Ciass_ Book a INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE BY G. LLOYD MORGAN D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S. PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 ■*** & ^ PREFACE IN the summer of 1910 a symposium on the subject of Instinct and Intelligence was held in London at a joint meeting of the Aristotelian and British Psycho- logical Societies and of the Mind Association. Con- siderable interest in the discussion was shown both in the room in which we met and beyond its walls. The papers then taken as read, and subsequently published in the " British Journal of Psychology," disclose not a little divergence in the sense in which the terms instinc- tive and intelligent are used, an underlying diver- gence in the principles on which the proffered interpretations are based, and indications, more or less clear, of yet deeper-seated differences of philosophical foundation. The questions at issue seem to open out live problems, and problems of wide range. Being under promise to write a short work on some aspect of genetic psychology I thought I might do some service by expanding my own contribution to the sym- posium, by bringing it into relation with the views expressed by other contributors, by following up the subject in further detail, and especially by giving something like definite form to the doctrine of ex- perience, which has, of late years, been taking shape in my mind, under influences too numerous to admit of detailed citation. vi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE The burden of my contention is that the history of the universe, so far as we are able to read it, is one continuous story, every episode in which is, if one may so phrase it, logically correlated with other relevant episodes. I use the word logically in a broad sense as equivalent to intelligibly, with no finalistic implica- tion. For reasons which I hope to render clear I avoid the terms mechanical or mechanistic, since there is much in the world-story which, though it should be interpreted as logically or intelligibly determinate, involves natural relationships with which neither mechanics nor mechanism, as such, has any concern. The world-story, then, is intelligible and, in that sense, has a logic which we may endeavour to understand. But the story is only given up to date ; we can only found our interpretation on the part that has so far been told ; of its further and future development we can only make forecasts in so far as we can, in some measure, sympathetically identify our own finite and imperfect logic of interpretation with the fuller and more perfect logic of the story we attempt to read, a world-story within which our own life and thought is itself a correlated episode forming part of the story as a whole. Often our powers of prevision are balked. It is true that where we are dealing with repetitive routine, little more is required than a skilled applica- tion of our powers of calculation. But in the evolution which supersedes routine we have again and again to confess that we cannot foretell how the world-story will work out in the future. This however, I contend, is not because the inherent development of the story will be lacking in logical coherence ; it is because our imperfect insight and reason fail to grasp the PREFACE vii determining factors within the deeper logic of the universe. This deeper logic is what I have elected to term the ground of the world, both as that which is experienced or experienceable, and as the process of experiencing. This is the basis of the uniformity of nature, if by this we mean, not merely repetition da capo of the tune of the past in recurrent routine, but that progressive and unitary development of a harmonious theme, which is true evolution. In claiming for the universe an inner relevance — a unity of concatenation of correlated episodes — I am not, how- ever, concerned to contend that, for our finite understanding, there is nowhere and at no time discoverable irrelevance. World-processes in their detail seem often to have a way of running into blind alleys which are off the line of evolutionary progress ; but even along the main lines of progress since, so far as we can judge, the elimination of irrelevance is a condition of advance in human logic, it may well be that what we call evolution is of the same type. At any rate the development of the world, and of life on its surface, tends consistently to increasing relevance and more closely knit coherence in logical texture. As differentiation and integration proceed the growing complexity involves a type of structure which answers more and more closely to what in our thought is characteristically logical, apparent irrelevance being caught up into a richer relevance within a progressive whole. Within this developing whole with which experi- ence deals that experience has itself been developed. This involves the presence of those special relation- ships which are characterized by conscious awareness. viii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE How shall we deal with them ? There they are as a matter of fact ; that no one can deny. They eventually have all the richness and complexity which are abundantly illustrated in human life ; that must be realized to the full. But how are they to be interpreted ? As part of the world-story, the highest outcome of its logic developed ah intra ? Or as alien insertions ab extra> derived from a logic of wholly different source ? I advocate the acceptance of the former alternative. But what does this imply? It implies that the fully explicit logic of human reason is but a higher development of the scarcely explicit logic of perceptual intelligence ; and that this in turn has its roots deeply embedded in the implicit logic of instinct which, as I define it, is organic behaviour suffused with awareness. Now granted that we have here genuine evolution as contrasted with the routine repetition which it supersedes, it appears to me that the key-note of the successive steps of progress is that (if I may pursue the logical analogy) there is always more in the conclusion than was contained in the premises. That is what I understand by the progressive synthesis which is characteristic of an evolving universe which we can interpret in rational fashion. It emphasizes, for example, the fact that in natural selection we have not only the elimination of failure ; we have also the synthetic production of success. But I contend that the grounds of the conclusion are always within the logical system of nature, and are not imposed on that system ab extra. That is where I part company with Dr. Driesch's Entelechy, M. Bergson's Vital Impetus, and the Psychic Entity of Mr. McDougall's Animism. PREFACE ix And if (carrying things yet one stage further back) conscious experience in the individual organism, as a concrete universal containing its share of the ground of the universe, appears to involve a conclusion carrying more than was present in the merely organic premises of embryological development — that, I urge, is just a fact of world-synthesis to be accepted — that, I claim, is of the same order as the facts which are characteristic of evolution throughout its entire range. If then we ask why this fact should be what it is and as it is, we must surely generalize the question, and ask why evolution should have those characteristics which, by patient research, we find that it does possess ; to which question, as I understand the matter, we can give no answer unless we resort to what I have termed the metaphysics of Source. Such being in outline my personal orientation towards the intra-mundane philosophy of experience, I have attempted to lead up to a discussion of some of the problems it opens out through a consideration of the nature of instinctive behaviour and its accom- panying instinctive experience. C. LLOYD MORGAN University of Bristol May, 1 91 2 CONTENTS CHAPTER I INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE The Biological Approach — The Problem of the Source of the Natural Order excluded from Science — The Moorhen's Dive as an Example of Instinctive Behaviour — Biological Defini- tion of Instinctive Behaviour — Diving differentiated from Swimming and affords Specific Experience — Dependent on Racial Preparation under Biological Evolution — Conscious- ness at the outset a mere Spectator — Primary and Secondary Meaning — Physiological Sketch of Reflexes concerned in Instinctive Behaviour — Those involving only lower Brain- centres, distinguished from those involving the Cortex— Further Interpretation of Moorhen's Dive — The Earlier Stage of Instinctive Swimming — Are the Movements really such as to afford New Data to Experience ? — Dr. Myers' Contention that a completely New Movement is impossible — Its Logical Results — The Beginning of Experience when the Moorhen is hatched — Previous Experience in the Eggshell may be regarded as practically negligible — The Primary Genesis of Experience in Instinctive Performance — Difficult Philosophical Questions with regard to the Conscious Accompaniments — Broadened Connotation of term Instinc- tive — Dr. Driesch's definition of Instinct — Dr. Myers' Criticism thereof — Instinctive Performance practically serviceable — Serviceable to what Ends ? — The Guidance of Experience introduces Conditions other than those of Instinctive Performance xii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE CHAPTER II THE RELATION OF INSTINCT TO EXPERIENCE PAGE Instinctive Behaviour an Organic Heritage — The Experience gained a Condition of Modified Behaviour — Dr. Myers' Identification of Instinct-intelligence — Its Consideration postponed — Some questions of Terminology — Cortical Influence on Lower Brain-centres correlated with Intelligent Modification of Behaviour — Dr. Stout's Criticism — When does Learning by Experience occur? — What are its Character- istics? — Divergence of View — The First and the Second Occasion — The Potential Experiencer — Pre-perception in Instinctive Performance — Mr. McDougall's and Dr. Stout's Doctrine of Inherited Pre-perception — Philosophical Implications postponed — The Nature of Pre-perceptual Meaning — Is its presence necessary for the Interpretation of Instinctive Behaviour— If present, due to Inherited Dispositions within the Cortex — Excluded, therefore, from Instinctive Behaviour as such — If included, Instinctive Behaviour is incipiently voluntary, as in Mr. McDougall's and Dr. Archdall Reid's Definitions of Instinct— As a form of Cortical Spread dim Pre-perception may be accepted as nowise contradictory to the Thesis of this Book— But, as Dr. Stout admits, it is relatively indeterminate— Definiteness the outcome of instinctive Pre-adjustment— Dr. Stout's contention that Intelligence must be present at the Outset of Experience— Process and Product of Experience — Intelli- gence as Process is what Dr. Stout rightly emphasizes— Some measure of agreement notwithstanding some divergence — Instinctive Endowment and Congenital Capacity for learning —Cortical Processes as correlated with Experience condition the Modifications of the Sub-cortical Processes primarily concerned in Instinctive Behaviour 28 CHAPTER III REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT Recapitulation of Position— The Identification of Instinctive Behaviour with Complex and Compound Reflex Action— CONTENTS xiii Instinctive Experience correlated with cortical changes conditioned by Instinctive Procedure — Instinctive Experience an Abstract Conception referring to certain Factors of Experience as contradistinguished from the Intelligent Factors — Prof. Sherrington's Researches on Reflex Action — First and Second Grades of Co-ordination — Chief Points of Emphasis — Scratch-reflex of the Dog — The Spinal Animal — Summation of Allied Stimuli — Antagonistic Reflexes — The Common Final Path — In Competition for Use of Final Common Path one Reflex generally prevails — Bearing of this on Instinctive Phenomena — Alternation of Reflexes — Spinal Irradiation and Induction— Further Effective Co-ordination — Influence of Fatigue — Scale of Potency — Nocuous Stimuli generally pre-potent — Constellations of Stimuli give purpo- sive results — The Decerebrate Animal — Activities of Decere- brate Frog ; of the Decerebrate Pigeon ; of the Decerebrate Dog — Observations of Goltz and Prof. Sherrington — Expres- sions of Emotion— Does the Decerebrate Animal behave instinctively ? — Assumed Conditions of Experience excluded with Removal of Cortex — How is Cortical Control operative? Principles of Integration probably the same throughout Central Nervous System— Dr. Paulow on Transference of sufticient Stimulus — Afferent Inlets and Instinctive Behaviour 54 CHAPTER IV HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS AND INNATE MENTAL TENDENCIES "he Biological Origin of Instinctive Behaviour and its Relation to Consciousness — Is Consciousness as old as or later than Organic Life? — Our Provisional Hypothesis — The Con- genital and the Acquired ; their Relations to Heredity — Should Inherited Mental Capacity in definite direction be termed Instinctive? — Rational and Intellectual Instincts of some Authors — Higher Innate Tendencies regarded as Instinctive — Instinct of Mozart, Pascal, Bidder — Suggested Differentiation of Terms Innate and Instinctive — Cortical and Sub-cortical Dispositions — Secondary Meaning and Inherited Re-presentations — Pre-percepti ve Interest and Corti- cal Spread— Mr. McDougall's Doctrine of Instinct—General riv INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE and Specific (Instinctive) Tendencies — Animistic View involving Teleological Interpretation — Mr. McDougall's " Principal Instincts of Man" — The Relation of Instinct to Emotion— Classes of Instinctive Modes of Behaviour and Experience — Predicates of Inherited Constitution as Logical Subject — Instincts as Unitary Principles — Disposition and Constitution — Danger of regarding Instincts as Faculties- Pugnacity as a Concept, and as a Principle or Force — The Nature of Impulse — The role of the Innate Mental Tendencies — How they run parallel with Instinctive Tendencies — Mr. McDougall's Treatment of the Complex Emotions — Compounds of Elements or Predicates of a Logical Subject? Emotion as a Mode of Experiencing — The Unity of experiencing, and the Multiplicity of Items experienced . 87 CHAPTER V THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE The Double Reference of Experience — The Experienced and Experiencing — The Subject as "owning" Experience — Existence of Nature as experienceable postulated — Instinctive Experience simplest and naivest form of Experience — Involves Conscious Relationships, and thus distinguished from Organic Process — The "ed" Reference and the "ing" Reference scarcely differentiated — Conscious Relationships constitutive of World-process and really count — The Limits of the Mental — Are Concepts mental or non-mental? — Policy of Interpretation outlined— Concept of Source or Agency ex- cluded from Science — Natural Processes correlated — The Conditions of Process — Are there Conditions of World- process as a whole?— The Concept of Ground — Constitu- tion of Nature as Ultimate Ground for Science — Example from Crystallization — Process and Product — Pluralistic Products and Monistic View of Process— One World-story— Unity of Concatenation — Perceptual Facts and Universal Concepts — Ideal Constructions as Maps — True so far as useful— Limits of Scientific Prediction— The Beginnings of Crystallization— Could Nature and Properties of Protoplasm be foretold ? — Mechanism and Vitalism as Descriptive Terms —Vital Force and Vital Chemistry— The Concept of En- telechy— Entelechy as Ground and as Source— Is there one CONTENTS xv PAGE Science of Nature ?— Organisms as Historical Beings- Constitution of Nature the Ground of their History — If New Departures frequent in Inorganic World, why not, on the same terms, in the Organic? .126 CHAPTER VI NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE [s there a Natural History of Experience ? — Self-consciousness as terminus ad quern and as terminus a quo — The Relation of History to Science — General Rules only emerge when History repeats itself— The Ground of the Expectations involved — Routine as the Basis of Science — Within what Limits does History repeat itself? — In what Sense is Evolu- tion the Appearance of the New? — The New as only a Re-grouping of the Old — The Characteristics of Routine — Organic Routine and Organic Evolution — Routine and Not- Routine in Experience — The Concept of the Individual — Does Heredity "provide" for both Routine and Evolution? — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Heredity and the Vital Impetus — A Contribution to Metaphysics rather than to Science — M, Bergson and Darwin — M. Bergson's Stress on the Continuity of Process — His Doctrine of Intellectual Snap- shots — All Process of the Vital and Conscious Order — Steps of the Argument — The Antithetical Views of Philosophical Materialists — The Search for Reality — Relationship and its Terms — The Conscious Relationship really counts — Relation- ships in Transverse Section — The Snap-shot "now" of Experience — A Specialized and Selective Relationship — Analogies throughout the Natural Order — Instinctive Experience as a Sequence of "nows"; conditioned by Primary Meaning — Secondary Meaning involves Factors of Revival — The Importance of Context — Longitudinal Relationships — Pre-perception and Memory — The Relation- ships extended in Ideal Construction — Map of Space and Time — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Time and Memory — The Distinction between the "eds" and the " ing" of Experience, as the Basis of much of M. Bergson's Philosophy — Can we make the "ing" an "ed"? 163 xvi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE CHAPTER VII THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT PAG] Sydney Smith on the Contrast between Instinct and Reason — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct and Intelligence as Different Forms of Knowledge— The Relation of Instinct to Consciousness — Consciousness as Annulled — Relation to old Physiological "Views on Automatism — The Insinuation of Life as Pure Memory — The Brain as a Switchboard, not in any sense a Storehouse of Memories — Pure Memory as Spirit directs the Physiological Impulses in the Nervous System by the insertion of Choice — What we enjoy as Consciousness is the Glow of Unconscious Spirit traversing Unconscious Brain-matter — Instinct and Organization — Their Relation to Pure Memory — M. Bergson's View of the Relation of Instinct to Intelligence— Divergent Paths in Arthropods and Vertebrates as Choice of Vital Impetus — Must attempt to deal with M. Bergson's Views sympathetic- ally — Is the Absence of Learning a Criterion of Instinct ? — Both Instinct and Intelligence involve Innate Knowledge; the one of Things and Matter, the other of Relation and Form— Seeking and finding through Instinct and Intelligence — The Nature of Instinctive Knowledge in the Insect — Instinct as Sympathy, but the Interpretation not Scientific — M. Bergson's Aim avowedly Philosophical — His Appeal to Experience as experienczV^— Instinct, Intuition, and Sym- pathy— Intuition, Invention, and Application— The Kernel of M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct — Relation of the Doctrine to that here advocated — In all Experience the "ing" and the "eds" correlative; but with Variations of Emphasis — The Detachment of Intellectual Interpretation — M. Bergson's Method of Hypostatising the Results of Analysis — The Home of Motion and Duration — How do we get at Movement and Process outside us— The r61e of Sympathy and of Empathy— M. Bergson's Stress on the Inward Direction of Instinct and Sym- pathy towards Process— Dr. Myers reverses the Direction — His Views on the Relation of Instinct and Intelli- gence 204 CONTENTS xvii CHAPTER VIII FINALISM AND MECHANISM : BODY AND MIND PAGB Finalism and Correlated Routine— Organic Tunes played da capo — Entelechy and Variations or Mutations — Finalism in Human Life as Purposeful — Similar Ends reached through Different Means—Stability of Constitution — The Sense in which the Present is conditioned by the Future — Universal Finalism — Mechanism the Antithesis to Finalism — Technical Details of a Mechanical Ideal Construction — Mechanistic Interpretation in Terms of Physics and Chemistry— Organic Phenomena need a further Formula — Psychological Relation- ships correlated but not identical with Physiological — Need we introduce Source ? — Ambiguities to be avoided — Mechan- istic Philosophy and Universal Correlation — Conscious Relationships as Pre-perceptive really count — One Natural Order or two ? — Is Inter-action inconceivable ? — Where lies the Mystery ? — The Doctrine of Parallelism — What is to be expected from the Appeal to Physiology ? — The Contention that Different Psychical States may be correlated with the same Cerebral States — Parallelism in Terms of the "ing" and the "eds" of experience — Not two Processes, but one, in merging Unity with Different Relationships — Dr. Driesch's " Intra-psychical Series " — Has nothing to do with the Brain — Mr. McDougall's Argument from "Meaning" — No Unitary Neural Process correlated with Meaning — His Thesis in Terms of "ing" and "eds" — His Psychic Entity an Hypostatized Abstraction — Our Interpretation of the Facts of Meaning — Organic Total Reaction — Retinal Rivalry — Divergent Interpretations of Biological Facts — Return to Finalism and Mechanism — The Doctrine of Panpsychism — Is all Process Conscious or Quasi-conscious? — The Emphasis on Pre-perception — In any case Nature the Product of Unitary Process 241 Index 293 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE CHAPTER I INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE I PROPOSE to approach the problems of experi- ence through the avenue of biology. My aim is to treat the phenomena of conscious existence as a naturalist treats the phenomena of organic life. I shall therefore begin with instinctive behaviour and shall endeavour to give some account of the nature of the instinctive experience which, as I believe, accompanies it. In this way we shall get some idea of what I conceive to be the beginnings of experience in the individual organism. A consideration of the criticisms to which such a method of treatment, and its results, have been subjected will lead to some qualification of the hypothesis at first barely outlined, and will open up further problems with regard to the nature and development of experience. We shall find as we proceed that the term instinctive is used by different writers with rather wide divergence of meaning. It will become evident that men of weight, like Dr. Titchener and Dr. Thorndike in America, 2 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE M. Bergson in France, Dr. Driesch and Father Wasmann in Germany, Dr. Stout, Mr. McDougall, and Dr. C. S. Myers in England, employ the term with differing connotation and denotation. Minor differences are found among writers whose approach like my own is from the side of biology. Under these circumstances some attempt to correlate divergent opinions should be helpful to further progress. Such an attempt might be made by one who, having no particular view of his own to support, could undertake the task with wholly unprejudiced judgment. That in my case is impossible. I have already reached conclusions of my own. If, however, I can succeed in giving a fair and just account of the teaching of those from whom I differ, and can make clear the grounds of my dissent, the fact that I write as an advocate, rather than one who is fitted to be judge and arbiter, may perhaps conduce to that vitality of treatment which is one of the advantages of a conflict of views. But as we follow up the relation of instinct to other modes and phases of the life of experience we shall find that wider and wider issues are brought into the field of our consideration. It is part of my aim to deal with these in the spirit of one who has not only an interpretation of instinct to formulate, but also a more comprehensive scientific doctrine to advocate — a doctrine of the relation of experience to the world as experienceable. For the further we go the more clearly shall we see that a thinker's con- clusions with regard to the nature of instinct are intimately connected with his philosophical attitude towards large and far-reaching world-problems. I BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 3 propose to discuss these problems from the point of view of one who comes to them from the scientific side, so far as the space at my command permits, and so far as such discussion is calculated to throw light on the nature and development of experience. Under the stimulating influence of M. Bergson the more philosophical aspect of life-problems has recently come into special prominence. Through his powerful advocacy, through the teaching of Dr. Driesch, and more recently through the skilfully marshalled arguments of Mr. McDougall — to mention no other names — the pendulum of opinion has acquired new impetus in the vitalistic direction of its swing. My own position will, I trust, be made suffi- ciently clear in the sequel. I shall urge that there is a tendency to introduce into a scientific discussion of such problems concepts which I regard as non- scientific. The aim of science, I conceive, is to develop a generalized interpretation of natural processes in all their relationships, including the conscious relation- ships which go to the synthetic formation of experience. Science does not, however, attempt to give any answer — not even the hint of an answer — to the further question : — What is the Source of the natural processes so interpreted? That I conceive to be a metaphysical question. It opens up issues which are intimately connected with Theology and with Religion. With such metaphysical problems I do not attempt to deal in this book. Without for one moment denying their vital human interest and their supreme importance, I wish at the outset to exclude them altogether from any place in a scientific 4 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE interpretation of natural processes. My only concern with them will be an emphatic, and perhaps often repeated, denial of their right of entry into a scientific universe of discourse, as I define the term scientific. It may, of course, be said that, by doing this, one leaves the scheme of science quite unexplained. Not only the mode of origin of the world in which we live, but its final end and purpose are thus wholly dis- regarded. Exactly so ! These are just the questions which should be left over for metaphysical treatment. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, mineralogy — all the sciences which deal with the inorganic world — have long ago recognized this. Some day biology and psychology will do so with equal candour and to their lasting profit. Some years ago 1 I had under observation two young moorhens or waterhens which I had hatched in an incubator and watched from day to day, almost from hour to hour, with some care. One of these, about nine weeks old, was swimming in a pool at the bend of a stream in Yorkshire. A vigorous rough- haired puppy, highly charged with canine vitality, ran down from the neighbouring farm, barking and gambolling ; and from the bank he made an awkward feint towards the young bird. In a moment the moorhen dived, disappeared from view, and soon partially reappeared, his head just peeping above the water beneath the overhanging bank. Now this was the first time the bird had dived. I had repeatedly 1 Cf. " Habit and Instinct," p. 64. " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., pp. 11 and 221. Some passages which have appeared in papers contributed to this Journal are here utilized. BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 5 endeavoured to elicit this characteristic piece of behaviour, but had failed. My friend Mr. F. A. Knight tells me that he has seen a moor-chick, not more than a day old, dive under a log of wood when suddenly disturbed. I have seen them dive nearly as early in life. Under unnatural conditions, however, in a large bath, and under natural conditions in the Yorkshire stream, do what I would in my efforts to coax or to frighten the young bird, I had never been able to make him dive. But now at last that blundering puppy succeeded, where I had so often failed. And when this characteristic piece of behaviour came upon my little friend — came upon him suddenly and without warning — his dive was absolutely true to type. I have elsewhere * advocated the acceptance of a definition of instinctive behaviour as that which is, on its first occurrence, independent of prior experience ; which tends to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race ; which is similarly per- formed by all the members of the same more or less restricted group of animals ; and which may be subject to subsequent modification under the guid- ance of experience. Such behaviour is, I conceive, a more or less complex organic or biological response to a more or less complex group of stimuli of external and internal origin, and it is, as such, wholly dependent on how the organism, and especially the nervous system and brain-centres have been built through heredity, under that mode of racial pre- paration which we call biological evolution. How far does the behaviour of the moorhen* 1 '* Animal Behaviour, " p. 71. 6 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE when it dives for the first time in its life, conform to this definition? I conceive that it conforms all along the line so long as, but only so long as, we restrict our attention to its specific nature as dive. Qua dive, it is independent of prior diving experience, for there has been no such experience. Of course it may be said that diving involves swimming and that of swimming the moorhen has had abundant experience during two months of active life. That is surely true enough. But to dive is not only to swim, but to swim with a difference. It is adapted to the peculiar circumstances of complete immersion. I do not think that any careful observer will deny that diving is a differentiated form of swimming and that it has specific characters which make it some- thing other than merely swimming under water. The whole poise and set of the body, the position of the head and outstretched neck, the impelling strokes of the legs, are specially adapted to a relatively new mode of progression. There must be a correlated modification of the processes of respira- tion. The question is whether these and other specific differentiations of behaviour are instinctive in the sense that they are as such independent of prior experience. That they are wholly independent of all previous experience I do not assert. If that were the case it is difficult to understand how they could possibly be incorporated with, and synthetically assimilated to, the experience already gained. But that they provide new factors to be so incorporated and assimilated seems to me to be a conclusion forced upon us by the facts of the case. The particular and specific form of behaviour exhibited BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 7 by the moorhen on the occasion of its first dive is, I believe, dependent as such on how the nervous system has been built up under that mode of racial preparation which we call biological evolution. If in further criticism of the view I wish to make clear, it be urged that though perhaps the specific form of the scare-begotten dive-situation is due to the hereditary make-up of the nerve-centres, it is also partly dependent (e.g. in its relation to swimming) on how the nerve-centres have been moulded and modified under previous experience — that is to say in psychological terms, partly dependent on intelligent guidance — I venture to remind my critic that we are endeavouring to disentangle the factors of behaviour ; that all I urge is that an instinctive factor, new to experience, is introduced. I am ready to admit, nay more I am prepared to contend, that, just in so far as the behaviour is dependent on previous experience, we have also the presence of the intelligent factor. In a moorhen two months old instinct and intelligence co-operate. None the less the instinctive and intelligent factors are distinguishable in analysis. What are we to understand by intelligent guidance ? At a later stage of our enquiry I shall endeavour to defend the hypotheses that intelligent guidance is the function of the cerebral cortex with its distinguishing property of consciousness ; that the co-ordination involved in instinctive behaviour, and in the distribution of physiological impulses to the viscera and vascular system, is the primary function of the lower brain-centres ; that, in instinctive behaviour as such, consciousness correlated with processes in the cerebral cortex, is so to speak, a n INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE mere spectator of organic and biological occurrences at present beyond its control ; but that, as spectator, it receives information of these occurrences through the nerve-channels of connexion between the lower and the higher parts of the brain. This, however, is only an outline sketch of a programme for further discussion. At present we are only concerned with this question : What gives to experience its guiding value ? Dr. Stout has enabled us to give the answer in one word. Experience has guiding value in virtue of the meaning it embodies. Why does the burnt '-hild shun fire? Because the sight of fire has . leaning. Why does the chick that has but once or I a ice taken a ladybird into its bill no longer peck at these insects notwithstanding its instinctive tendency to peck at any small object within reach ? Because the appearance of the ladybird carries meaning. Why does your dog beg when you say " biscuit " ? Because the sound has meaning. One is obliged, in order to avoid pedantry, to say that the sight or sound or other presentation to sense carries or conveys or has meaning. It would be more correct to say that the total experience in any one of these situations is meaningful. Any given experience in any given moment is a synthetic product or, from a different point of view, a phase in a continuous synthetic process. It is essential to bear in mind that, no matter how far and in what detail we may analyse such a synthetic phase of na'fvely developing experience into its constituents, within the experience as given and felt, or as Professor Alexander would say enjoyed, these constituents merge their individu- ality to form an indissoluble whole. BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 9 We may here distinguish between primary and secondary meaning. 1 Suppose there be a bit of developing experience occurring as such for the first time — our moorhen's dive for example — which gives a sequence a, b, c, d. Since the consciousness of the first part of the sequence has not faded away when the latter part comes, the experience at the phase d is not one of d only but of d as qualified by the net results of the precedent a, b, c. This qualification of d by what has gone before is the primary meaning which d " carries M ; it is that which makes d mean- ingful through primary retention. There is here no revival of what has faded out of consciousness and has to be reinstated. Thus primary experience — that of the dive to wit — swells with meaning as it grows, as it develops, as it proceeds on its course. But now suppose the completed series a f b, c, d } e, /, has been previously experienced ; then on a subsequent occasion when d is reached it is not only qualified by the precedent a, b, c, of this occasion, but also by a revival or pre-perception of the e> f> which formed part of the series on a previous occasion. This pre-perception, this expectation be- gotten of previous experience, is the secondary meaning which d then carries. Behaviour in part determined by secondary meaning I term intelligent. If the situation within which the sound "biscuit," in its appropriate setting, occurs had not developed on former occasions in a certain routine, your dog would have no expectation or pre-perception of what would follow on this occasion — the sound would carry no secondary meaning. We must remember 1 Cf, G, F. Stout, « Manual of Psychology," Bk, I, Ch. ii, §§, 7 and 9. LO INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE that in the early stages of the genesis of experience, what is expected is in large measure the revived experience of behaving in certain ways within the previous routine. It must be remembered too that meaning — (I shall use this term in reference to secondary meaning) — is limited to the qualifying revival of part of the previous routine — re-presented in experience but not again presented to experience through the channels of sense as the situation actually develops. Bearing this in mind let us return to our puppy and moorhen. I will first describe in physiological terms what I conceive to take place ; and I shall, for the moment, disregard the fact that the bird has a cerebral cortex. He is therefore, I assume, an unconscious automaton of the purely reflex order, until we take his higher brain-centres into consideration. Groups of effective stimuli fall upon the receptor end-organs of eye and ear. These initiate physiological impulses which are transmitted by the optic and auditory nerves, and throw the lower brain-centres into functional activity. From these centres two sets of impulses proceed outwards along efferent nerves. The first set calls into play the muscles concerned in diving. The second set is distributed to the viscera — the vascular system, alimentary system, respiratory system. When I took it out of the water the bird was panting with open beak, its heart-beat was strong and quick. Although I did not observe defecation in this case, I have frequently observed its occurrence in similar cases. It is often noticeable when young birds are first put into water. Now from the organs concerned BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 11 in swimming and diving and from the heart, lungs, and other viscera, afferent impulses proceed inwards to the lower brain-centres and either initiate new processes therein or modify those which are already taking place. Thus there are three sets of afferent or in -going impulses. The first set of afferent impulses (a) is due to some specific mode of sensory contact with the environment. This through its action on the lower brain-centres gives rise to the two sets of afferent impulses (i) ;to the organs of behaviour, (2) to the visceral organs. And then from these organs come the other two sets of afferent impulses (b) from limbs concerned in behaviour and (c) from heart, lungs, etc. Is this scheme already somewhat complex? It is reduced to a simplicity which is probably absurdly inadequate to the facts. If we regard the dive as a whole we have to remember that the stimuli to eye and ear merely start the train of events which breaks in upon a foregoing train of events. Directly the bird is under water there are new stimuli due to complete immersion. It is probable that the mere fact of total immersion is the condition (or a condition) of the differentiated mode of swimming under water. There is a new influence of the environment as the moorhen approaches the bank. Is it going too far to say that, throughout the continuous dive, the total stimulation of the lower brain-centres is constantly varying? Is it unreasonable to suggest that each phase of the dive is definitely correlated with the progressively varying group of processes in the lower brain -centres ? [% INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Now whether a decerebrate bird — one whose cerebral hemispheres had been removed or thrown out of action — would dive as did my moorhen in the Yorkshire stream, I cannot say. We have some data for the discussion of such a question ; and these will be considered in the sequel. As a matter of fact, however, in my moorhen, the higher brain- centres and cortex were intact. And I think it in the highest degree unlikely that the processes occurring in its cerebral hemispheres were without influence on its behaviour. This indeed is but to repeat in other words what I have said above — that in such behaviour instinct and intelligence co-operate ; for the cortex is the organ of intelligence ; meaning is correlated with cortical process. Let us then restore to their proper place the cerebral cortex, the presence of which we have so far disregarded. The cortex is connected with the lower nerve-centres. From them, or through them, it can receive physio- logical impulses ; to them it can transmit other controlling impulses. When groups of visual and auditory stimuli excite the receptor end-organs of eye and ear, not only are the lower brain-centres thrown into activity but, through them, certain regions of the cortex are excited. In and through this excitement the moorhen sees and hears the puppy. When afferent impulses reach the brain from the organs concerned in behaviour, not only is the activity of the lower brain-centres qualified by their effects, but through them the cerebral cortex is further excited. In and through this excitement the moorhen feels its own behaviour ; has the experience of swimming and diving. When BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 13 afferent impulses reach the brain from the heart, lungs, and other viscera, from many parts of the organism, not only is the activity of the lower brain- centres further qualified by their added effects, but through them also the cerebral cortex is further excited. In and through this excitement, the moor- hen (according to the James-Lange theory of emotion) feels scared. At any rate they help to contribute to the total complex experience which has emotional colour. Now all these three sets of data unite and combine to form that part of the synthetic product of the bird's continuous 'experience which is due to the performance of the instinctive act. But the situation is meaningful ; and the incorporated (secondary) meaning is the outcome of previous experience which has left traces in the cortex and mind of the moorhen. It is in the highest degree improbable that even on the initial occasion when the bird dives for the first time, cortical and conscious processes exercise no control- ling influence on the behaviour of the moorhen. And just in so far as they do exercise such influence, the behaviour is under intelligent guidance. If then I interpret the matter correctly in outline, there was, correlated with the cortical processes of the moorhen as he swam in the pool, a certain amount of experience actually present, and a certain amount of individual preparation of the cortex such as to afford the neural conditions of revived experi- ence. So much to begin with. Here we have the moorhen as actual or potential experiencer. Then comes a new situation which the experiencer can assimilate. In this case, in so far as a new instinctive 14 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE response is called forth, the conditions are largely supplied by the racial preparation of the lower brain- centres as the outcome of evolutionary process. The new factors comprise (i) a specific presentation differing from previous presentations in what one may term initiating value, (2) a specific response, differing in certain ways from all previous responses and therefore affording new data to