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 
139 
