s 
1896:] A New Factor in Evolution. 549 
in the direction of correct writing. It is a long and most 
laborious accumulation of slight Organic Selections from over- 
produced movements (ref. for handwriting in detail, 2, chap. 
v; also 2, pp. 373, ff.). 
6. The only resort left to the theory that consciousness is some 
sort of an actus purus is to hold that it directs brain energies or 
selects between possible alternatives of movement; but besides 
the objection that it is as hard to direct movement as it is to 
make it (for nothing short of a force could release or direct 
brain energies), we find nothing of the kind necessary. The 
attention is what determines the particular movement in 
developed organisms, and the attention is no longer con- 
sidered an actus purus with no brain process accompanying it. 
The attention is a function of memories, movements, organic 
experiences. We do not attend to a thing because we have 
already selected it, or because the attention selects it; but we 
select it because we—consciousness and organism—are attending to 
it. “It is clear that this doctrine of selection as applied to 
muscular movement does away with all necessity for holding 
that consciousness even directs brain energy. The need of 
such direction seems to me to be as artificial as Darwin showed 
the need of special creation to be for the teleological adapta- 
tions of the different species. This need done away, in this 
case of supposed directive agency as in that, the question of 
the relation of consciousness to the brain becomes a meta- 
physical one, just as that of teleology in nature became a meta- 
physical one; and it is not to much profit that science meddles 
withit. And biological as well as psychological science should 
be glad that it is so, should it not?” (ref. 6; and on the meta- 
physical question, ref. 7). 
y. 
A word on the relation of this principle of Organic Selection 
to Natural Selection. Natural Selection is too often treated as 
a positive agency. It is not a positive agency; it is entirely 
negative. It is simply a statement of what occurs when an 
organism does not have the qualifications necessary to enable 
it to survive in given conditions of life ; it does not in any way 
