forms of thought or fancy. So stable intellective systems, directly or indirectly subserving practice, are elaborated and correlated. In short, restriction and organic structure have replaced the primitive diffusion or irradiation': a microcosm more or less perfect and complete now manifests the subject that has shaped it, and the place which this occupies in that larger world from which it now sharply distinguishes itself.

If the plastic continuity of this long process debars us from describing it as a mere 'organization' of a quasi-atomic aggregate or sensation-manifold, determined by certain quasi-mechanical laws; if also its uniqueness compels us to recognise the subjective factor as formative throughout; then may we not interpret it as the genesis of a psychical organism, a gradually articulated system, implying correspondingly coordinated functions? As we say that the child when born is possessed of a viable physical organism, may we not say that as he advances towards adolescence he becomes possessed of a mental organism making him 'viable' as a person in a society of persons?

(ii) What next concerns us—and this will justify our interpretation-is to regard this genesis in the light of the subjective activity, which, as we have maintained, it really implies, to regard it functionally that is to say. From first to last the growing structure just summarily described-we must now note—is the work of the subject so surely as feeling and attention, or in one word, interest, is essential to mental synthesis in any form. There must be material to synthesize, of course: we cannot synthesize what is not 'given.' But we do not synthesize merely on the ground of presentation. Differentiation implies some concentration of attention; but effective synthesis implies interest as well. The mere surprise or 'shock' that non-voluntarily determines a momentary notice, unless accompanied or immediately followed by either pain or pleasure, leads to nothing'. So far this 'shock' answers simply to the receptive movement of attention as

1 Cf. above, ch. x, § 1, p. 244. But to describe this state as one in which feeling is 'neutral' or indifferent and yet to identify it with excitement, as Bain did, is surely bad analysis. Plenty of people go in search of excitement, but does anyone hanker after feeling that is neutral or indifferent? In Mind, O.S. vols. xii.-xiv. there is a full discussion of this topic led off by Bain himself. The reply of Professor Sully (xiii. pp. 248 ff.) is especially good. How little the non-voluntary movements of attention have to do with psychical life-though we may regard them as awakening it-is shewn by the almost universal neglect of this topic by psychologists.

distinct from the active. If it prove to be uninterestingneither hurtful nor helpful-it is soon ignored, however startling it may have been at first; as we may see, for example, in the readiness with which animals 'get used' to trains. If, however, it prove to be interesting, there is always reaction: something positive is learnt and something actual is done. These two complementary processes, ignoring on the one side, selecting on the other1, become more pronounced the more-with advancing experience the subjective initiative increases. So the objective differentiation progresses on subjectively determined lines. This is for psychology the first and fundamental fact: to lose sight of it is to miss the essential meaning of experience".

But on the one hand we dislike change and on the other we seek it. These differences must be explained or reconciled. Obviously aversion to all change would tend towards a stationary state, while the exclusive pursuit of change, were it possible, would put an end to all continuity. Stability and progression, in a word, are correlative conditions of psychical, as they are of all other, evolution. The changes that we dislike, then, are such as frustrate what is done; whereas those that we seek are such as may further what is still to do. The one implies the interest of self-conservation, the other that of self-betterment. So long as all goes well, the latter may predominate, for it means more and fuller life; only in the contrary case does the former become paramount, for then the life we already have is threatened. It is thus easy to see how, normally, as experience advances, increased familiarity and facility within its present limits-just because there it has become chiefly routine, our 'dead selves'-prompt us to gaze into the future for the ways and means of advance to 'higher things.'

We are then at the ideational level, and the one thing we have to notice there is that the subjective selection we have found shaping experience at the perceptual level is still more evident at this, and becomes increasingly evident the further the ideational synthesis proceeds. Already reduplications of the

1 We may note here a certain converse relation between subjective selection and natural selection: the one rejects by positively selecting, the other selects by positively rejecting. Nature eliminates the unfit, leaving the fittest to survive, experients select what interests them and are indifferent to all beside.

2 Cf. above, ch. i, § 4, p. 20 fin.; ch. iii, § 3, p. 72 fin.

memory-thread had led to preperceptions and, if the situation meant anything to the subject, to an appropriate motor attitude or response. So far to provide was not merely to foresee but also to prepare. But when from such experiences free ideas at length emerge, they too are gradually synthesized by the subject in seeking how to bring things nearer to the heart's desire-not primarily then for the sake of theory but entirely for the sake of life. In other words the synthesis here as earlier is a working synthesis, specification for action, 'instrumental,' organic anyhow, even when defective. And if effective-we may add by the way -assuredly true as well; and not true because it is useful but useful because it is true. Here, as elsewhere, the distinction between psychological order and logical order is important. To identify the two in this case seems to be the mistake of some pragmatists; but to insist on the genetic priority for experience of the teleological and practical is certainly a merit.