behaviour- experience, and (3) a hitherto unfelt quality of emotional tone. I do not think that the young bird had ever been really scared before. But though we may analyse the newly experienced situation in some such way as this, the bird pre- sumably gets the whole as a coalescent synthetic net result with a bearing on behaviour and some, perhaps much, reinstatement of the meaning which has qualified previous situations. He just lives through one palpitating situation, assimilates its teachings, and emerges from the ordeal a new bird. As experiencer he is never again what he was before. Let us now go back to an earlier stage of our little moorhen's life, to near the beginning of his free existence, to a time when he was, not two long months old, an experiencer of some standing as moor- hens go, but when he had seen but a few brief days of life beyond the confines of the egg-shell. We started with our birdling as experiencer swimming about in the stream. The question I have now to consider is this: — How did he reach this level of conscious organization ? It is obvious that I cannot trace in detail the genesis of his experience, though I watched him carefully from day to day. I must select an episode which has some bearing upon his diving BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 15 in the stream. It may be said that this behaviour was closely and intimately related with the long experience of swimming which he had already gained. But there was a time when he had no experience of water and swimming. I remember the day when I first placed him in a large bath. Even then he was already an experiencer having gained so much experience as was possible during the few hours of life he had enjoyed. Still, comparatively few things had for him, so far, become meaningful. Of swim- ming experience he had none. The great lake of my bath had for him no meaning. Racial preparation had however fitted the tissues contained within his black fluffy skin, and the subtler tissue of his lower brain-centres, to respond in a quite definite manner to the stimulation of water on the breast and legs. And in the first act of swimming — true to type, practically serviceable to secure a biological end, though needing that which came later, the perfecting touch of intelligent guidance, — in this first act of swimming there were afforded to his experience analogous factors to those I have given above in considering his instinctive dive — a specific presentation, a specific group of behaviour feelings, a specific emotional tone, all coalescent into one felt synthesis, developing in accordance with a developing situation. We have not yet, however, got back to the initial genesis of experience in our moorhen. So long as he brings to any given situation experience already gained, his very first behaviour in that situation may carry meaning — not very definite ad hoc meaning, no doubt, but still some meaning. Dr. Myers lays stress on this already gotten meaning, 1<> INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE but he goes further than I am prepared to go. He says 1 :— "To my mind it is certain that, on the occasion of the chick's first peck, or the duckling's first swim, the bird is dimly, of course very dimly, conscious of the way in which it is about to act. I believe this because no organism can ever execute a new movement which does not involve other move- ments that have been performed previously. A completely new movement is as impossible as a completely new thought. When a chick first attempts to peck, many of the muscles then called into action must have contracted before. Thus the feeling of activity arising on the occasion of the chick's first peck is not altogether a new one. It is related, as each of our own experiences is related, to past experiences. And the very vague awareness of results, associated with those previous feelings of activity, gives the chick a vague awareness of the result of its first peck, before it has actually performed the action." Now for the present I will assume that "awareness of results " is synonymous with secondary meaning. If the chick's first peck has some dim and vague meaning due to foregoing use of the same muscles, none the less the accomplished peck supplies the data for new meaning — not merely meaning in terms of previous other-use of the same muscles, but meaning in terms of their specific pecking-use. It is this specific pecking-use which I believe to be biologically determined through the natural selection of variations (or mutations ? ) of germinal origin. I find difficulty in accepting the view, to be considered in the sequel, that it is appreciably determined by any dim and 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. Hi., p. 211. BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 17 vague awareness of results which, as pecking-results, have never yet been experienced. With regard to the moorhen's first swim, then, I do not deny that when placed in the bath he had already gained the experience necessarily involved in using the same limbs and the same muscles in walking. But I conceive that when he makes his first strokes in the water the awareness that he is going to swim, even granting its existence, is so very dim and vague as to be negligible in comparison with the purely reflex tendency to swim grounded in the moorhen's organic constitution. As M. Bergson says l : — " Thousands and thousands of variations on the theme of walking will never yield a rule for swimming. . . . Swimming is an extension of walking, but walking would never have pushed you on to swimming." In the first peck or the first swim, therefore, accord- ing to my interpretation, we have as peck and as swim the instinctive factor relatively, but still only relatively, pure — relatively impure in so far as it is accompanied by such very dim and very vague awareness of what is coming as may be due to other previously gotten experience. Some slight admixture of intelligent meaning is still present because we have not yet got down to the very beginning of our moorhen's experience. If one tries to follow out to its logical conclusion Dr. Myers' statement that " no organism can ever execute a new movement which does not involve other movements that have been performed previously ; " if one tries to grasp his contention 2 1 " Creative Evolution," p. 204. 3 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 269. IS INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE that u there never can be a beginning of experience, — a beginning which has no relation to previous experience " ; one seems posed by the problem of infinite regress. One gets back to the embryo within the egg-shell, and thus to the fertilized ovum, and so to parents and ancestors more and more remote ; and still we are, I suppose, told that there never can be a beginning to experience ; the stage we have reached, no matter how remote or how primitive, still has relation to previous experience! I am fully aware that any adequate discussion of the place of experience in the universe must lead up to very difficult philosophical problems. Every movement regarded as a part or phase of the world- process is conditioned by antecedent movement like- wise so conditioned. Every organic movement however new (really new, in some cases, as I hold) is of course related to foregoing organic changes. And for those who are convinced by the arguments of Paulsen and others in favour of panpsychism, there is, of course, no beginning of consciousness ; and if we equate experience and consciousness, there is for them no beginning of experience. All this is, however, beyond the scope of our present considerations. Our universe of discourse is just now of a much more limited range. I assume that the behaviour of the moorhen has a beginning — a beginning that is sufficiently well marked for the practical purposes of our inquiry, however limited may be their philosophical range. I want to get, if possible, at the very beginning of such experience as correlated with such initial behaviour. And I therefore go yet one stage further back in the history BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 19 of our little bird. I suggest that when the moorhen chick was struggling out of the cramping egg-shell there came what we may fairly regard as the initial presentations to sense, followed by the initial responsive behaviour in the earliest instinctive acts, accompanied, we may presume, by the initial emotional tone, coalescent in primary synthesis. Thus I conceive that, for scientific interpretation, experience has its genesis. A number of instinctive responses occur invirtue of the organization established by centuries of racial preparation as the outcome of natural selection or of other factors in organic evolution. These unite synthetically to generate experience. 1 It is itself dim and vague, but it can carry no meaning, however dim and vague, in terms of previous experience, for of such previous experience there has been none. The only meaning in this sense which can possibly be present is such as might conceivably be derived from experience previously gained within the unbroken egg-shell. I am ready to yield this much for what it is worth, merely remarking that for practical interpretation it is not worth much, and that what there is of it is of the reflex and instinctive order. If I may be allowed to neglect it as a vanishing quantity, then I conceive we reach the stage at which the experiencer as such has its primary genesis. It is called into existence by the earliest instinctive behaviour (whenever and however that earliest behaviour occurs), and here, for strictly scientific interpretation, I find the 1 I have elsewhere used the expression -•" primary tissue of experience." I shall use it no longer, It is by no means felicitous and it has misleading implications. 20 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE very first beginnings of the individual experience. From this primitive stage to that later stage when the moorhen swam in the Yorkshire stream is a far cry. But just as- there is one moorhen with inter- related parts and organs, one central nervous system correlating the incoming data of presentation and co-ordinating the outgoing nerve-impulses in respon- sive behaviour, so there grows up in correlation with the cortical-processes, one experience for which the presentative data acquire meaning and become precepts for the guidance of further behaviour. Thus is it, I conceive, in the case of the moorhen : thus is it in the case of the human infant. Such in all cases is the starting-point of the natural history of experience, the unification of which finds expression in behaviour and conduct. Such is my main thesis. I shall have to consider in the next chapter the question whether my assumption that all meaning is the result of individual acquisition needs qualification ; and, if so, whether my thesis is invalidated. I must ask the reader to remember that I seek to give at the outset an outline sketch of my view. I must ask him to remember that any hypothesis with regard to the genesis of experience must inevitably remain beyond the range of direct verification from the aspect of experiencing. I have never been a moorhen. And though I was once a baby, I have no memory-data for compiling my reminiscences during the first year. No one has. When did my experience begin ? At birth? Or was it some time later? Is what Wm. James calls "the big blooming buzzing confusion" of the early days of life to be called experience ? Or BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 21 does experience begin when this chaos of stimulation becomes incipiently cosmic ? Or, again, must we seek the beginnings of experience before birth, when the child is still in the womb ? And, if so, when did it begin ? At what stage of the development of the nervous system ? Or was it even before the neural band was differentiated from epiblastic tissue? Has all vital process an accompaniment of consciousness ? And, if so, is all such consciousness to be called experience ? Such questions are easily asked. But only speculative imagination can furnish answers. I have assumed that experiencing is correlated with physiological processes in the cortex. Trying to look at the genesis of experience from as reasonable a point of view as my modest share of common-sense permits, I suggest that instinctive behaviour, biologically determined, affords those grouped stimulations which initiate cortical process, and afford grouped data in consciousness which may serve in some degree to explain (so far as it can be explained) the genesis of experience. It appears to me, then, that for purposes of psychological interpretation, in so far as this is concerned with the genesis of experience, we should so far broaden the connotation of the qualifying adjective instinctive as to include all those primary and inherited modes of behaviour, including reflex acts, which contribute in any degree to experience. If there be reflexes or modes of instinctive behaviour which have no correlated consciousness, with them the psychologist has no concern. He may cheerfully hand them over to the biologist. Now among the invertebrates, and especially the INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE insects, there arc cases of instinctive behaviour of a remarkably stereotyped nature. A complicated scries of acts, showing wonderful nicety and accuracy of adaptation, is performed once, and only once, in the lifetime of the individual without any opportunity of imitation so-called. These cases may conform to Dr. Driesch's definition * of an instinct as " a compli- cated reaction that is perfect the very first time." Dr. Myers has criticized this definition. " I question," he says, 2 " whether this is ever literally the case, if only the reaction could be submitted to close enough examination. . . . Instincts are almost always modifi- able and perfected by later experience. . . . An instinct which is from the first unalterable is nothing but a reflex." I believe that in all cases an instinctive act is, from the biological and physio- logical point of view, nothing but a reflex. But from the psychological point of view it is always something more than a reflex, in so far as it affords data to conscious experience. I am, however, in full agree- ment with Dr. Myers when he says that instincts are almost always modifiable and perfected by later experience. Dr. Driesch's brief definition applies only to a very limited number of instinctive activities. It scarcely applies at all to the instinctive behaviour of such vertebrates as birds and mammals. I have therefore suggested the following modification of the brief definition : Instinctive behaviour, as congenitally determined, is practically serviceable on the occasion of its first performance. Take the 1 " Science and Philosophy of the Organism " (1908), voL ii,, p. no. • " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 211. BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 23 flight of the swallow as an example which may illustrate a vast number of instinctive acts. Is there a biologist who has adequate acquaintance with the facts* who would dream of asserting that the instinctive performance at the outset has anything approaching in delicacy and effectiveness the perfected skill of the mature bird — a skill shot through and through with meaning of the highest value for experience of life on the wing ? l None the less, I am convinced from personal observation 2 that the relatively imperfect instinctive flight of the young swallow taken from the nest is practically serviceable and has survival value. It is good enough to preserve the little bird from falling to the ground and running the risk of destruction, the very first time it leaves the nest, even when, as in my own experiments, the normal period of flight is somewhat antedated. The outcome of natural selection is not to produce either behaviour or organic structure which is so perfect that no trace of imperfection can be discovered by the closest examination. One of the least imperfect organs is the normally developed human eye ; and yet, as we all know, Helmholtz found in the organ of vision many defects. 3 The products of natural selec- tion are practically serviceable, not theoretically perfect. Only where, as most markedly in the case of some of the instinctive activities of insects, a close approach to perfection is necessary in order that the behaviour shall be serviceable for survival of the 1 Cf. " Animal Behaviour," p. 88. 2 Cf. " Habit and Instinct," p. 71. 8 "Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects,"— The Eye as an Optical Instrument, pp. 197, ff. U INSTINCT xVND EXPERIENCE species, do we find that it is scarcely, if at all, subject to further improvement. But if we accept the view that instinctive actions are susceptible of improvement under the guidance of intelligence, it is clear that the biological value of such instinctive actions includes the fact that they are serviceable as affording a basis for such improvement. Improvement implies something which can be im- proved ; instinctive activities supply that improvable something. I have said above that for purposes of psychological interpretation, in so far as this is concerned with the genesis of experience, we should so far broaden the connotation of the qualifying adjective instinctive as to include all those primary and inherited modes of behaviour, including reflex acts, which contribute in any degree to experience. In many cases the instinctive action, in this broader sense, is serviceable as a congenital factor which, under the guidance of intelligence, is incorporated in a larger whole. Mr. MoDougall, who is unable to accept l my modification of Dr. Driesch's brief defini- tion, says that while he agrees that the imperfections of many instinctive actions on their first performance render inacceptable the definition proposed by Dr. Driesch, he thinks that these imperfections are so great in many cases as to render my own definition untrue of much instinctive behaviour. "When the young kitten attentively watches the dangled button or the rolling ball, and makes its first futile effort to seize it, its behaviour is instinctive, but can hardly be called practically serviceable." I shall deal later with Mr. McDougall's general theory of instinct— a 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol, iii., p. 259. BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 25 theory which is worthy of careful consideration. Here and now I will only say that, accepting as I do the cardinal features of Dr. Groos's contention that the biological value of animal play lies in the fact that it affords the instinctive basis for the further developed and perfected activities of later life, the behaviour of the kitten is eminently serviceable. Dr. Stout 1 regards my criterion as "too purely biological to meet psychological requirements," and supplements it by adding, as characteristic of instinctive behaviour, " a definiteness such as would require to be explained as the result of learning by experience or conscious contrivance, if it were not directly provided for by inherited constitution of the nervous system, as determined by the course of biological development" This emphasizes the purposive (but not purposeful) character of instinctive behaviour, and appears to me to be a helpful and acceptable supplement for purposes of description. I suggest then that, for the biologist and the psychologist, a criterion — not the only criterion, but a criterion of instinctive behaviour, is that it is serviceable on the first occasion. But the biologist, for the purposes of his interpretation of animal life, will ask : Serviceable to what end ? First of all, serviceable as affording the congenital foundations for an improved superstructure of behaviour. That is one way in which instinctive behaviour is serviceable — the way which is of special interest to the psychologist. From the more distinctively biological point of view, instinctive behaviour is broadly and generally serviceable for survival to which sundry 1 G. F. Stout, "is the further gain to knowledge in referring the unity and system to a unifying principle as its source, if that principle is to have no other character except what it gives itself in its unifying action " ; or again more briefly :— " Why do the relations want a Source ? Why cannot they 1 Henry Sidgwick, " Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant " (1905), p. 261. Cf. T. H. Green, " Prolegomena to Ethics," §§ 67-73. 2 Op. cit., pp. 263 and 226. 