136 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



from the world of mechanism, if indeed there is any 

 world of pure mechanism. The terms descriptive of 

 mind have no mechanistic coloring. The mind, itself 

 created, is creative. It grows, expands, contrives, in- 

 vents, aspires. It has visions of beauty and goodness. 

 It envisages a better art and literature, a more equi- 

 table distribution of wealth, a better social order, 

 higher moral standards. It is never satisfied with 

 what it has attained. It aspires to more complete 

 control and a larger freedom. It is just because of 

 the marvelous powers of the mind that there has al- 

 ways been a tendency to refer these to some meta- 

 physical psyche or soul, an animistic survival of the 

 custom of primitive man to explain the wonderful and 

 strange by attributing them to "spirits." But there 

 are other ways by which spiritual values may be 

 gained. They may be won, realized, through a half 

 billion years of evolutionary growth. 



So we see that the mind loses nothing of its reality 

 from the standpoint of behaviorism, nor does it suffer 

 any loss of worth or dignity. On the contrary, as the 

 characteristic activity of the most highly complex and 

 perfectly integrated organism which organic evolution 

 has produced, it would appear to occupy the highest 

 position in the world of living things, unless indeed we 

 except the creations of the mind itself, such as science, 

 literature and art. 



Personally I like to think of the world movement 

 as a process of realization — and there is surely noth- 

 ing in a behaviorist psychology to discourage such a 

 conception — in which life and mind are values which 

 have been realized in evolution. The process through 

 which they have been realized seems to be a process 



