affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all that
makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as conducive to the
highest human perfection. In the former, the man of contemplation would
be treated as only half a human being, passion and practical resource
would become once more glories of our race, a concrete victory over this
earth's outward powers of darkness would appear an equivalent for any
amount of passive spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the
test of every education worthy of the name.

It is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology of our own
day the emphasis is transferred from the mind's purely rational
function, where Plato and Aristotle, and what one may call the whole
classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so long neglected
practical side. The theory of evolution is mainly responsible for this.
Man, we now have reason to believe, has been evolved from infra-human
ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly existed, if at all, and whose
mind, so far as it can have had any function, would appear to have been
an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from
the environment, so as to escape the better from destruction.
Consciousness would thus seem in the first instance to be nothing but a
sort of super-added biological perfection,--useless unless it prompted
to useful conduct, and inexplicable apart from that consideration.

Deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our consciousness
persist, undisguised and undiminished. Our sensations are here to
attract us or to deter us, our memories to warn or encourage us, our
feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain our behavior, so that on
the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land. Whatever of
transmundane metaphysical insight or of practically inapplicable
æsthetic perception or ethical sentiment we may carry in our interiors