There is a certain appeal in regarding the conscious mind as an adaptation created by the intelligence of life to further its ends, an adaptation that has gone wild and come to regard itself and its virtual centre, the ego or the self, individual or collective, as the originating force and goal of the entire process, and to regard life, or the unconscious, as the ancillary function. And out of this comes not only all theology and metaphysics, but concomitantly all psychological self-hindering complexity and neuroticism, as rationalisations of this primal usurpation. That such usurpations tend to be the rule rather than the exception in evolution does not make this one any the less an obfuscation.