INDIVIDUAL TELESIS 70 1
journal, Mind. 1 In this paper I attacked the problem in a some- what popular way, directing it more or less against the school of laissez faire philosophers, but bringing out certain aspects in a different light from that in which they had previously been viewed.
I continued to reflect upon the subject, and its importance grew as its varied applications and implications became appar- ent. At last I decided to devote an entire volume to its full elucidation, and my Psychic Factors of Civilization, which appeared in 1893, was the result. In this work I have passed in review the entire philosophy of mind and joined this to that of society. It is in chap, xxxiii of that work that I have brought forward the principal considerations that should occupy this paper. These I shall now endeavor to epitomize as comports with the limits which the paper imposes.
Telic progress, as the name implies, depends altogether upon that faculty of mind which enables man to pursue ends which it foresees and judges to be advantageous. A clear idea must there- fore be formed of the precise nature of that faculty before it is possible fully to understand how it operates. After all I had said in Psychic Factors in the direction of explaining the origin and nature of that faculty, which, so far as I am aware, was the first attempt that had been made to explain these on wholly natural principles, I still felt that there was more to be said, i. e. t that there was another way of approaching the subject and leading up to the same result, which for certain types of mind might render the explanation still clearer. I reflected a year on this new mode of treatment and then undertook to formulate it."
My purpose in this new pugillns was to arrive at the exact nature of final causes, as the result of a long series of cosmic steps in the direction of rendering the forces of nature and the properties of matter more efficient in accomplishing results or doing work. These several evolutionary steps were shown to
'Vol. IX, London, October 1884, pp. $63-573.
"The Natural Storage of Energy," the Afonut, Vol. V, Chicago, January 1895, pp. 247-263.
