THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT 315 
II].—Tnre Psycnonogican ASPECT 
On the hypothesis of monism, the nature of which, so far 
as it bears on our inquiry, was briefly indicated in the fore- 
going section, the conscious situation is the psychical or 
mental expression of that which for the physiologist is what 
we may term a neural situation. As such it does not enter 
into the chain of physical causation ; nor do physical events 
as such—that is to say, save as experienced—enter into the 
chain of mental causation. For mental development they 
have no independent existence, and are negligible except in 
so far as they enter as items of experience into the conscious 
situation. 
But altogether apart from the way or ways in which we 
may attempt to explain the fact, most of us believe, with 
unquestioning confidence, that the growth of practical ex- 
perience, somehow associated with nervous changes in the 
brain or sensorium, is of real value in the guidance of 
behaviour in such manner as to secure biological ends. Con- 
scious experience must therefore, in the animal world, serve 
its biological purpose, or it will be of no avail. If there be 
not a pre-established harmony, there must be an evolved 
harmony ; and how such a harmony could be evolved if con- 
sciousness be not by some means in vital touch with behaviour, 
influenced by and in turn influencing it, we cannot conceive. 
The steam-whistle theory of consciousness leaves the matter, 
for the evolutionist, in this inconceivable position. 
We need not, however, flog a dead horse. We need not 
ask how, on the steam-whistle theory, those states of feeling 
which we broadly classify as pleasurable could become asso- 
ciated with behaviour conducing to welfare, and those which 
“we group as hurtful with behaviour which is biologically 
harmful. It is more important, again, to notice that, associated 
and consonant with the biological end, there arises a psycho- 
logical end of behaviour—what we may term, with the quali- 
fications before considered,* the getting of pleasure and the 
* Vide supra, p. 285. 
