in the deliberate self-development of a race 

 under the guidance of reason. Organised life rests not on 

 internecine rivalry, but on mutual interdependence. 



This organisation is at first physical or biological. It is 

 extended by intelligence, the essential function of which 

 is to correlate experience and action. The development 

 of intelligence consists in widening the scope of this 

 function, as well as in perfecting its execution. There is 

 an organisation of individual experience, an organisation of 

 social life. Of this organisation in both these forms we 

 have roughly sketched the growth. Life is indeed in a 

 sense organised without intelligence, but only in a 

 rudimentary way. Without intelligence, the race is not 

 master of its fate. It is so built as to behave itself 

 appropriately within a certain groove. Outside of that 

 groove it is lost. Its instincts may prompt a measure of 

 co-operation, but this, again, will be within limits 

 mechanically defined. It is never at this stage master of 

 its surroundings, for the very perfection of its hereditary 

 adjustments rests on a constant elimination of the great 

 majority of its component members. Its rate of progress 

 at the best is such as can be attained by a gradual 

 elimination of the less efficient individuals. In all these 

 respects the growth of mind works a gradual revolution, 

 reorganising life on the basis of knowledge, realising the 

 unity of the race, and deliberately working out its 

 capacities for development. 



6. But not only is the organisation of life made more 

 efficient by intelligence, but its very purpose is gradually 

 revolutionised. To complete our account, we must trace 

 the steps of this revolution. The first change introduced 

 by the intelligent use of experience lies in the substitution 

 of pleasures and pains for life and death as the "sanctions" 

 of conduct. It is a necessary consequence of this truth 

 that we should hold with Mr. Herbert Spencer that the 

 pleasurable and the life-giving, the painful and the death- 

 dealing tend to coincide. So much would be determined 



