8 PSYCUOLOG T. 



activit}- from its outset and soliciting or drawing it into 

 being by a sort of vis a f route. Tlie end, on the contrary, ia 

 deemed a mere passive result, pushed into being a tergo, 

 having had, so to speak, no voice in its own production. 

 Alter the pre-existing conditions, and with inorganic ma- 

 terials 3'ou bring forth each time a different apparent end. 

 But with intelligent agents, altering the conditions changes 

 the activity displayed, but not the end reached ; for here 

 the idea of the yet unrealized end co-operates with the con- 

 ditions to determine what the activities shall be. 



77ie pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for 

 their attainment are thv^ the mark and criterion of the presence 

 of mentality in a phenomenon. We all use this test to dis- 

 criminate between an intelligent and a mechanical per- 

 formance. Wo impute no mentality to sticks and stones, 

 because they never seem to move for the sake of anything, 

 but always when pushed, and then indifferently and with no 

 sign of choice. So we unhesitatingly call them senseless. 



Just so we form our decision upon the deepest of all 

 philosophic problems : Is the Kosmos an expression of 

 intelligence rational in its inward nature, or a brute ex- 

 ternal fact pure and simple ? If we find ourselves, in con- 

 templating it, unable to banish the impression that it is a 

 realm of final purposes, that it exists for the sake of some- 

 thing, we place intelligence at the heart of it and have a 

 religion. If, on the contrary, in surveying its irremediable 

 flux, we can think of the present only as so much mere 

 mechanical sprouting from the past, occurring with no 

 reference to the future, we are atheists and materialists. 



In the lengthy discussions which psychologists have 

 carried on about the amount of intelligence displayed by 

 lower mammals, or the amount of consciousness involved in 

 the functions of the nerve-centres of reptiles, the same test 

 has always been applied : Is the character of the actions 

 such that we must believe them to be performed/or the sake 

 of their result ? The result in question, as we shall here- 

 after abundantly see, is as a rule a useful one, — the animal 

 is, on the whole, safer under the circumstances for bringing 

 it forth. So far the action has a teleological character; 