138 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE get on without one ? " Although myself a believer in Source, I hold that this concept should be rigidly excluded from the scientific universe of discourse. I too ask : — Why should we not endeavour to interpret the constitution of nature just as we find it somehow presented to our experience ? That I conceive is the task of science, which should leave severely alone, as beyond its province, all forms of the metaphysics of Source, all reference to extra- mundane Agency. To modify Hume's oft-quoted words, "the scenes of the universe are constantly shifting, and one object follows another in an uninterrupted succession ; but the Power or Force which actuates the whole machine is entirely" — outside the field of scientific inquiry. No doubt any limitation of this field of inquiry is a matter of arbitrary definition. That is just why I wish to make perfectly clear where I, for one, in discussing this subject, decide to draw the line. A few more words may serve to render less obscure my reasons for excluding the concept of Source from what I regard as the province of science. Let us suppose that Life is the Source or Cause of organic processes and products. Now according to the old scholastic adage, Causa aequat effectum. If Cause is the Giver and process the given then, as James put it, Nemo dat quod non habet. But the Cause may have, and traditionally has, more than it actually gives — eminenter as Descartes would say. Life when it organized the carboniferous flora and fauna possessed "eminently" the further power of organizing the plant and animal world of to-day. Now if the given in any process at any time contains just THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 139 what the Giver then gives, have we not in this given all that science has any concern with ? What need have we, in science, of Source or Cause or Giver, if life-processes and life-products are all that we are acquainted with as given ? But it is not only that we are calling in a concept which is unnecessary for science. We are so apt to make the Source to which that concept refers do duty which poses as scientific business. When we get to a difficulty, instead of confessing ignorance and striving to remove it by scientific method, we say : — " Oh ! that can only be explained by reference to Source" — which, to put it bluntly, is a roundabout way of expressing, without confessing, scientific ignorance. Furthermore, there is an almost ineradicable tendency to endow Source with a false and meretricious simplicity. The Life that organizes is supposed to have a simplicity analogous to that which is attributed to the mind of the captain of an ironclad, who deals in his conning-tower with all the multiplicity of the ship's intricate mechanism. But to every mechanical detail, just in so far as it is known to the captain, there is what Professor Alexander would term the " non-mental " which is in the field of his contemplation — that which is cognized, imagined, and so forth. And though the unity of process should never be lost sight of, yet within that unity, merging and interpenetrating, there is a complexity strictly correlative to the complexity of the " eds " with which it deals. It is just because this complexity in large measure defies analysis (for process itself can only be analysed in reference to its products) that we are bidden to 140 INSTINCT AND EXrERIENCE attribute it to a Source which out of its utter simplicity, falsely conceived, can produce any required amount of complexity — that is, in effect, just that amount which is actually found. What is thus given is process and products, or process/^* and the process^; it is the business of science to deal with them in terms of correlation. But the metaphysics of Source has a perfect right to say : Just as in the given there is the processed and the correlative processing ; so to the given there is the correlative giving by Source. The Source of phenomena being thus excluded from our limited field of inquiry, what shall be our definition of cause? I give none, because, though I have used the word above in one of its senses, I propose, so far as is possible, to avoid the use of this very ambiguous term, endeavouring to make clear the sense in which I do use it, should occasion arise. Instead of employing this term here I shall speak of any given process on which our attention is fixed, as correlated with other processes ; or of an earlier phase of any given process as correlated with the later phases. I shall assume that ubiquitous corre- lations hold good within the constitution of nature, and that patient scientific research may lead to their discovery. I shall, however, also use the word con- ditions for the relevant circumstances under which a process runs its course — it being understood that these conditions afford data for correlation. We may thus speak of the conditions under which the synthesis of a chemical compound, say carbon disulphide, occurs ; or the conditions under which the develop- ment of a hen's tgg takes place ; or the conditions THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 141 under which I write this paragraph. In each case we fix our attention on a current process reached through its products, and describe other processes related to it as conditions. But with the shifting of our attention the same process may be regarded now as conditioning and now as conditioned. Thus, to take an example from daily life, the state of the fire in my grate may be the condition of a certain mode of my experience ; this may be the condition of my poking the fire ; this again the condition of a freer and fuller process of combustion ; and this of a satisfactory modification of my experience. I give this illustration to show first how the focus of our attention shifts from one to the other of correlated processes, each of which in turn is made the subject of certain predicates ; and secondly, to emphasize the fact that conscious processes really count as con- ditions of change in other world-processes with which they are themselves in relation. But how about the conditions within the process itself? Of course an earlier phase of process may be regarded as the condition of a later phase of the same process. But if we have in mind the process itself as a whole ! Then it seems to me that we ought not, in that context, to use the word conditions. Of process itself as existent it is futile (in science) to seek for the conditions of its very existence. We can only find such conditions in the realm of Source, and that realm is closed to us here by a self-denying ordinance. Take the world-process as a whole. If we are asked what are the conditions of its existence, we must reply : There are none ; for conditions imply that there are other processes with which this process 142 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE may be correlated ! Of course if, with M. Bergson, we accept the conception of two orders of being — the one comprising all processes of the inert or the auto- matic type, the other all processes of the vital or conscious type — then, clearly, those of the one may be regarded as affording conditions to be correlated with those of the other. But we have at present no concern with this conception. Accepting provisionally one order — the world process with all its relationships — we cannot speak of the conditions of its existence within our universe of discourse. But we do seem to need — if only for convenience of description — a term which shall enable us to refer the correlated phases within a given process to the process as a whole. To this end I shall use the term ground. The ultimate ground of all natural occur- rences is, for science, the constitution of nature. In any changing configuration the ground of the change is the nature of the constitution of that configuration — gravitational in the solar system, chemical when carbon disulphide is formed, and so forth. On the constitutive nature, as ground, will depend, in any given natural system, the character and value of the changes which are observable therein. On the consti- tutive nature of the hen's egg will depend the character and course of its development. The living organism is thus the ground of the organic processes which run their course under normal conditions in correla- tion with other processes. We shall, I think, find this term useful when we have to ask with regard to some suggested " principle " — with regard to entelechy for example : — Is it suggested with reference to Source, or is it suggested with reference to ground ? THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 143 Let us take as a concrete case the formation of a crystal in an appropriate solution. I select the crystal as an example of what I understand by a synthetic product in the realm of the inorganic. Now the man of science explains the formation of the crystal by describing all the relevant antecedent and accompanying conditions which may be observed or inferred from the fullest and most minute study of all the phenomena concerned and nothing but the relevant phenomena ; and by referring the particular case to the type of synthesis — crystallization to wit — under which it is entered in the day-book of science. The explanation here given is expressed first in terms of correlated conditions, and secondly in terms of ground. On this understanding there can be no reasonable objection to speaking of crystallization as the ground of the formation of crystallized products. It just refers particular occurrences to that phase of the world-process which they exemplify. But what do we mean by products, and what is their relation to process ? Rather a difficult question. Only a suggestion of the direction in which an answer may be sought, and perhaps found, can be given. Are not products just bits of frozen world-pro- cess which are rendered stable and static for perception and conception ? Why such congealing of fragments of process, the parts of which hang together as a relatively independent whole, should take place, we do not know. It may be that the seeming stability is only a phase of process itself: that the rigidity of products is like that of the gyroscope. Is it not to such a doctrine that modern theories of the atom, purely schematic and conceptual as they are, lead 144 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE up? "Call it process, or call it product, all is process." This seems to express the tendency of contemporary scientific thought. Still for practical purposes of interpretation we must distinguish between product and process. May we not say that the product is that which is process^; and that, as M. Bergson urges, such products lie strewn along the course of the ever-fluent stream of process/^- ? Why this should be we know not ; that is nature's way. Incidental reference may here be made to the old problem of "the one and the many" — a problem which Wm. James revived in his brilliant and picturesque advocacy of a pluralistic universe. I cannot, of course, discuss so large a question parenthetically. But may it not be suggested that the world of products strewn along the course of process, frozen into seeming rigidity, inevitably tends to assume a radically pluralistic guise ; and yet that, none the less, the world process of which these widely scattered products are the outcome, is one and con- tinuous ; and that our conceptual scheme (which we believe refers to an existent constitution of nature) reaches its ideal limit in a completely monistic inter- pretation ? James advocated a doctrine of discon- tinuity. Perception (the perceived) itself comes in pulses, as the threshold is surpassed. "On the discontinuity theory," said James, 1 "time change, etc., would grow by finite buds or drops, either nothing coming at all, or certain units of amount bursting into being 'at a stroke.*" But had he not in view the discontinuity of products ? That discon- tinuity cannot be denied, and should not be neglected. 1 M Some Problems of Philosophy," p. 154. THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 145 But does this show that process is discontinuous ? May we not say that just as the sensibly continuous flow of water through a narrow pipe breaks into separate drops beyond the orifice, so does continuous world-process break up into the relatively discon- tinuous process -systems which we call products ? Why this should be we know not. But thus we may have a pluralism of products and yet a monistic interpretation of process. But what do I mean by a monistic interpretation ? Do I mean an interpreta- tion which leads to an absolute unity of pure being in which all shades of difference are annulled ? That is certainly not what I have in mind. That seems to me a philosophical conception with which we have here no concern. What then do I mean by a monistic interpretation ? I mean one in terms of correlations so complete that all the multifarious happenings in the universe, in all their rich and varied multiplicity, are conceived as integral parts of one developing world-story ; so that one could pass in thought from any given phase of process to any other phase of process along definitely describable correlation-routes. This is the monistic " unity of concatenation " which, as I understand him, even the pluralistic James was prepared to accept (p. 129) at any rate in retrospective reference. But is the unity in the interpretation or in that which is interpreted ? Another ancient problem ! The old writers sought to find and to express the relation of the realm of perceptual fact to the sphere of conceptual thought. Where, they asked, is the home of universals ; in the one or in the other ? In their scholastic phraseology there were, they said, 146 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE three alternatives : (i) Universalia ante rem ; (2) Universalia post rem ; (3) Universalia in re. Now the first formula involves the conception of Source, and leads to the Platonic Ideas (as currently inter- preted) to the world-plan of the Eternal Spirit, and the like. That conception lies beyond our province here. The second position is that of radical empiri- cism. The conceptual scheme is the outcome of man's thought concerning the phenomena presented in perceptual detail. So long as we are dealing with the development of human knowledge, I accept this without reservation. First the facts, then the interpretation. None the less do I accept also the third of the three scholastic formulas, in the sense that the order which we express in general terms is in the constitution of nature. It is there for us to discover if we can, though our discovery of it may need the patient observation of many facts. Of course it is not there as a number of propositions ; it is, however, there as that to which these propositions have reference. A given synthetic process is not there in the form, of a concept ; but it is there ready to be named and formulated. It is there in a form that is universal just in so far as we rightly predicate universality of it. The res is the perceptual country in which we live : the universalia of thought are the maps which we make of that country. Obviously the maps cannot possibly reproduce all the details of the country. If they could it would utterly spoil their utility as maps. They signify some of the deeper meaning of the country. The use of a map is to enable us to find our way in the country, to emphasize THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 147 essential relationships, to reduce the scale of the real to compassable limits, and to help us better to understand the country as we learn to read the maps. The omission of detail is absolutely essential to the value of a map for these purposes. But though tens of thousands of details are, and must be, excluded, none of these details must be such as to invalidate any of the teachings of the map. That is fatal. The map is no good if it is inconsistent with the country's facts. Leave out as much as may conduce to the end in view ; but insert nothing which conflicts with detailed observation. But maps may be made and used for different purposes, so as to aid us to interpret the country in different ways — a political map, a road map, a railway map, a geological map, and so forth. Each must significantly represent the facts it is meant to summarize ; each must be consistent within itself; each must be consistent with the other maps so far as their data coin- cide. Each is of use to enable us to find our way in the map, and to find our way in the country mapped. More detailed acquaintance with the country helps us to make a better map ; a better map helps us to become more closely acquainted with the country ; and so on, to and fro, up to the ideal limits of acquaintance with and knowledge of reality. Such maps are our ideal constructions in science. Physics makes its map ; physiology its map; psychology its map, and so on. Each map leaves out certain features of perceptual reality ; none can put in more than a certain amount of detail ; there must be no contradiction between the several maps so far as the facts to which they refer are the same. 148 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Every mapped out ideal construction is useful so far as it enables thought to move securely within its scheme, and affords a reliable guide in that which the scheme significantly interprets — the perceptual world with its bewildering multiplicity of particular and concrete detail. And just in so far as they are useful for these purposes, we may say that the maps are true — true in their self-consistency, true in their consistency with other maps, true to the perceptual experience from which they are derived, true to the constitution of nature in which that experience is grounded. The ideal monistic interpretation of nature is, then, a highly generalized map of the moving and developing world-process wherein all the correlation routes are serviceable for conceptual thought, and serviceable for the interpretation of observable processes and products. Now suppose, if the supposi- tion be not too extravagant, that we had reached this ideal. Suppose that we were in possession of an adequately complete knowledge-map of world-process and world -products up to date. Could we with like adequate completeness foretell the future ? Let us narrow down the question. Let us suppose ourselves to be sentient beings living in the fire-mist at an evolutionary period before crystallization occurred in what is now our solar system. Could we then, on the basis of the fullest possible experience of our fire-mist world, foretell the forms that crystalline synthesis would assume in the not-yet of the future ? I think not. How could we describe and formulate facts the like of which were not yet in being for our experience ? It may be said that science is day by day foretelling facts which are not yet in being. THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 149 Yes ! But does science ever foretell facts the like of which have not yet swum into the ken of experience ? I speak under correction ; but I believe not. I hold that all scientific explanation is after the event, and that all scientific prediction is of like events under like conditions. But surely, it may be urged, an adequate knowledge of the constitution of nature would enable us to predict any event no matter how novel or how far removed from us in future time. In a sense this is true enough — but only in the sense that the supposed adequate knowledge embraces the constitution of nature when it is finished — if it ever gets finished for human understanding to grasp. In the case I have supposed, the order of nature as an evolutionary product was still in the making and had not reached the critical moment of crystallization. In our interpretation of the evolutionary process, if we place ourselves at any moment in the midst of its flow, we anticipate the future on the basis of the experience gained up to date. But even if that experience were exhaustive, our anticipations must often be at fault if the world is still in the making for our experience, if new modes of synthesis hitherto unexperienced, and, therefore, as I con- ceive unpredictable, 1 come into being. I am, how- ever, fully aware of the fact that many men of science would contend that the evolution of all the varieties of crystal-form, and all the corre- lated physical properties, could have been fore- told, before their actual existence, on the basis of 1 M. Bergson, as I think unwarrantably, restricts the range of the unpredictable to the vital order ; but it must be remembered that for him all process is, in a wide sense, vital. 150 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE an adequate knowledge of molecular polarities. But as a matter of historical fact, is not our knowledge of these molecular polarities derived from the study of crystals and their properties ? Given specific modes of synthesis, we set to work to explain them in terms of what we find therein. But that is a different matter from predicting the modes of synthesis before they are given ! Is such a view proved to be incorrect by the prediction of the discovery of Neptune based on the skilled and laborious calculations of Adams and Leverrier — a prediction, the accuracy of which was established when the new planet swam into the field of M. Galle's telescope ; or by the prediction of the physical properties of certain chemical elements, the discovery of which might be anticipated on the basis of Mendeleefs law? Surely not. Reduced to its simplest expression, what we have in such cases is a curve of ideal construction within which certain points may be ideally interpolated before those points have been shown by observation to exist on nature's curve of fact. But the curve of ideal construction is based on experiments and observations up to date ; and these deal with occurrences up to date. But if the phenomena of crystallization had not occurred up to date, on what basis could a curve of ideal con- struction, dealing with the not-yets of the natural order, be founded ? How could points be inter- polated or extrapolated in a curve for the drawing of which nature had not yet supplied the data ? But enough of the inorganic order. Crystalliza- tion has been taken merely as an example. Chemical synthesis might have been treated on similar lines. THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 151 It might have been asked whether the constitution and properties of carbon disulphide could have been predicted before the event of its coming into being, and before like events had afforded analogical data. The point of my contention is that the progress of inorganic evolution is replete with events which are unforseeable on the basis of the fullest possible experience prior to the actual occurrence of such events. All that we can do, in science, is to correlate the new with the old. Carrying with us the lesson we have learnt from the inorganic world, let us pass onwards to the sphere of the organic. Let us again ask a question : — Could our supposed sentient being (Irish, I admit, in the figure of prolepsis), existent before life (as the man of science regards life) appeared on the surface of this planet — could this impossible being have possibly foretold the nature of organic processes ? His descendant, speaking in Belfast, 1 no doubt discerned " in that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers . . . have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." But Tyndall was speaking after the event; and I doubt whether even the champion of biogenesis could have foretold the properties of protoplasm before that elusive substance had come into exist- ence. Now it is in being, we can gain experience of these properties, though we cannot as yet correlate the genetic stages of its natural evolution. That is just part of our scientific ignorance. Some of the properties of living organisms are, however, 1 John Tyndall, "Address to the British Association" (1874). 