THE PRIMAL MIND 



postulate a primal impulse toward development? Is 

 it all pure mechanics? 



Of course, in saying all this we are ascribing our 

 intelligence to nature, and we cannot do otherwise. 

 We can think of degrees of intelligence, but not of 

 kinds. Evolution in the inorganic world has been 

 a purely chemicomechanical process, but in the or- 

 ganic there has been a new factor, supermechanical 

 and superchemical. We are forced to think of it in 

 those terms. 



Think of the blind, irrational, or, at least, un- 

 rational forces that are careering over the earth at 

 this moment, and every moment, — in the winds, 

 the tides, the rains, the storms, the floods, the river 

 and ocean currents, — changing its surface, pulling 

 down, building up, transporting; sleeping here, 

 raging there; one moment fostering life, the next, 

 destroying it; malignant or benevolent according as 

 we place ourselves in relation to them; and all, from 

 our point of view, without intelligent guidance. No 

 engineer has planned the drainage-system of the 

 globe, and yet see how surely the waters find their 

 way to the sea. 



I can see nothing in the operations of inorganic 

 nature analogous to human intelligence or human 

 benevolence, or, I may add, analogous to human 

 malevolence. Human intelligence would go more 

 directly to its goal and avoid the waste, the delay, 

 the suffering, the failures, that we see about us. We 

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