Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/643

Rh biologic sense, and the difficulty before referred to is reduced to showing the relation of the advantageous to the non-advantageous faculties. The latter have been habitually regarded as constituting the whole of mind, and hence it became impossible to account for the origin of mind on natural principles. It is only necessary to affiliate the speculative powers upon the egoistic ones. This I have also attempted to do, and I believe successfully, on the neo-Lamarckian principle of the transmission of characters acquired by individual effort. I thus account for both the creative and the speculative genius of man, and the intellect in its most fully equipped form no longer presents an insoluble problem. These so-called higher faculties are simply derivative, and represent a surplus that has accumulated over and above what was demanded for the essentials of life.

The consideration of the intellect as the directive agent, highly essential as it was, constitutes nevertheless a sort of digression or interruption of the main principle that was under discussion. In resuming the thread I will put some of the results previously reached into a somewhat different form. It was found convenient to personify Nature and ascribe to her an end or object. This object was generalized under the term Function. The object of the sentient creature was at the same time shown to be Feeling. Something was said of the scheme of Nature, or evolution, in the organic world. This, on closer inspection, proves to be distinct from function or the simple preservation and continuation of life. The latter involves growth and multiplication, but not change. Evolution, on the contrary, depends wholly upon change, and this involves a new principle, viz., activity or effort. It is through individual effort that the organism is molded to the environment, and this organic modification is what constitutes those perfectionments of structure that result in progressive development. We may therefore personify Evolution also, and ascribe to it an end or object. It is in the interest of Evolution that the organism put forth efforts to attain its ends. The purely biological formula may therefore be stated as follows: