ry process is a struggle not for bare life or
existence, but for the prevalence of the _higher kinds_ of life and
existence; and intelligence and morality are not only co-operative as
instruments in maintaining and extending human life, but are themselves
the principal elements of that complex life. True, the mind does
minister to the body and preserve it; but still more does the body
minister to the mind; or rather, each ministers to that whole in which
the play of the mind is the principal function and the play of the body
subordinate. If, then, we hold to the verdict of our common sense, and
regard our mental life not as subordinate to our sensitive and vegetal
life, but as co-ordinate and even superior, we must (so to speak) view
it as no less "for its own sake," as no less an "end in itself" than
they are, but rather much more; we must regard evolution as making for
the life of truth and the life of righteousness even more principally
than for bare existence or animal vitality. It is now no longer mere
life that tries to assert itself, and in the struggle shapes things to
what they are; but it is the very highest kind of life, that is trying
to come to the birth. Nature inherently tends to the higher through the
lower forms of life, and these minister to the higher and receive in
return from them the means of a yet more efficacious ministry.

In this conception, every function of the organism has two aspects,
under one of which it is its own end and exists for its own sake as an
element of the life of the whole; under the other it is ministerial,
serving other functions above and below it, as it in return is served by
them. Correspondence with the environment is, similarly, not merely a
condition of life, but also that wherein vitality principally consists.
"Living" is spontaneous self-adaptation to surrounding reality, taken in
the very widest sense. The more diverse and multiform this adaptability,
the fuller and higher is the life; and thus our ordinary common-sense
classifications are justified. Each new manifestation of life means some
new correspondence with surrounding reality as we piss from mere
vegetation, and then add local movement, and one sense after another,
till we come finally to intelligence and the life of reason and
right-doing, which again, consists in self-conformation to things as
they really are. In all this we are in agreement with common sense and
common language, which identify the fullest