which it is proposed to put in its place is not exhibited.[1] To explain, however, is just to link together differences through an identity; and it is essential to see clearly what the developmental point of view requires us to substitute, as a principle of explanation, for the quantitative identity of physical cause and effect. This, as I have already said, must be the principle of teleology, the ideal identity of end and means. Now, it is of fundamental importance to recognize that the adoption of this category implies a complete transformation of view and a shifting of emphasis from the parts to the whole. There can no longer be any question of the equality or inequality of the members of the series viewed as external to each other; but, as means or functional processes, they are now conceived as constituent parts of a teleological system. It may be that Professor Baldwin actually reaches the teleological point of view in his treatment of the genetic categories as 'prospective;' but, as I read him, he is there insisting on the necessity of recognizing the something new, 'the further career,' rather than looking at the whole process as a ideologically developing system. Moreover, the idea of teleological development carries with it another aspect of the genetic series which Professor Baldwin, I think, has not emphasized, and which he perhaps would not admit. A genetic series as teleological is a self-determining series, as opposed to the changes of a mechanical system which are determined from without. So long as we read a series in genetic terms, we must regard the different modes and stages which it presents as the movement and manifestation of an ideal unity or whole. Determination through external causality is simply unmeaning and inapplicable. To give a causo-mechanical explanation of evolution is a contradiction in terms. When such a mode of explanation is adopted the evolutionary point of view has been abandoned, and the developing subject been transformed into a series of objects, which are viewed as standing in causal relation to other objects.
When, on the other hand, the genesis of knowledge is conceived
- ↑ In a paper in the Psychological Review for November (Vol. XVI, No. 6) Professor Baldwin has replied to this criticism as well as to certain other points which I urged in an article in the May (1909) number of that journal. It does not, however, appear to me that his statements on this point clear up the difficulty to which I have called attention. The questions at issue are too fundamental to be discussed in a footnote, and I hope to find occasion to return to the subject.
