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Even the "Reign of Law" theory, Owen's "purposive route of development and chance . . . . by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto," as well as other expositions of the general doctrine on a theistic basis, are barely mentioned without a word of comment, except, perhaps, a general "protest against the arraying of probabilities against the teachings of Scripture."
It has evolved according to sound Darwinian principles, and in so doing the fittest of its 'variations' have survived. But were these variations quite fortuitous? May they not have been purposive responses to the stimulation of environment? Can logic have been invented like saws and ships for purposes of human service?
But this censure too is entirely mistaken, not because it urges the purposive views against the causal but because it is in error as to the facts. Such critics are fully under the influence of the startling results which are reached; they do not take the trouble to examine the long and difficult way which has had to be traversed with patience and energy.
The decision as to the aims of education must be made by ethics, which indeed takes not a causal but a purposive attitude. Only after ethics has selected the aim, psychology can teach us how to reach it. Of course this principle must hold for the physician too. All his causal dealing with the mind presupposes that he has selected a certain end in harmony with his purpose.
But so long as he realizes that he is thereby committing himself by implication to a prophetic and purposive interpretation of the facts, he need not hesitate to style this growth of complexity progress so far as man is concerned.
So far most of the world's progress has been by a slow course of natural adjustment of individuals and groups to one another; that process cannot be stopped, but it can be directed by those who are conscious of the maladjustments that exist and perceive ways and means of improvement. Under such persons as leaders purposive progress may be achieved more rapidly and effectually in the near future.
Our inner life in its purposive reality has therefore nothing to do with brain processes, but if we are on the psychological track and consider man as a system of psychological phenomena, then to be sure, we must see that our only possible interest lies in the finding of necessary causal connections.
With its assistance we discover that the purposive and remarkable sense-organs were developed, like all other organs, without any preconceived design developed by the same mechanical process of natural selection, the same constant correlation of adaptation and heredity, by which the other purposive structures in the animal frame were slowly and gradually brought forth in the struggle for life.
In the immediate reality of our purposive life we aim towards mastering the world by a causal understanding, and for this end we create science; but this aim itself is then a purpose and not an object. The first act is thus for us, the thinkers, not a part of the causal events, but a purposive intention towards an ideal.
His instinctive feeling that disease is a causal process, and that he should therefore keep away from the purposive attitude, leads him too easily to a dangerous narrowness. He treats disease as if it were an isolated process and overlooks the thousandfold connections in which the nervous system stands with the patient's whole life experience in past and future.
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