The Relation of Organic to Mental Evolution. 269 



nerve-fibres convey to it the currents by which it is stimu- 

 lated to functional activity : the nutritive processes to 

 ■which it contributes are necessary for its maintenance ; 

 respiratory processes are essential for its continued vitality 

 and for the elaboration of its special secretion ; for it the 

 heart beats and the blood circulates. All this is so familiar 

 and well recognized as to savour of the biological common- 

 place. It is a matter of common knowledge that the 

 individual cell is in nice adjustment to an environment 

 of the body of which it is a constituent unit, and that it 

 is only in virtue of this adjustment that its continued 

 existence is possible. 



But when we come to the mental development that 

 is implied in and grows out of conscious adjustment, the 

 analogous facts, though equally important, are not so well 

 recognized. Just as there is an organization of the 

 material body into a unity of interdependent parts, so too 

 there is an organization of states of consciousness into a 

 body of experience. And just as the adjustment of the 

 parts to the whole in the material body is essential to the 

 continued existence of both, so too is the adjustment of the 

 parts to the whole in the body of experience essential to 

 that progressive unification without which mental develop- 

 ment would be impossible. Conscious adjustment involves 

 choice ; and this implies the selection of that which is 

 acceptable or pleasing, or in other words (and more gene- 

 rally), in harmonious adjustment to the conscious system; 

 and the rejection, so far as possible, of that which is dis- 

 tasteful, discordant, or incongruous. Just as every organ, 

 every tissue, every cell within the animal body, has to 

 make good its claim to continued existence at the bar of 

 the incorporated society of its biological peers; so does 

 every bit of experience stand its trial at the bar of con- 

 sciousness ; it has to make good its claim for repetition in 



