In conclusion, then, we may say that the primary purpose of the evolution of feeling and emotion is to promote beneficial behaviour, and that the observed consonance of the psychological end of attaining satisfaction, and the biological end of securing survival, seems to be due to natural selection--is, indeed, scarcely explicable on any other naturalistic hypothesis.
A word of warning may be added. We have repeatedly spoken of biological and psychological ends. By this we mean what seems to the observer, as an interpreter of natural processes, the purpose and object of their existence. But the word “end” is often used in such a way as to imply foresight and contrivance on the part of a rational being. We have not used it in this sense. Whether the whole of nature, including animal behaviour, is driven onwards to definite ends by an underlying Cause, is a metaphysical question. It is not one on which science has any right to express an opinion one way or the other. Science deals with the phenomena; the causes of their being lie outside her province.
At the outset of our inquiry, we used the word “behaviour” in a wide and comprehensive sense. Thus broadly used, I said, the term in all cases indicates and draws attention to the reaction of that which we speak of as behaving in response to certain surrounding forces or circumstances which evoke the behaviour. The behaviour of living cells is dependent on changes in their environment; that of deciduous trees, as they put forth their leaves in the spring or shed them in the autumn, is related to the change of the season; instinctive, intelligent, and emotional behaviour are called forth in response to those circumstances which exercise a constraining influence at the moment of action. Used in this comprehensive sense, the term “behaviour” neither implies nor excludes the presence of consciousness. We know from our own experience, however, that consciousness does in some cases accompany behaviour, and we infer that in many other cases it may be present. But we need a criterion of its presence to guide our inferences, and this criterion we found in the ability of living beings to profit by experience. In Dr. Stout’s phraseology, if a thing seems to acquire meaning for such a being, and the behaviour is guided in accordance with such acquired meaning, we infer the presence of consciousness as supplying conditions effective in determining its course. Still this does not exclude, nay, rather it presupposes the presence of sentience at a lower stage of evolution, a sentience which is as yet ineffective since the process of conscious coalescence has not begun, or has not been carried far enough.