11 Fragments of Science," 6th Ed. (1879), vol, ii., p. 193. 152 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE unquestionably, as I believe, different from the properties of inorganic substances. New relationships as a matter of observation obtain. I do not care, at this stage of our inquiry, to have much traffic with " isms ". But if the term mechanism be employed as a group-name by which to label certain salient characteristics of physical and chemical processes in the inorganic world, and the same processes in so far as they occur in organisms, there would seem to be no objection to the application of the term vitalism to the salient characteristics of the specifically physio- logical processes which differentiate the organism from inorganic matter. But obviously the two terms should be used on a similar footing, that is to say, to label the observed characteristics and to aid us in our classification and our scientific interpretation. Un- fortunately, however, the word vitalism generally carries with it another and a different connotation. Inasmuch as any suggested interpretation of instinct is sure to be termed mechanistic or vitalistic, and inasmuch as one's attitude towards the instinctive problem is closely related to one's attitude towards vital problems generally, I must endeavour to make clear my own point of view. First as to vital force. This opens up the ques- tion. What are we to understand by force ? Given certain observable changes of position in the solar system ; is force the Source of these motions ? That question is beyond our province. We have excluded Source from our universe of discourse ; and we must therefore have nothing to do with either gravitative or vital Force in that sense of the word. Then we may speak of force as a measure of the accelerations THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 153 which occur in a mechanical system. But we know little or nothing about the accelerations of particles in an organic system ; so that can scarcely be the meaning we are to attach to vital force. We may, however, speak of the solar system, for example, as one in which the changes which occur are to be interpreted in terms of gravitative force, meaning thereby that the system is a gravitative system. The term gravitative force here has reference to the constitution of the system as the ground of certain observed occurrences. It names the order of relation- ships with which we have to deal. If the term vital force is used in an analogous manner, and if we are careful to make this quite clear in our definition, I see no reason why we should reject this usage. The only serious objection is that it is apt to suggest Source, and not what I have called ground. I should, myself, therefore, much prefer to speak of organic constitution or organic relationships. But still, since we speak of crystalline, magnetic, and chemical forces as characterizing certain natural processes, using this form of speech to describe the constitution of the system in each case, I see no objection to speaking in like manner of vital force, as characterizing organic processes as such, so long as it is distinctly understood that this is just what is meant, and that there is no implication of Life as Source. If this implication be intended, let it be clearly stated, then we shall know exactly where we are. What then about vital chemistry ? Vital or physiological chemistry is either a branch of chemistry or it is not. If it be not, then the sooner some other 154 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE name is found for it the better. If it is, then, surely, as a branch, it is still intimately correlated with other branches of the parent stem from which it is differentiated, and as such must be dealt with in terms of chemical processes and chemical products. But, it will be said, this way of putting the matter studiously avoids the very point at issue. As Dr. Driesch l has well phrased it : — " What physiological chemistry studies is only results that are chemically characterized — not results of processes that are chemical processes. It is very important/' he adds, " to understand well what this means. Of course chemical potentials have formed the general basis of all physiological chemical results, but these results as we know, are not due to the mere play of these potentials as such, but to the intervention of entelechy ; therefore something purely chemical is found in the results only, not in the processes. Without entelechy there would be other chemical results." No one has stated the case for vitalism more clearly, ably, and cogently than Dr. Driesch. His doctrine of entelechy goes to the very root of the matter. We must try to reach an understanding of what he means by entelechy. Is it an assemblage of natural conditions ; or is it a name for the constitution of the organism, that is the ground of organic phenomena ; or is it an extra-mundane Source of these phenomena ? There are certain processes which are characteristic of the living organism. It is the business of the biologist to deal with these phenomena in the terms 1 Hans Driesch, " The Science and Philosophy of the Organism," vol. ii. (1908), p. 254 . THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 155 of his scientific methods — to explain, for example, the development of the chick from the fertilized egg, or the restitution of a limb in a maimed newt. Now unquestionably all the processes of growth and restitution involve chemical or metabolic changes with which the chemist may deal according to his methods, and involve molecular changes with which the physicist, no less than the biologist, is concerned. Let us assume that all the metabolic processes, in so far as they are susceptible of treatment by the chemist, are interpretable in terms of chemistry, and that all the physical changes, as such, are found to be in accordance with recognized physical generaliza- tions. This may be more than the vitalist will grant. Let it pass, however, as an assumption which is the basis of scientific research. The question is whether, when the chemist and the physicist have done their work, there is anything left for the biologist to explain — whether correlated with these chemical processes and these molecular changes, there are also further processes which assume a specific form in the phenomena of organic growth that is nowhere to be found in the inorganic world. Dr. Driesch contends that they do — that the biologist may claim an autonomous field of research. Let us grant that he is right. As at present advised I should myself grant it freely and unreservedly. Let us, then, not only admit, but contend, that in the living organism there are specifically organic modes of synthesis. And let us provisionally agree to substitute for the familiar word organic, as qualifying, for example, growth and development, the relatively unfamiliar term entelechian. Then entelechy is the noun from 156 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE which this adjective is derived ; it expresses the distinctively biological concept. In this sense I can accept entelechy as the specific ground of organic processes within a relatively autonomous province of the constitution of nature. And in this sense the term is sometimes used by Dr. Driesch. " Entelechy," he says, " is order of relation and absolutely nothing else" (p. 169). But the ground of all order in nature is for him, following Kant, to be sought in the constitution of the mind. Its home is among the categories. Unless I wholly misunderstand him, Dr. Driesch is so far Kantian as to hold that the given manifold of sensory experience is made into a cosmos by us human knowers. I accept, as I have said above, the other alternative, and believe that it is the constitution of nature that makes us human knowers what we are in the sense that we are just parts within the whole, and parts in which conscious relationships, strictly correlated with other relationships, have been evolved. But if the knower is himself thus part of the order of nature, may it not be reasonably claimed that, whichever alternative be accepted, the sole and sufficient ground of all experience and all scientific knowledge is the order of nature ? So far, as part of that order, entelechy may be accepted as a concept of value in biological interpretation. It must be remembered that on these terms entelechy is accepted as part of the constitutive nature of the organism. It is not accepted as a natural agent existent outside the organism and somehow acting not in but into the organism. When we are told by Dr. Driesch that entelechy is a natural THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 157 agent which rules, determines, and controls organic processes (i. p. 227-8) ; when we are told that entelechy uses the brain as a piano-player uses the piano (ii. p. 97) ; when we are told that it is the task of entelechy to build up the organism (ii. p. 149) ; I seek to know whether crystallization is also a natural agent which rules, determines, and controls crystalline processes ; whether gravitation uses the solar system as a piano-player uses a piano ; whether it is " the task " of a committee of such agents to build up the universe. I seek to know what crystallization, gravitation, organization, and the rest are doing when they are not playing their pianos ; and what evidence there is of their exist- ence independently of their business avocation as instrumentalists. And this I seek to know within the universe of discourse of science which just accepts process as given, to be correlated with other process, and has no concern with the question why process is what it is. If we say that entelechy uses matter and material causality for its purposes ; if we emphasize by italics that entelechy is alien not only to matter but also to its own material purposes (ii. p. 336), are we not passing beyond the order of nature as given, in our search for an entity or entities through the Agency of which a part of that order has its Source and Origin ? Entelechy we are told (ii. p. 235) is affected by and acts upon spatial causality as if it came out of an ultraspatial dimension ; it does not act in space, it acts into space ; it is not in space, it only has points of manifestation in space. So, too, it is not in the material organism but only "manifests" itself in this material (p. 336). There is no living 158 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE substance ; there is only substance which is used by life (ii. p. 246 and 248 and i. p. 93). Have we not here the manifestation of Agency as the Source of the order which is observed. It certainly appears to be so. For we are led up to the question whether the harmony in certain domains of nature does not point back to " an original primary entelechy that made it just as the artist makes an object of art;" to which the reply is that "the mind is forced to assume this primary entelechy in the universe," an entelechy which has not indeed created absolute reality but which has ordered certain parts of it (ii. p. 370). This may be a perfectly valid conception for the metaphysics of Source ; but it is not what I understand by natural science of which biology is a branch. I proceed throughout on the assumption that, whatever may be their source — whether it be Life, or Entelechy or God — all natural processes, including both organic and mental processes, are related within the constitution of nature, and must be correlated within our ideal construction of the natural order. That is what I understand by a universe. If we could tell the story of evolution up to date, it would be one story, all its episodes of process being in some measure related. But if it be one story, is there not one science of nature in terms of which this story may be told ? Professor J. Arthur Thomson asks x this question and gives a negative answer. But what are we to understand by one science of nature. Professor Thomson tells us that "it must consist of precise physico-chemical descriptions which have been, or 1 " Hibbert Journal," vol. x., p. no (Oct. 191 1). THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 159 are in process of being, summed up in mathematical terms." I take this to mean that the one science of nature must take into consideration chemical and physical relationships only, and must either (i) deny the existence of, or (2) exclude from its treatment, all other relationships, such as those which are specifically organic, still more those that are of the conscious or experiential order. Now of course Professor Thomson as a distinguished biologist is not prepared to do either the one or the other, and since he is precluded by his definition of the one science from including specifically biological relationships therein, he seems to urge that there are two sciences of nature — in- organic science on the one hand and on the other hand the science of biology. But it seems to me that the only possible justification of such treatment is the Bergsonian conception of two separate orders — the order of the inert and the order of the vital and the conscious. In other words the doctrine of two sciences is founded in a doctrine of radical dualism. The thesis I seek to develop is that there is one science of nature — that which includes all kinds of relationships. But of course this one science of nature must not be so defined at the outset as to limit it to physico-chemical relationships and to exclude all that is distinctively organic. Professor Thomson includes under biology certain phenomena in connection with animal behaviour which involve experiential relation- ships. That these phenomena cannot adequately be interpreted in terms of "precise physico-chemical descriptions," and in these terms only, is for me, so true as to be a truism. But I doubt whether there are many of even the staunchest upholders of a 160 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE so-called mechanical interpretation, who would deny the presence of other relationships than those which we term physical and chemical, or would deny that these other phenomena are susceptible of scientific treat- ment. There is one further characteristic — a distinctive characteristic — of the phenomena with which biology deals to which allusion must be made. Professor Thomson rightly lays stress on the fact that organisms are historic beings. As W. K. Clifford said 1 in a passage which Professor Thomson quotes : — " A living being must always contain within itself the history, not merely of its own existence, but of all its ancestors." Every organism runs through a life- history which is substantially a cyclic repetition of that of its parents. What, then, is the relation of this distinctively organic sequence to inorganic processes ? We know indeed that as the life histories run their course they are in close relation to physical processes in the environment. But what about the beginnings of life on the face of this earth ? We must frankly confess that the mists of our ignorance hide the stages of correlation from our view. Must we then, to account for the origin of protoplasm, postulate the incursion of a foreign order, hitherto unrelated to the old inorganic order, and coming from an alien sphere ? If we do so we leave science and resort to the metaphysics of Source. What know we in science concerning this foreign order save in and through its relationships with the native order at the points of postulated incursion ? Let us once 1 "Lectures and Essays," vol. i., p. 83. Discourse delivered in 1868. THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 161 more suppose that at some stage of world-develop- ment a sentient being might have observed the seemingly sudden (if it was sudden) appearance of lowly forms of organization. In what essential respects would such an occurrence differ from the seemingly sudden appearance of crystallization in the pre- crystalline magma of an earlier phase of develop- ment ? Let us at least be consistent in our thought. If we regard organization as an incursion from an alien sphere, let us also so regard crystallization. Let us apply to the inorganic world the same canons of interpretation which we apply to the organic world. But if we do so, in the one case as in the other, are we not postulating a Source of the occurrences which ex hypothesis might have been observed as matters of experiential fact ? What then is the other course open to us ? — What is the course which is here advocated ? The nai've acceptance of any such facts as can be established by observation and scientific inference. Among these facts is, I conceive, the frequent appearance of what must seem to contemporary experience to be new pro- ducts of synthesis at critical periods of the develop- ment of world process. I suppose few will deny that the genesis of crystals is correlated with certain assignable conditions under which that genesis occurs. Why should we deny, on the basis of our present ignor- ance, that the genesis of organisms is or was likewise correlated with certain other conditions as yet unknown ? Why should we deny that the constitution of nature, which is the sufficient ground of the genesis of the one, affords no ground for the genesis of the other ? M 162 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE But if we are prepared to see in the constitution of nature the ground of all those processes with which science attempts to deal, and of all those products which are strewn along the banks of the flowing stream of process — in short of all perceptual ex- perience and all scientific knowledge — we must also be prepared to regard the constitution of nature as the ground of new and unforeseeable modes of synthesis. We must be prepared to regard the world at any stage of progress as one which is really evolving. And if it is evolving in this sense of exhibiting genuinely new modes of synthesis, the past can never be a wholly sufficient basis for anticipations with regard to the future. On this view of evolutionary progress there are, as M. Bergson and William James have claimed, unforeseen and unforeseeable possi- bilities in store for the universe. The tune of the future will not be merely a repetition of the theme of the past, with only such insignificant variations as may be due to minor rearrangements of already existent chords in nature's melody and harmony. Once more a note of warning must be uttered. The constitution of nature as ground is not to be regarded as independent of natural process ; nor as imposing on natural process the characters it possesses. Directly we so regard it we pass to the conception of Source. It is just the logical form, or, if it be preferred, the intelligibility of the world. It neither produces nor is produced by process ; it is the essential feature of the existing and evolving universe as rationally interpretable. CHAPTER VI NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE IN earlier chapters I have attempted to interpret instinctive experience in terms of natural history. But can there be a natural history of experience ? Or is the attempt to give a genetic account of experience in terms of natural history, and science founded thereon, futile and foredoomed to failure ? I regard instinctive experience as the earliest phase of a continuous development in the individual, which may lead up to the enriched thought- experience of man. But am I not, it will be asked, beginning at the wrong end ? Can one explain the higher in terms of the lower ? Must one not reverse the procedure and explain the lower in terms of the higher ? Those who approach this question along such a path as ours regard human self-consciousness as a result of evolution ; it is, for them, the terminus ad quern to which or towards which development leads up. But those who approach the question through a different avenue, urge that self-conscious- ness is the terminus a quo from which we must start forth on our quest for explanation. Thus T. H. Green says l that self-consciousness is " at its begin- 1 "Introduction to Hume," "Treatise of Human Nature," Green & Grose, vol. i., p. 166. (Impression of 1909-) 163 164 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE ning formally or potentially or implicitly all that it becomes actually or explicitly in developed know- ledge." There is of course a sense in which the naturalist can understand and accept this statement — the sense in which an acorn is potentially or implicitly all that it becomes actually or explicitly in the developed oak-tree. But here we have only an expectation founded on knowledge of routine, and one which implies the prior existence of such know- ledge, as this in turn implies the prior existence of a knower. In any case this is certainly not the sense in which Green's statement is to be understood. " A natural history of self-consciousness is," he says, "impossible since such a history must be of events and self-consciousness is not reducible to a series of events." This might perhaps be interpreted as indicating an insight into the distinction between the events experienced and the process of experiencing, or, as Green would have phrased it, between content and act. But for him the act implies an Agent, and the Agent is not of this world. Mind, though it may act into nature is not of, or belonging to, the order of nature. " A form of consciousness which we cannot explain as of natural origin " is, Green says, 1 "necessary for our conceiving an order of nature." Here we have Consciousness as Source. For Green, as we saw in the last chapter, Source is all-important ; and his real point is that a natural explanation of Source is impossible. This may be freely granted both by those who believe in a Source of phenomena and by those who disbelieve. Now, in so far as 1 " Prolegomena to Ethics," § 19, p. 23 (5th Ed. 1906). Italics mine. NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 165 epistemology discusses the origin of knowledge, as distinct from its genetic development, it belongs to the metaphysics of Source. Its method of interpre- tation is to explain the lower in terms of the higher ; the end determines the course of events by which it is reached. Hence my reiterated contention that any commingling of the antithetical methods of metaphysics and of science is to be deprecated. Why should we not try to write a natural history of experience, as it somehow actually runs its course, leaving the problem of its Source to be discussed on a different platform ? But, granted that a natural history of experience might be written, were our knowledge far more adequate than it is at present ; it would, I take it, in strictness, be a natural history of an individual experience, just as the natural history of an organism is, in strictness, that of an individual. Granted, then, that on these terms, a natural history of experience might be told, the question arises whether this alone would suffice for scientific interpre- tation. The question is perhaps a little subtle ; but it opens up the wider question : — What is the relation of history to science ? If history, as such, always deals descriptively with a particular series of events forming a sequence which occurred within an assignable period of time ; and if it be the task of science to furnish an explanation and interpretation of these events in terms of general rules ; it does not seem possible to identify the one with the other. It would appear, rather, that it is the function of history to supply, on its own terms, the data for scientific discussion. Granted that history repeats itself — a 166 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE statement which, as we shall see, may require some qualification — only in so far as it does so may we hope to ascertain the general rules which obtain in such repetition. Science can only deal effectively with the data which are afforded by routine. Only on the basis of routine can expectations and anticipa- tions arise. For Hume, custom afforded a sufficient ground for such routine. For a modern disciple of Hume, Professor Karl Pearson, 1 routine is grounded in the nature of the perceptive faculty itself. For us the ultimate ground of perception and custom and routine is the constitution of nature. But what is the constitution of nature but that to which our concept of the natural order refers ? And in the absence of recurrent phenomena could we ever have framed this conception of a natural order ? If physics, chemistry, and astronomy dealt with always fresh occurrences, without any repeated series, we might indeed have history ; but could we have science ? If the development of this oak-tree from that acorn were not substantially the same as that of other oak-trees from other acorns, and in like manner with a vast number of organic life-histories, could we, it may be asked, frame any generalizations that could properly be termed biological ? If again there were no recurrent phases of what is consciously experienced, could even that custom, on which Hume relied, have arisen ? Is not all co-operative work in the interpretation of nature dependent on the fact that sequences of events are repeated in and for the individual experience of different men ? Is it, then, too much to say that, apart from the repeated 1 "The Grammar of Science," pt. i., p. 1 15 (1911). NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 167 recurrence of sequences which, for the purposes of interpretation, may be regarded as the same, no such conception of the natural order as has been framed by men of science could have come into being ? There is unquestionably a central core of truth in the views implied in such questions. But is it the whole truth ? Is there not somewhat to be urged on the other side ? Suppose that we could know the complete history of the natural order up to date. We think of it nowadays in terms of evolution. Regard then the evolution as a whole and consider the thought-model men of science have framed of its progress. Does this history repeat itself ? Can we conceive that it has ever repeated itself in literal exactness, as a great progressive whole? Does the astronomer, touched with the spirit of evolution, believe that any period in the history of the solar system exactly reproduced the events of any preceding period ? Does the geologist, or the palaeontologist, believe that the physical features of the whole earth and the total flora and fauna all over the globe, were ever twice the same, so far as his researches enable him to form an opinion ? Has not every period, long or short, its distinguishing individuality ? If so, there is surely a valid sense in which it may be urged that our concept of evolution is antithetical to a concept involving the complete and through- and-through re- currence of any phase of the evolutionary process regarded as a whole. And when we narrow our field of view and consider the history of any given organism, still more that of the individual experience of any conscious being, is not the salient fact that 168 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE history does not repeat itself — that history always comprises within its record some measure of genuine becoming, always presents something new, something unique ? It may, however, be urged that this so-called genuine becoming, this something new and unique, is only a re-grouping of world-old elements. But why only a re-grouping' 4 ? Is not every synthesis within the natural order, on this view, only a re-grouping ? What is thus stigmatized by the dis- paraging word only is, it may be urged, the essential and distinguishing feature of evolution, and should be recognized as such, not only by the psychologist and the biologist, but by the interpreter of inorganic phases of the evolutionary process. When crystal- lization first occurred in that part of the universe which is now our earth, there was in a sense only a re-grouping of molecules never before so grouped. In a sense, too, every time a crystal forms to-day there is only a synthetic re-grouping of molecules otherwise grouped just previous to its formation. But in the latter case, and in thousands of such cases, experience has afforded a basis, absent in the first instance, for the interpretation of crystal-formation in terms of routine. Let us admit then that, within the natural order as a whole, there are many details of the history which occur over and over again, and differ only in the time and place of their occurrence ; for we may here neglect the fact (if such it be) that no two crystals, for example, are ever absolutely alike, and that the balance of unlikeness, perhaps infinitesimal, gives at any rate just a little uniqueness and individuality. Though the history NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 169 of the natural order as a whole (so far as we can form an ideal construction of the whole) does not in any two periods of time repeat itself, yet within that whole there are numberless repetitions sufficiently alike to be comprised under the generalizations of science. What, then, are the characteristics of such repeti- tions of process ? We may express the essential feature diagrammatically thus * : — Take the recorded curve of this bit of natural process, with its products, occurring here and now ; superpose it in thought on the curve-record of another bit of natural process which occurred at another time and in another place ; then if these records are substantially the same, so that the one curve approximately fits the other — history so far repeats itself. How stands the matter then with regard to the organism ? Does history repeat itself in a similar sense here ? Take the relatively simple life-history of the frog or newt from the egg through the tadpole phases. Or take the much more complex case of the liver-fluke, the Hfe-history of which is a series of quite romantic episodes. I conceive that in all such cases, simple or complex, the practical working zoologist who has no philosophical theory to advocate, will say that, in biology, history does repeat itself; that when the record of any one individual organism is compared with that of another of the same species there will be substantial agreement, and that to contend that there is not absolute identity is a bit of quibbling. But such an one cannot have learnt to the full the lesson of evolution. For, if in a long series, over a considerable period of 1 Cf. Bergson, " Creative Evolution," p. 227, 170 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE time, each successive individual is quite like its predecessors, where is the possibility of progress in the evolution of species ? On such a view where does variation come in ? Does not the history of biology teach us that whereas the older zoologists were content to believe that history does repeat itself, post-Darwinian biologists have learnt to accept the view that in strictness this is not the case ? Hence it can scarcely be termed quibbling to contend that in no two cases is there absolute identity. Will it not be wiser to say : — (i) that for the purposes of the systematic zoologist who is conducting a research on life-history there is substantial agreement in the case of the different individuals of any living species ; (2) that for the purposes of the evolutionist those minor differences which are termed variations must be taken into consideration ; and (3) that for the purposes of philosophic thought absolute identity between any two life-histories is, to say the least of it, highly improbable ? Combining these three, we may say that in any individual life-history there is a largely preponderant portion which is a repetition of what has occurred before in other individual phases of the history of the species ; that there is a much smaller proportion which is a variation from previous life-histories in the same line of heredity ; and that, though, among some organisms, this latter proportion is so small as to elude the closest observation, it is never a vanishing quantity. So too, in the natural history of experience, as one among the many concatenated processes of the natural order, we find, as in the organic characters which mark the course of the individual life-history NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 171 of an organism, (i) some measure of substantial but never complete repetition, and (2) some measure of the new and unique. Here again, however, we are faced with the same difficulty of interpretation. Is the apparently new and unique a veritable " creative " departure from routine ? Or is it the algebraical sum of characters given in previous routines and therefore predictable if we knew the amounts of these characters and the mode of their summation ? I see, at present, no ground for denying, though I am not prepared to assert, that really new synthetic combina- tions, as contrasted with quasi-mechanical mixtures of old characters, do occur in the natural history of experience. But since, as matters now are, we have not the data for proof of either their presence or absence, let us be content to grant that they may occur. In any case a large measure of individuality seems to be emphasized in the concatenated experi- ential processes and products of the higher organisms. In a sense that is quite valid and true the mental life-history of the individual never in any of its phases repeats itself, nor is any phase an exact repetition of previous parental or ancestral life-history. Hence in the natural history of experience the same antecedent conditions never again recur ; hence I do not act to-day quite as I acted yesterday ; and hence it may be said that the concept of stereotyped routine — of ubiquitous uniformity of sequence — is here inapplicable. The assertion that like ante- cedents will always be followed by like consequents, the constitution of nature being assumed to be constant, may be true enough ; but what can be its value here, if, in the ever-changing flow of experience 172 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE the same conditions never do recur ? All this has an element of truth ; and M. Bergson and his followers do well to insist on this feature of the conscious life- history. But surely it is not the whole truth ; for it ignores the fact that though, in strictness, the life- history does not repeat itself any more than does the history of the universe, yet there is in it enough of routine on which to found generalizations. M. Bergson seems rather extravagantly to over- emphasize the difference and to minimize the similarity in successive phases of the mental life ; but it must be remembered that for him routine and habit, though they are due to the Agency of Life, are part of the automatism Life has created, and are being, or have been, translated into the stereotyped order of the inert. Then and then only do they come within the purview of science so as to be susceptible of treatment in the static terms which science as he admits rightly employs in its interpre- tation. Still, granted that the quality of our experience changes from day to day, it is only within the narrow margin of this " creative " difference that the resulting actions are, in M. Bergson's sense of the term, "free." And this limited freedom is, for us, but not for him, grounded in the constitution of experi- ence which is part of the constitution of nature. We must turn aside here to consider briefly what we mean when we speak of the individual and individuality. It is convenient, in biology, to apply the term individual to the organism which embodies that portion of the continuous life-history which is relatively (but only relatively) isolated and runs from the cleavage of the fertilized ovum to the death of NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 173 the adult, and begins again with the egg laid by the adult. Biologists will remind us that in some cases, as in that of the liver-fluke, there are, within the individual history, relatively isolable stages to which the term quasi-individual may be applied. They will remind us, too, that, where the egg is fertilized, any individual life-history is continuous with two life- histories. But these are only supplementary con- ceptions. The essential conception is that the individual is relatively isolated, and that it has certain characteristics which distinguish it as an individual from otherwise similar individuals. Now it is often asserted that outside the sphere of life no such concept as that of individuality is applic- able. We cannot affirm, it is urged, that each molecule of water has its own peculiar distinguishing characters which mark its true individuality. Perhaps not. But can we deny that it has ? No doubt in the interpreta- tion of the chemist any such individuality as atoms and molecules may possess, nowise matters for his purposes. For these purposes they are regarded as all just alike. But to assert that the real molecules to which that thought has reference- — the molecules as they exist (if they do exist) independently of that thought, have no distinguishing characters of individuality — that, I conceive, is to go further than known facts justify us in going. We cannot get at them to compare in minute detail each with others. We have no grounds for any dogmatic assertion on the matter one way or the other. There may be, therefore individuality, in molecules and crystals, in mountains, in rivers — in the inorganic world. None the less we may quite justifiably say that outside the organic sphere the 174 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE concept of individuality is not applicable in the same sense as within that sphere. Nowhere in the in- organic world do we find such repetitive cycles ; nowhere else the cumulative effects for which heredity somehow " provides " ; nowhere else the subtly interrelated processes of differentiation from what is, or seems, comparatively homogeneous at the outset, combined with the integration of the differentiated products into an organic whole with characteristic unity. There is nothing quite like this in the in- organic world. And hence there is no stick individu- ality outside the sphere of the organic and the conscious. Let us, however, again fix our attention on the essential feature of individuality. It is what distinguishes this from that. It is the balance of unlikeness which distinguishes this individual assemblage of processes and products, from that other assemblage otherwise so closely alike. It is a kink in the recorded-curve which prevents it from quite accurately fitting the generalized statistical curve. But though the balance of unlikeness is the distinguishing mark of individuality it is not that which constittites the individual. The individual is the developing microcosm in its entirety. It is a differentiated centre within the macrocosm. It par- takes of the universality which characterizes the con- stitution of nature within which it is differentiated. Now does hereditary transmission " provide " only for that full measure of repetition which the study of organic and conscious life-histories discloses ; or does it also " provide " in some way for that far smaller measure of variation which gives to the individual its distinguishing characters ? NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 175 We must remember that the organism which expresses, or is the expression of, the life-history is only relatively isolated. It is in relation to the environment. By environing conditions it is more or less modified in running its course. Some biologists believe that the modifications impressed on the bodily tissues of the parent beget correlated variations in the offspring. But since it is at present, to say the least of it, doubtful whether such modifications, due to environing conditions affecting the bodily tissues, are inherited, we may provisionally assume that variations do not arise in this way. Or, if it be so preferred, we will assume that the environment is so far constant that these conditions of modification may be eliminated from our present consideration. But if under these circumstances variation does still occur, would a complete knowledge of life-histories up to date enable us to predict its nature ? Is it strictly correlated with some parental or germinal conditions of its occurrence ? I take it that the orthodox biological reply to these questions would be in the affirmative. But some biologists would differentiate between the two questions. To the latter they would reply in the affirmative ; they would say that unquestionably there is hereditary correlation. But they might hesitate to affirm with equal confidence that even complete knowledge up to date would afford the basis of prediction — of foretelling the exact nature of a variation which ex hypothesi occurs for the first time and is therefore really new. If it be an algebraical sum of parental or ancestral characters here juxtaposed or mixed in a new pattern, it would be predictable on the basis of routine, since it would 176 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE be only a new combination of old routines. But if the constitution of the organism should have reached a critical stage, analogous to that in which new crystals or new chemical compounds are formed — a critical stage at which new variations crystallize out, or organize out, if the expression be allowed ; then they would not be foreseeable, since previous routine would afford no clue to their nature. I do not contend that this is the case. I question whether there are biological data for deciding the question. All that I urge is that if such unforeseeable variations occur in the natural history of organisms, or in the natural history of experience, then the business of science is to seek the correlated conditions of their appearance, and to accept them as grounded in the constitution of nature, remembering that the world in which we live is still in the making, and may have much in store which even the most complete knowledge up to date would not enable us to predict. Now as we have already seen, new and unpredict- able events in the history of experience, and new and unpredictable variations in the course of evolution, are what M. Bergson terms " creative " and charac- terizes as "free." But for him they are not grounded in the constitution of the organism, as part of the constitution of nature one and indivisible, they are grounded in the constitution of life which is the Source of the creative and the free. " The spontan- eity of life," he tells us, " is manifested in a continual