It may be remarked by anticipation, that even at the higher level, to which we are presently to pass, the pursuit of truth 'for its own sake' as we say, which is then possible, is also essentially conative and practical. We try and fail and try again. We have to devise means, which we call methods and hypotheses; and the entire process is sustained by subjective interest. In spite of its special character-in that what we seek is certainly not personal advantage-the pursuit of truth even more than simpler conations depends on subjective selection. The interest in it is not less keen, if more disinterested, than the pursuit of useful knowledge merely as a means, to attain which the efforts of its pursuit are secondary. But presently, for some at any rate, the pleasure of the pursuit converts this too into an end in itself. The end as well as the means being then intrinsically valued, we realise so far the ideal of subjective activity.

To realise this ideal completely so that every power find sweet employ'-becomes the goal of human endeavour at the intellectual level, and brings subjective selection more than ever to the fore. For the realisation of ideals, since they actually are not but only are to be, obviously presupposes that the subject selects, pursues, and-may be-achieves them. Again 'synthetic preference,' which is possible only at this level, is, as already said, due entirely to subjective selection.

Here psychogeny, so far as the psychological individual is

concerned, is for us at an end: the superman dwells in the realm of fancy not of fact. But the comparative study of concrete individuals opens up an enormous field, so great is the diversity, and so many the grades of development within the limits of the human type. It is in this connexion that we commonly talk of character, and under this head we are to try presently to study psychogeny a little further. Before taking leave of the psychological individual, we have, however, still to glance at the other factor which his psychogeny involves besides subjective selection, viz. the objective factor which-somewhat stretching the termwe might regard as the analogue of natural selection.

The (epistemologically) Objective Factor.

3. By objective factor three distinct things might be meant: the presentational continuum, i.e. the psychoplasm which experience differentiates and organizes; or the physical world as science conceives it, to which our bodily organism pertains; or the world in which we live, the world of nature and history as common sense understands it. The last of these is the epistemologically objective factor just now referred to-the world that each one comes to know and distinguish from himself and his psychical organism, only after attaining the transsubjective level. With this we begin. It includes all that we commonly describe collectively as circumstances whether physical or social; whatever, in other words, is an antecedent condition or occasion, on the psychological side, of the successive syntheses that differentiate and articulate what we call the psychical organism. Some circumstances betoken the accomplishment of our purposes, some are due to the purposes of others interested on our behalf. The increase in the number and worth of such circumstances may be the surest index of the world's progress. Meanwhile circumstances for the most part remain independent of the several activities of particular individuals and are so far as they are concerned--contingent, if not fortuitous. And, for us now, this independence is the primary fact: it holds good of all circumstances as they stand, whatever their origin. This is just what objectivity means psychologically as well as epistemologically. Regarding circumstances in this light and from the transsubjective level, it would seem we were entitled to say that

W. P.

27

their presentation is, directly or indirectly, the material from which is selected whatever is synthesized.-Nevertheless the distinction between natural and social environment is vital to attempt to discuss them together further would only confuse.

The part which the natural environment plays-to begin with that is directly and in the main negative. We may call this strictly natural selection; but-as already said-it does not like subjective selection actively construct or synthesize: it does not itself promote either conservation or betterment. It only restrains; it may do this, however, so severely as not only to arrest, but so far at least as we can see-to terminate the subjective process altogether. This contrast is so important and so wide reaching-applying both to biological and to psychological ontogeny-as to justify a moment's reflexion even in an essay on psychology. It is fundamentally the contrast with which we are nowadays familiar as the contrast between the mechanical and the historical. The more rigorously the concatenation of the essentially changeless and inanimate system of the former is specified, the more manifest the creative functions of life and mind become. In the one there is no novelty, in the other no repetition'. To quote the fine concluding sentence of Darwin's Origin of Species just now referred to2: "There is grandeur in this view of life......that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." And as we contemplate the social and intellectual evolution of mankind-the most recent of these forms-our wonder at the vastness of the advance from so simple a beginning' still steadily grows. During all this long history, with its ever accelerating though devious progress, not a single physical law has ever changed. The whole stupendous drama of l'élan vital, as Bergson calls it, has nevertheless inserted itself into this -abstractly regarded-purely mechanical framework, producing a pattern which it cannot account for; but there it is to be accounted for somehow.

As to the social environment, here again we find what we may call a negative or restrictive element-the counterpart of the stability which is practically absolute in the abstract physical system. 1 Cf. W. James's posthumous work, Some Problems of Philosophy, 1911, ch. ix. 2 § 1, p. 411 above.