Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/543

 UTILITARIAN ECONOMICS 529

adaptation of means to ends is one of the most striking and won- derful in the whole range of nature's operations. So long as the psychic element remained at this lowest stage of pure feeling, it was a perfectly safe ally of the other cosmic forces. The struggle might go on, and no matter how great the havoc among the animated and sensitive molecules and cells, they would all prove true to their original purpose and survive or perish as fate might decide.

But the same agencies that created the primary psychic element worked for its development. The more intense it was, the more certain were its effects in securing the preservation and multiplication of life. A stage was at length reached at which a second element, derivative, indeed, but distinct in its mode of action, made its appearance and was slowly developed. This was the reason, dimly apparent in some very lowly creatures, and plainly manifest in the highest animal races. I have attempted l fully to trace the origin and development of this new psychic element and need not now repeat this history. Born of the cosmic law and created to be the servant of the primary ele- ment, it may be described in one phrase as a device for securing indirectly those ends which could not be secured directly. It is easy to see that, so far at least as the ends of the creature were concerned, this step represented a great gain.

The profound bio-psychic dualism under consideration demands still further elucidation. As I have pointed out on a former occasion, 3 function is essentially static, while feeling alone is dynamic. The former rests on the law of heredity, the latter underlies the phenomena of variation. But throughout the animal series these two factors codperate with sufficient exactness to be in the main safe. They are self-regulating, and natural selection may be trusted to correct any dangerous tendency toward an undue deviation from the type. Near the end of that series there have occurred, it is true, enormous aberrations, in certain respects almost completely reversing the normal condition

^Psychic Facton o/ CivMtatwM, Part II

'Political Sf tenet Quarterly, Vol. X No WtH V..ik. June. iSqS. pp. 206. 207.