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
aesthetic perception or ethical sentiment we may carry in our interiors
might at this rate be regarded as only part of the incidental excess of
function that necessarily accompanies the working of every complex
machine.

I shall ask you now--not meaning at all thereby to close the theoretic
question, but merely because it seems to me the point of view likely to
be of greatest practical use to you as teachers--to adopt with me, in
this course of lectures, the biological conception, as thus expressed,
and to lay your own emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he may
be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in
adapting him to this world's life.

In the learning of all matters, we have to start with some one deep
aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the only aspect;
and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those neglected other
features which complete the case. No one believes more strongly than I
do that what our senses know as 'this world' is only one portion of our
mind's total environment and object. Yet, because it is the primal
portion, it is the _sine qua non_ of all the rest. If you grasp the facts
about it firmly, you may proceed to higher regions undisturbed. As our
time must be so short together, I prefer being elementary and
fundamental to being complete, so I propose to you to hold fast to the
ultra-simple point of view.

The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily told.

First, human and animal psychology thereby become less discontinuous. I
know that to some of you this will hardly seem an attractive reason,
but there are others whom it will affect.

Second, mental action is conditioned by brain action, and runs parallel
therewith. But the brain, so far as we understand it, is given us for
practical behavior.