CHAPTER XIX 



SELF-CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT 



OUR object in the present work has been to ascertain 

 the character and function of Mind as the organising 

 principle in Evolution. In the absence of intelligence and 

 in its lowest stages, Life is, as we expressed it, relatively "un- 

 organised." The successive actions of an individual are 

 not properly correlated. As between different individuals 

 there is conflict rather than co-operation. In the process 

 by which species are formed there is an even more com- 

 plete lack of plan. The fact that biological evolution 

 rests on a struggle for existence is itself enough to show 

 a want of that organic unity in which the good of one 

 part is necessarily the good of the rest. Were a species 

 to become a unity, and its development organic, the 

 fundamental condition would be that each individual should 

 find the furthering, the development, of his own nature 

 in that which furthers and develops others. Evolution 

 by natural selection is thus the direct negation of an 

 organic growth. It is in no way parallel to the regular 

 unfolding of a germ. It is an irregular backwards and 

 forwards movement in which now an individual of one 

 type prevails, now an example of another, and little by 

 little, the battle swings over to the one side. This is not 

 development. It is more like a slow process of sifting, in 

 which, by a long series of stages, and with many pauses, 

 grains of one kind tend to come together in one heap. In 

 such a process, clearly the accidental as well as the more 