creation of new forms succeeding others " (" Creat. Ev." p. 91). " Heredity," he says, " not only transmits characters, it transmits also the impetus in virtue of NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 177 which the characters are modified and this impetus is vitality itself" (p. 144). " It is the current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another " (p. 27). And this life is identified with will " which is employed in some cases in setting up the mechanism itself, and in others in choosing the mechanisms to be released. The will of an animal/* we are told, " is the more effective and the more intense, the greater the number of mechanisms it can choose from, the more complicated the switch- board on which all the motor paths cross, or in other words the more complicated its brain (p. 265). No doubt in some of these and other such passages, it is a little difficult to be quite sure when M. Bergson is referring to natural process as distinguished from its products, and when he is referring to an extra-mundane Source which acts into (rather than in) the organism. In a sense we may say that heredity " transmits " the process of organizing ; that I suppose is what we mean when we say that characters, as the products of organization, are " transmitted." It would, however, conduce to scientific precision if the word " transmis- sion " could be superseded and heredity were treated in terms of correlation. On these terms M. Bergson's extra-mundane Life or Will would be the Source of existing correlations in the routine it has established, and the Source of new correlations in its creative capacity. When M. Bergson draws a distinction between " the evolved which is a result " and " evolution itself which is the act by which the result is obtained" (p. 53), does he mean by "act" a continuous natural process of which the organisms we can study are the products, or does he mean the N 178 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE manifestation of extra-mundane Will? I think he means the latter. It must, of course, be remembered that M. Bergson's aim is to combine science and metaphysics in one comprehensive synthesis. He is, therefore, perfectly justified in introducing the concept of the Source of organic phenomena into his universe of discourse. Whether he does so to the benefit or to the detriment of biological science must remain a matter of opinion. My own opinion is that any introduction of the metaphysics of Source into scientific discussion is always detrimental to science. It always raises false issues. The current discussion of vitalism and animism is riddled through and through with such false issues — false, that is, within the field of science. Not content with accepting processes and products and their relationships, vitalists and animists persistently ask questions as to their source and origin, and straightway Entelechy, Life, Psychic Entity, descend from the blue of metaphysics to trouble the waters of science. The scientific task of correlating phenomena, especially the complex phenomena of living organisms, is difficult enough and is still in its early and tentative stages. There are a great number of correlation- questions (in the broader sense of the term, and not in the restricted Darwinian sense) — questions with regard to evolutionary and developmental conditions — which are easily asked, but which at present cannot be satisfactorily answered. To say that organic pheno- menon are due to Life which, to paraphrase Green's words, contains within itself potentially or implicitly, all that it manifests actually or explicitly, is no NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 179 solution, not even the hint of a solution, of the scientific problem. M. Bergson in his criticism of Darwin and of later biologists asks a number of questions which have often been put before. If the variations which resulted in the vertebrate eye, he asks, were infinitesimal and insensible, how could natural selection preserve or accumulate them ? A sensible value is essential to make the difference between elimination or survival. If, on the other hand, they were appreciable in amount, and sudden or discontinuous in occurrence, how could so many complementary and independent variational jumps conspire to give the perfection of the organ ? Unless all jumped together in working harmony each several jump would be harmful rather than helpful. And how comes it that the pallial eye of the pecten, a mollusk, has a structure in some general features resembling the eye of man, a vertebrate? How comes it, for example, that in both there is a peculiar inversion of the retinal elements, so that their recep- tive ends are directed away from and not towards the object of vision ? There is no attempt to corre- late this arrangement with the presence of a pig- mented layer; no consideration of whether the presence of such a pigment layer is advantageous or not ; or of whether, if advantageous, it would be of any use in front of the retina instead of behind it ; or of whether, if advantageous behind the retina, inversion of the direction of the receptor cells is not a struc- tural necessity. Such questions, or their like, suggest lines of investigation. That is not M. Bergson's aim. His questions are put as posers to science. And because science can only feel its way towards definite 180 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE answers to difficult questions — difficult to answer but easy enough to ask — we are straightway bidden to believe that all is due to Life ; we are invited to credit the potentialities of Life with all the actualities we find in tHe organism. As if that helped us in the smallest degree towards an explanation of the facts ! With all due respect for M. Bergson's poetic genius — for his doctrine of Life is more akin to poetry than to science — his facile criticisms of Darwin's magnificent and truly scientific generalizations only serve to show to how large a degree the intermingling of problems involving the metaphysics of Source with those of scientific interpretation, may darken counsel and serve seriously to hinder the progress of biology. " The Origin of Species " formulated a policy which has guided the scientific work of three generations of biologists. I search in vain in the pages of " Creative Evolution " for a hint of a working policy ; or if a policy is suggested, it is that of explaining biological phenomena by going outside or behind the biological field. M. Bergson would have us rise from mere science to the metaphysics of Source. Now, rightly or wrongly, we have elected to exclude the problem of Source from our universe of discourse. Even for us, however, M. Bergson's insistence on the cardinal importance of process, is none the less timely and helpful. "There is," he well says, " more in the transition than the series of states — more in the movement than the series of positions" (p. 331). If, as he believes, men of science and intellectualist philosophers, are apt to lose sight of the thread of process in contemplating the concept- beads they string upon it, M. Bergson does well in NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 181 drawing attention to what they have, perhaps too readily, taken for granted and failed to render explicit. But when he urges that all process is, or is of the nature of, vital process ; when he arbitrarily sunders process, as belonging to a separate order of the vital and the conscious, from the static products of the order of the inert ; and when he presents his thesis in a style so full of charm and with a wealth of illustra- tion and of metaphor so rich and varied ; the need of protest, on the part of those who have been led to very different conclusions, is imperative. The difficulty is that there is so much in his suggestive thought that can be gladly accepted by the most resolute opponents of his central doctrine. There is a sound core of truth in his criticism of thorough- going intellectualism, based wholly upon what he calls its cinematographical method ; there is a sound core of truth in his contention that the one and only process of which we have direct intuitive awareness is that which, as living and conscious beings, we are. But he works these up into an argument of doubtful validity and cogency. The steps of the argument, if I have rightly grasped its purport, are these: — (I) The method of the intellect is to make a series of snap-shots by means of the instantaneous photography of thought ; (2) Such a series, so made, must for ever remain a series of separate thought-pictures, each one of which is inert and static ; (3) Hence process itself refuses to be photographed, and therefore cannot be intellectually conceived since the concept is an intellectual snap-shot ; (4) But the word process has a meaning and refers to something that really exists ; (5) This reference is always, in its first intent, to the 182 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE life and consciousness which we feel coursing within us — that is to the vital order of which we are part ; (6) Thus only by intuition (as he terms it) and never by conceptual thought, with its inevitably static products, are we aware of process itself; (7) If then there be process, other than that of which we are immediately aware as we live it, we must somehow put ourselves in its place by an act of " sympathy " ; (8) But since we are ourselves vital and conscious agents we can only sympathize with other like agents ; (9) Hence all process is of the vital and conscious order, and even the order of the inert is only a static product precipitated from the dynamic stream of life. So runs the argument. If I have here misrepresented M. Bergson's thesis, I must plead in excuse the difficulty of the subject, the subtlety of his treatment, and the need for brevity. For M. Bergson, with his basal assumption of two orders of being, to one of which, from the outset and throughout, is assigned all process, all duration, all time — for time is very stuff of which life is made (p. 4) — while to the other is left only static and spatial juxtaposition in a world that is dead and inert, there is no other course than that which he follows. He assumes in his premises all that emerges in his conclusion. No doubt that is what we all do more or less ! He, at any rate, is bound by his basal assumption to interpret all process, whenever and wherever it occurs, in terms of conscious Agency, and to regard all order, all form, all movement in the world as due to this Source. He claims to be directly aware of Will as a Source of activity within him ; and since this is the only form of Source of which we have, NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 183 or can have, immediate intuition, all modes of activity must for him be due to Will. The strict antithesis of his interpretation is that of those who explain all process in terms of physical Forces. For them Force is the Agency by which all process is called into being ; and conscious will itself is only the phosphorescent glow which accompanies certain physiological processes due to a subtle interplay of physical Forces. For M. Bergson process is reality and the Reality which underlies process is the Agency of Will. For philosophical materialists, or energists, process is reality and the Reality that underlies process is the Agency of Force or perhaps hypostatized Energy. 1 For M. Bergson there are two orders, one of which, that of the vital and conscious, is the home of Reality, the other, that of the inert, being merely its sloughed off skin. For the materialists there are two orders, one of which, that of Energy, as the expression of Force, being the home of Reality, while the other is only its epiphenomenal phosphorescence. Both schools are in search of Reality as the Source of the phenomen- ally real. Both are, in our view, schools of the metaphysics of Source ; neither of them is content to be a school of science. Here we eschew all capital letters, and accept the real as given. We make no attempt to seek Reality as its Source — whether that Reality be Life, or Force, or God. I shall not attempt to define reality. I take the process and products of experience as a sample of reality. If anything in this universe is real, the 1 On the tendency to hypostatize Energy see T. Percy Nunn, 41 Animism and the Doctrine of Energy," in ** Proc. Aristotelian Soc." 1911-12. 184 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE conscious relationships within a changing context of reality, are real ; and in following up the contention of this chapter that the scientific treatment of experience is a branch of natural history, I propose to deal in some further detail with these relation- ships. But what are we to understand by the conscious relationship? If it be a relationship, then, it will be said, it involves at least two related terms. Of course in a complex context there may be an indefinite number of terms in subtly varying relations. But the analytic tendency of our thought leads us to try to deal with only two at a time; and so the natural question seems to be what are the two terms. The traditional answer to this question, where the experimental relationship is concerned, is that these two terms are object and subject. In perception, for example, there is the relation between the object perceived and the subject perceiving, and this may be followed by new relationships to the object through the activity of the subject which is expressed in behaviour. The subject is thus commonly regarded as an Agent, as a Source of behaviour. Those who are resolute in excluding all forms of Agency from any place in scientific interpretation, cannot accept this view of Subject as Agent. They just accept the reality of process and products. The natural order, as a going concern, is a vast system of interrelated processes ; and the relationships for scientific treat- ment are the contextual conditions under which this or that change in the moving order of nature occurs. Now few, if any, are likely to deny that the conscious relationship is present in intelligent behaviour ; but NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 185 some do deny that this specific relationship makes any difference in the behaviour as such. Surely this is little short of preposterous. Surely it is tantamount to a denial that the conscious relationship has any reality in correlation with the context of the so-called objective world as real. In any case I must proceed on the assumption (if such it be) that the evidence at our command unequivocally shows that the ex- periential relationship does really count. But all that this implies is that given the presence of this relationship the observed facts of process are so and so : in the absence of this relationship the facts are otherwise : the course of process is different. There is no concept of Agency here ; merely a description of the relationships under which process runs this course or that course. What, then, are the terms of a relationship ? In general it may be said that any process which is in some degree independent may be in relation to any other process or its products. And what processes are selected as terms (or termini) is entirely a matter of fruitfulness for the immediate purpose in hand, within the sphere of interpretation of multiform correlations. For it is only by a useful but arbitrary act of abstraction that we isolate some part or phase of the total relational process and regard it as a term. We may thus isolate the organism and consider its relationships to the environment ; or we may isolate the process of experience and consider its relationship to other life processes within the organism ; or we may isolate some phase of the process of experiencing and consider its relationship to foregoing or following phases ; or we may isolate some process-factor in 186 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE that phase and consider its relationship to other co-existent factors ; and so on. The essential point, so far, to bear in mind is that the natural order as a whole is a contextual network of interrelated processes and their products. The natural history of experience is the story of an arbitrarily isolated stream, and, for scientific interpretation it lies wholly within the field of intra-mundane reality. When once we leave this field ; when once we inquire what is the relationship between organic or experiential processes and Life as the Agency which calls them into being ; when once we inquire what is the relationship between conscious processes and the Subject which guides and directs them ; when once we inquire what is the relationship of the natural order to the Source of all things ; we are outside those limits of scientific inquiry which I for one accept. Why should we not endeavour to interpret the natural history of experience on the basis of intra-mundane relationships, somehow existent, without entering into such further inquiries, quite legitimate in their proper place, but none the less inquiries which lie beyond the confines of Science ? We have said that it is in some respects convenient to regard the conscious processes of the organism as a relational term ; they can then be correlated with the cortical or other physiological processes, and with processes in the environment. But in some respects it is often more convenient to regard the stimulating process and the responding process as the terms, and consciousness as the relationship itself between these two. When a boy, riding his bicycle, tends to fall over towards the left, he turns the handle-bar and wheel to the left, and, without knowing anything NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 187 about the mechanical explanation, utilizes the principle of inertia, as we phrase it, to recover his balance. His experience lives in the relationship between the stimulating cue of just a little leaning over to one side, and the appropriate behaviour- response. In solving a problem the intellectual relationship is between the problem and its solution. In all temporal relationships within the conscious process itself the relation is between the antecedent and consequent phases within the process. Just as in the bodily life we live along the threads of organic relationships, so too we live the mental life along the threads of the conscious relationships. From this point of view streams of process pass through the organism, and some of these in their passage are experience. Consciousness as a relational link points this way and that way to the processes, or phases of the same process, in which it provisionally terminates ; or rather to processes or phases of process through which it passes on to lose itself in the vast whole of the natural order. Of course any such view as this involves the whole- hearted acceptance of relationships as constitutive of the natural order throughout, and not only con- stitutive categories of the mind as knowing and thus impressing on the mere matter of sensations (sensa) the form which makes the world orderly for human experience. The so-called a priori forms of relation- ship are, for us, not only constitutive of experience within the sphere of mind ; their peculiar primacy lies in the fact that they are common to the process of experiencing and to the world as experienced. To use the convenient phraseology suggested by Professor 188 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Alexander, they are common to the context as enjoyed and the context as contemplated. This enjoyment of context, this awareness of meaning, is through-and- through relational, just as the world-context and world-meaning which we interpret is through-and- through relational. Indeed it may perhaps be said without extravagance, and without much, if any, disregard of the traditional use of philosophical terms, that the basal a priori category is meaning. For us then all streams of process and all their relationships, general and particular, are constitutive parts of the one natural order wherein arises every bit of new becoming, every phase of evolutionary develop- ment which is interpretable in terms of scientific explanation. But we may in thought make cross- sections through the flow of events, and then we find relatively isolated streams of process, interrelated no doubt with other such streams, but yet possessing some independence ; or we may make longitudinal sections, and then we find much less of isolation — much more of continuity. It is this last fact, — a fact which is at the very foundation of evolutionary treat- ment, — which leads M. Bergson to insist on the importance of duration. In such a longitudinal section, along the flow of process, any stage or state ideally cut out from the pulsing continuity of events, is the embodiment of results of selective synthesis all along the line from an indefinitely remote past right up to the moment of its existence. This is true of all process as continuous. But nowhere are we led to grasp this fact so clearly as in the processes of life and in the processes of consciousness that are the highest developments of life. NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 189 Now if we consider one of the higher animals at any given moment of its life-history we find a double set of relationships in accordance with our conception of the transverse and of the longitudinal sections across or along the streams of world-process. The first comprises the immediate relations to the environ- ment, including what, from the psychological point of view, is the presentation of some situation. It is clear that what I here speak of as the transverse section is that which is primarily concerned with the relationships involved in the perception of the external world. The second or longitudinal section comprises all relations of antecedence and sequence ; comprises the hereditary relationships ; and com- prises the phenomena of expectation and memory in their reference to future or past. The distinction it must be remembered is purely analytic. In actual life both are combined in one web. The analysis pretty nearly comes to this that, apart from other relationships, the one gives space-relations, 1 the other time-relations. But we must be careful to avoid the error of restricting time to the process of 1 Of course time-relationships are also involved when we seek to interpret the transverse section. What is present in the ideal " now " of the moment of perception has to be correlated with events in the perhaps distant context of the environment ; and these events actually occurred within that context before the now of perception. If the sight of Sirius is under consideration the natural event of perceiving the star has to be correlated with the natural event of the shining of Sirius eight years ago. The hearing of distant thunder has to be correlated with an electric discharge, say, ten seconds ago, and so on. Time- relationships of natural events can never be really eliminated though we may disregard them in an abstract discussion of the transverse section which gives us the perception of the external world. 