130 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
of elementary habits has been secured, and then fixed in - 
by a repetition of the success, each constituent habit is 
mechanically, or without conscious direction or interfer- 
ence, followed by its definite successor. A describable 
causal series of material changes is here seen to have 
its genesis in a free cause. Also such mechanical com- 
plexes of habits are the matter or stuff of still higher 
strivings and achievements, strivings that stimulate them 
to action and keep them in operation. Thus these higher 
strivings are seen to be the indispensable stimuli and 
support, the free and imminent causes, of the mechanical 
or transeunt type of causes. 
A completer view of these strivings or free causes 
reveals the fact that they go on in immediate interaction 
with the strivings of others, with other free causes. In 
fact such free causes are most commonly stimulated, 
controlled, and sustained in their growth by other and 
similar free causes. The strivings and achievements of 
others, vaguely apprehended by us, if they are properly 
related to our own interests, create in us a feeling of 
need. Then they stimulate, correct, and support our own 
strivings. The striving to learn to pronounce a word or 
to learn to do almost anything else is due to our interest 
in others whose imitation by us would fulfil our own 
interests, or whose imitation of us would further our un- 
selfish interest in their own achievements. Free causes 
may be stimulated, nourished, and sustained by other 
free causes, and in the process of their fulfilment mechani- 
cal causes are bcth an outcome, and a set of powers or 
energy complexes that form the basis or material for 
still higher degrees of striving and achievemnt. 
In the study of this socialized human conduct we 
seem to gain a view of but a small section of material 
nature. But many philosophers believe that in this section 
we have a specimen of matter which reveals to us its 
essential and universal nature, that in socialized human 
conduct there is revealed the general structure of the 
vast system of energy complexes which constitute mater- 
ial nature. But they also believe that we must supplement 
the strivings of human and sub-human free causes by 
the cooperative strivings of a super-human free-cause 
confluent with the human and the sub-human in order 
