xix SELF-CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT 443 



external, of its life and growth. The primitive intelligence is 

 useful to the organism as a more elastic method of adjusting 

 itself to its environment. As the mental powers develop, 

 the tables are turned, and the mind adjusts its environment 

 to its own needs. " Mihi res non me rebus subjungere 

 conor " is the motto that it takes for its own. With the 

 mastery of external nature, applied science has made us all 

 familiar. But the last enemy that man shall overcome is 

 himself. The internal conditions of life, the physiological 

 basis of mental activity, the sociological laws that operate 

 for the most part unconsciously, are parts of the " environ- 

 ment " which the self-conscious intelligence has to master, 

 and it is on this mastery that the regnum hominis will rest. 

 The development in its highest stage is beyond doubt 

 purposive. The purpose is conceived in the human mind 

 itself. Are we now to throw the purpose back, and to 

 conceive the whole course of orthogenic evolution as 

 determined thereby ? We can conceive such a purpose in 

 one of two forms. We may place it within the evolu- 

 tionary process, attributing it to the beings taking part 

 therein, or we may place it outside the process in a 

 hypothetical Being who contrives the whole movement, and 

 shapes it towards the end defined. In the former alternative, 

 we are forced to characterise the purpose as an unconscious 

 purpose, and this threatens to be a contradiction in terms. 

 At most, we can say that there are in the earlier stages 

 elements of purpose and understanding which are 

 gradually blended and fused into coherence. The latter 

 alternative would bring us to the conception of an 

 unconditioned creation of the world-order, which can 

 never be accepted by the intelligence without stifling the 

 moral sense. Is there any third possibility ? 



5. I have argued elsewhere 1 that a close examination 

 of the postulates of knowledge leads us to conceive 

 Reality as a single comprehensive system in which all 

 things and all processes have their place in accordance 



1 In the Theory of Knowledge (1896). I leave the following section as 

 it was originally written, but may be allowed to refer to a fuller and in 

 some respects a modified exposition of the argument in Development and 

 Purpose (1913). 



