488 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



Now, from all that has been said in this chapter, it will 

 be seen that, on the hypothesis of monism, we cannot 

 regard organic and mental evolution as continuous the one 

 into the other, but rather as parallel the one with the 

 other — as the kinetic and metakinetic manifestations of 

 the same process. Organic evolution is a matter of 

 structure and activity. If the structure or the activity be 

 not attuned to the environing conditions, it will be elimi- 

 nated, those sufficiently well attuned surviving. Turning 

 to the metakinetic aspect, we have seen that there are 

 certain mental processes which are directly and closely 

 associated with activities. Their evolution will be in- 

 timately associated with organic evolution. For if these 

 processes lead to ill-attuned activities, the organism will 

 be eliminated; and thus the evolution of well-attuned 

 activities and their corresponding mental states will proceed 

 side by side. "We may, therefore, say, not incorrectly, that 

 these lower phases of mental evolution are subject to the 

 law of natural selection. 



But when the neural processes which intervene between 

 stimulus and activity become more complex and more 

 roundabout ; when, instead of being directly and closely 

 associated with life-preserving activities, they are associated 

 indirectly and remotely ; — then they become, step by step, 

 removed from their subjection to natural selection. And 

 when, in man, the metakineses associated with these neural 

 kineses assume the form of hypotheses, theories, interpreta- 

 tions of nature, moral ideals, and religious conceptions, 

 these are, except in so far as they lead to activities which 

 may conduce to elimination, no longer subject to the law 

 of natural selection, unless we use this term in a somewhat 

 metaphorical, or at least extended, sense. They are subject, 

 as we have seen, to a new process of elimination through 

 incongruity. 



Similarly with that wide range of conduct in man which 

 is the outcome of his conceptual life, and is removed from 

 those merely life-preserving activities which are still, to 

 some extent, under the influence of natural elimination. 



