t units of composition or function,
numbering these off, and labelling them by technical names.

III. THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM

I wish now to continue the description of the peculiarities of the
stream of consciousness by asking whether we can in any intelligible way
assign its _functions_.

It has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge, and it
leads to action.

Can we say which of these functions is the more essential?

An old historic divergence of opinion comes in here. Popular belief has
always tended to estimate the worth of a man's mental processes by their
effects upon his practical life. But philosophers have usually cherished
a different view. "Man's supreme glory," they have said, "is to be a
_rational_ being, to know absolute and eternal and universal truth. The
uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate
matters. 'The theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing
can be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to
take sides with one or the other of these views, and emphasize the
practical or the theoretical ideal. In the latter case, abstraction from
the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human
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