Consciousness and Evolution.

This is a psychological attempt to discover the method of the individual's adaptations; it has detailed applications in the field of higher mental process, where imitation, volition, etc., give direct exemplifications of the circular type of reaction. But if the truth of it be allowed by the biologist for the individual's development, it follows from the doctrine of recapitulation that this type function shall run through all life. This would mean that something analogous to consciousness (as pleasure and pain, etc.,) is coextensive with life, and that the vital process itself shows a fundamental difference in movements--analogous to the difference between pleasure-incited and pain-incited movements. The biologist may say that this is too special-this difference of reaction-to be fundamental; so it may be. But then so is life special, very special! Whatever we may say to such particular conclusions, they illustrate one of the topics which should be discussed by anyone, biologist or psychologist, who wants to find all the factors of evolution. There are some factors revealed in ontogenesis which do not appear in the current theories of phylogenetic evolution. Indeed, so far beside the mark are the biologists who are discussing heredity to-day that they generally omit--except when they hit at each other--the two factors which the psychologist has to recognize; Social Heredity, for the transmission of socially-acquired characters, and Organic Selection, for the accommodations of the individual organism, and through them of 'determinate variations' in phylogeny. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)