Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/66

 actions and instinctive movements which even in men play a great rôle.

If we find all these qualities of the intellectual faculties to be a necessary concomitant of the power of self-movement already in the animal world, so do we, on the other hand, find in the same qualities also the same limitations which even the most embracing and most penetrating understanding of the highly-developed civilised man cannot surmount.

Forces and capacities which were acquired as weapons in the battle for existence can naturally be made available for other purposes as well as those of rendering existence secure when the organism has brought its power of self-movement and its intelligence as well as its instincts, of which we will speak later, to a high enough degree of development. The individual can employ the muscles, which were developed in it for the purpose of snatching its booty or warding off the foe, as well for dancing and playing. But their particular character is obtained by these powers and capacities all the same only from the struggle for life which developed them. Play and dance develop no particular muscles.

That holds good also of the intellectual powers and faculties as a necessary supplement to the power of self-movement in the struggle for life; developed in order to render possible to the organism the most suitable movement in the surrounding world for its own preservation, yet it could, all the same, be made to serve other purposes. To these belong also pure knowing without any practical thoughts in the background, without regard for the practical consequences which it can bring about. But our intellectual powers have not been developed by the struggle for existence to become an organ of pure knowledge, but only to be an organ which regulates our movements in conformity with their purpose. So completely does it function in respect of the latter, so incomplete is it in the first. From the very beginning most intimately connected with the power of self-movement, it develops itself completely only in mutual dependence on the power