190 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE experiencing, and restricting space to the realm of the experienced. Some years ago William James propounded the question : — Does consciousness exist ? In reply he denied the existence of Consciousness as an independ- ent Entity, while he fully recognized the existence of conscious relationships within an empirical nexus. I should prefer to say that from the point of view of science we should neither assert nor deny Conscious- ness as a Source. We should leave the question for metaphysics. But we should assert that the given conscious relationships (however given) are the proper subject-matter for science which should not go beyond them to seek their Source. To the questions : Does Time exist ? Does Space exist ? Does Causality exist ? Our answers would be of like kind. Temporal, spatial, causal relationships exist throughout the natural order, they are common to the processes of which the contemplated world is a visible changing expression, and to our enjoyment of a privileged process therein ; that is what gives them their deep- seated a priori character. They are ineradicably real as constitutive of a relational context which has meaning. But whether Time, for example, is a Real Entity, the Source of temporal relationships — that is a question which lies wholly outside our limited universe of discourse. Let us now pass on to deal with the relationships of the transverse section l in somewhat greater detail, remembering that our treatment is purely analytic, 1 How far I am indebted in what follows to M. Bergson's doctrine of ft pure perception," I must leave the reader to judge. Cp., "Matter and Memory," p. 26 and passim. NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 191 for in actual experience the transverse and the longitudinal relationships are given together in the brief span of consciousness which we enjoy. And let us, since we are proceeding by the method of abstraction, eliminate representative factors and dis- regard affective tone.^ Ideally in such an instantaneous " now " the organism is in physical relation to all that exists in the transverse section of the total flow of process ; practically it is in biological relation to that part of the world which we call its environment ; but psychologically it is only in relation to that part of the environment which is presented to sense at the moment of experience. Hence an essential feature of the transverse relationship, qua experiential, is that it is a selective and limited relationship, the selection and limitation being dependent on the sensory and nervous constitution of the organism. This selective and limited nature of the relational process of experience has its analogies throughout the natural order. " There is no essential difference," says M. Bergson, 1 " between the process by which the acid picks out from the salt its base, and the act of the plant which invariably extracts from the most diverse soils those elements which serve to nourish it. . . . In short, we can follow from the mineral to the plant, from the plant to the simplest conscious beings, from the animal to man, the progress of the operation by which things seize from out their surroundings that which attracts them." In the conscious relationships of the instantaneous " now " there are thus specialized limited and selected relations between the process which has the property 1 " Matter and Memory," pp. 207-8. 192 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE of experiencing and some parallel processes in the environment as experienced. Now the data thus afforded involve correlation with external events through sensations of sight, hearing, touch, and so forth ; but there are other data which are correlated with intra-organic events — snap-shot data due to general physiological tone (coenaesthesis) to visceral changes in progress, and to motor behaviour (kinaesthesis). These last, the behaviour data, are of paramount importance and give the business context of the data of sight, hearing, and the other special senses, when we restore to process its natural movement and change in time. If then we divide the data of the instantaneous snap-shot into those of extra-organic origin on the one hand and those of intra-organic origin on the other hand, these two sets of data form a synthetic complex of the ex- perience at a given isolated instant correlative with the process of experienczVzg*as then and there enjoyed. Of course this is a very abstract view of experience limited to an ideally instantaneous snap-shot. It is, however, scarcely possible to over- emphasize the importance of realizing the fact that even in such a snap-shot view a number of simul- taneous relationships, with varying emphasis, are themselves related within a complex. Apart from such relationing of relationships it is impossible to conceive a basis for conscious experience. Any selected group of data, such as those afforded by the sight of an object, are only a salient feature with- in a context, and this context is not only contemplated in thought, but enjoyed in the moment of experiencing, I cannot here enter into the subtle question, important NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 193 as it is for psychology, whether relationing should be regarded as an elementary mental process not susceptible of further analysis. In any case it is of fundamental importance. The doctrine of context lies at the very foundations both of psychological and of physiological interpretation. But enough of the instantaneous snap-shot dealing only with the transverse section. In life its process is in progress. And directly we introduce into our analytic treatment the concept of progress, we supplement transverse relationships by longitudinal relationships. We thus get a continuous sequence of transverse sections. And that is what we get in instinctive experience according to my interpretation. What then is the nature of the longitudinal relation- ships in their incipient genetic form within instinctive experience? It is that which is expressed in the doctrine of the acquirement of primary meaning. If, in any given instinctive sequence a } b, c, d, e,f (each letter representing a transverse section), we fix our attention on the phase d it is partly conditioned by the precedent phase c> as that is by b and so on, and it partly conditions the sequent phase e. Such serial conditioning is dependent on primary reten- tion, which should be distinguished from memory as retrospection and from pre-perception. These are later developments of the longitudinal relationships. In our moorhen's dive the experiential process at any moment is not only conditioned by the data of the transverse section ; it is conditioned also by the precedent phases of process. The process of experiencing, as it flows, constantly changes in puls- ing continuity. I speak here, be it remembered, o 194 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE of the instinctive experience as such, in abstraction from any secondary meaning which may also be present. The essential feature of this secondary meaning is that some later phase of an original instinctive sequence may be partially re-presented before it is again presented— or rather would have been again presented in the unmodified instinctive sequence. The conditions of the phase d are therefore different from what they were on the first occasion — different by the addition of factors of revival as they may be termed. And since the whole sequence, all along the line, is thus differently conditioned, the experi- ential process — correlated with the organic processes of behaviour — is different. There is intelligent modification of behaviour since new relationships have been introduced. Note here the intimate relation between meaning and context. Broadly speaking, if we may combine in one synthesis biological and psychological inter- pretation, context is meaning. Assuredly in the absence of context there is no meaning. And it is scarcely a straining of the use of terms to say that, in the earlier and lower phases of organic life, any stimulus has meaning within the context of the responses it evokes. The salient feature of psycho- logical meaning is that re-presentative factors are present and are influential within the context as a whole. In our higher mental life the context- meaning has been partly automatized and partly generalized into that awareness of conscious atti- tude which is so difficult to describe and to analyse — a conscious enjoyment correlated with the total NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERI ENCE 195 functional activity of a complex constellation of cortical centres. Let us now consider a little more closely the longitudinal relationships when secondary meaning is being developed. They arise within the brief span of the living or specious present. Beyond this brief span they cannot immediately reach. Their forward direction within this span gives the peculiar quality of pre-perception of what is just coming ; and their backward direction gives the peculiar quality of what is just going, fading away at the rearward edge of the span. These two arise together. But pre-perception has the dominant utility in the primitive life of experience. What practically concerns the animal is what is just coming, that which at the outset of development is closely followed by the experience of the ap- propriate behaviour organically conditioned, and not yet conditioned by the expectant conscious relationship ; but that which (when intelligence supervenes), as coming, can be met or avoided. Expectancy has a practical bearing different from the theoretical bearing of retrospective memory. It is, I think, clear that all direct and primary experience of the order of expectation and memory must be sought within the brief span of process wherein these longitudinal relationships actually live. But it is equally clear that our memory and anticipation deal with a past stretching back far beyond the brief span of direct and primary experience, and with a future foreseen ahead of the living present These deal with the duration of process as an ideal constmction. Imagination and 196 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE conception have played their part in making a map of space and of time. M. Bergson is substantially right in his contention that, in ideal construction, we translate temporal sequence into spatial terms. Just as we imagine and conceive process-filled space — the natural order as spatial — stretching far beyond the limits of the immediate conscious rela- tionship of the transverse section, so do we imagine and conceive process-filled time — the natural order as temporal — stretching behind the present span of consciousness as the accomplished past, and projected forward (so far as a basis of routine permits) as the expected future ; and combining these two in one ideal construction, we are able to picture and think the natural order as existent and changing in space and time. Any placing of an event at any exact moment in the flow of process is a reference to such a context of ideal construction. If, then, we live in the brief span of process which is the conscious present, it is within this living present that the process of remember/^ occurs ; only the remember^ events are referred to the ideal construction of the past. And they get their peculiar quality, that which differentiates them from the presentations of the snap-shot " now," partly from the fact that they are thus revived, or relived, partly from the sense of greater or less familiarity they import into the context, partly from the fact that they link up with the just-nows of the hinder margin of the span of consciousness — the past being the conceptual prolongation of its rearward fringe. For M. Bergson " pure memory " l is something 1 Sec " Matter and Memory," p. 195, and sub verbo in index. NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 197 very different from anything I have attempted to interpret in the foregoing paragraphs. For him Life and Consciousness have their true home in a different plane (one is forced to use spatial terms ! ) from that of mundane behaviour. Where these two planes intersect we have his " pure perception," since here the one order comes into relation with the other- But " pure memory " dwells in the vital plane and preserves an extra-mundane existence, save in so far as, at the intersection of the planes, it is presently inserted within the intra-mundane sphere. It is the still-existent duration of one's whole past, with all its dated events (how dated is not made clear) ever ready to insert itself into present action. For M. Bergson the past as " pure memory " has not ceased to exist, it has only ceased to be useful. Its mere utility for us here on earth is confined to the points of intersection. The past still exists in the vital plane beyond the view of present experience, just as on the other plane objects in space exist beyond the range of perception. If we find this concept diffi- cult, M. Bergson will tell us that this is due to our inveterate habit of projecting duration on to the plane' of space, translating it into a series of quasi- spatial points, and fancying that we have left these points behind us as we travel ; forgetting that the genuine Self, "which is indeed outside space," is duration, since " time is the stuff that psychical life is made of." Interesting, nay, fascinating in a tanta- lizing fashion, as is M. Bergson's doctrine of a continuously abiding past, with wedge-like inser- tions into present mundane affairs, it lies for the most part outside the natural history of experience 198 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE which, for us, deals only with intra-mundane process. There is, however, a possible point of contact between M. Bergson's conception of the manner in which Life, as memory, is influential on behaviour, and our own widely-divergent interpretation. His teaching is that, so long as response follows directly on stimulus, there is no opportunity for the guiding activity of Life to be insinuated ; but that when there is some interval between the one and the other — when alternative channels of nervous discharge are established — then Life can insert itself and so far render the response an act of free choice. Now there is a sense in which we too can accept an interval of choice between stimulus and response ; there is a sense in which we can accept an intervening influence ; but for us it is not an extra-mundane Source of change that intervenes. For us the guiding influence that breaks the chain of that automatic and sub-cortically determined behaviour which I regard as biologically instinctive, is the functional process of the cortex in virtue of the correlated experiential relationships. We must now revert, however, to that which I regard as the cardinal distinction between what I have called, elliptically, the "eds" and the "ing" of experience. In this connexion we have to be on our guard against the puzzling ambiguity which results from the same word being used in both contexts. The word " sensation " may be used in one passage for what is sensed, in another for the process of sensing. So, too, perception may be the perceiw^ or perceivz'/^ ; the idea may be a product — what is NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 199 ideaed, as in Berkeley's writings, or a process, as in much Berkeleyan criticism. The same ambiguity runs up into regions of higher and more complex mental development. Consider what we mean when we speak of scientific or philosophical thought. Do we not sometimes mean the body of doctrine which is the " ed "-product of investigation ; sometimes the process by which these results have been reached ? The teaching of science is both a presentation of what has been scienced, and a development of sciencing — of scientific observing and thinking. To add to our difficulties and our liability to confusion, we cannot even speak of our own process of experiencing save as that which is, at the time of its occurrence, ex- perience/, or, to use Professor Alexander's useful term, enjoy ed. Endeavouring, as best we may, to avoid these difficulties and to escape from this confusion, we have to note that both within the context of the " eds," and within that of the " ing," there are differen- tiations, but that whereas the differentiations of the "eds " — the objects of perception, conception, imagin- ation and so forth — are relatively clear-cut and isolated for thought, the differentiations of the "ing " retain much more of their primitive continuity, are much less sharply defined, exhibit in far larger measure what M. Bergson speaks of as interpene- tration. The several items of the perceived and the conceived have a relative discontinuity and mutual independence of each other which is in marked con- trast with the relative unity and continuity of per- ceiving and conceiving. Hence among the " eds " we have what M. Bergson speaks of as " the multiplicity of juxtaposition," whereas "just in proportion as we mO INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE dig down below the surface and get to the real self [as experiencing] do its states of consciousness cease to stand in juxtaposition and begin to permeate and melt into one another, and each to be tinged with the colouring of all the others." * I believe that this distinction between the " eds " and the " ing M of experience lies at the root of much of M. Bergson's philosophy; though he would not accept the interpre- tation I put upon it. He speaks of two aspects of the self. " Our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas," he says, 2 " occur under two aspects : the one clear and precise but impersonal ; the other confused, ever-changing and inexpressible because language cannot get hold of it without arresting its mobility or fit it into its commonplace forms without making it into public property." The former are the " eds " of experience ; the latter is a phase of the "ing.' 1 Again M. Bergson says 3 : " Sensations and tastes seem to me objects as soon as I isolate and name them, and in the human soul there are only processes!' The essential feature of duration is, for M. Bergson, the continuous development of experienc/^* as it grows, when our ego lets itself live, when phases of conscious- ness melt into each other, when every successive phase affords an example of creative evolution. " The capital error of associationism," he says, 4 " is that it substitutes for the continuity of becoming, which is the living reality, a discontinuous multiplicity of elements, inert and juxtaposed." "In place of 5 an inner life 1 "Time and Free Will," pp. 162 and 164. 2 Ibid, p. 129. 3 Ibid, p. 131. 4 "Matter and Memory," p. 171. 3 " Time and Free Will," p. 237. NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 201 whose successive phases, each unique of its kind," melt into each other and interpenetrate, " we get a self which can be artificially re-constructed and simple psychic states which can be added and taken from one another just like the letters of the alphabet." For M. Bergson the distinction I have drawn between the " ing " and the " eds " of experience is that between the snap-shot data with which we deal intellectually and the intuitive awareness of the con- tinuity of conscious life. For Professor Alexander it is that between contemplation and enjoyment. But are we not, it will be asked, here putting more strain upon the distinction than it will bear. For surely, it will be said, intuition itself affords data which can be dealt with by the intellect; enjoyment itself can be contemplated. May we not make the " ing " of one moment the "ed" of a subsequent moment? May we not, for example, make the process of thinking the object of subsequent thought ? In a sense no doubt we can. But only by translating it into terms which may be conceive ; just as, according to M. Bergson, we can only deal with time intellectually when we translate the continuous duration of pro- cess into a series of spatial or quasi-spatial time- points. What I mean by translation can perhaps best be illustrated in reference to aesthetic appreciation. Although it is no doubt impossible to have this mode of enjoyment in the absence of any contemplation of beautiful objects in nature or in art, still at the moment of enjoyment the emphasis is on appreciating rather than on what is appreciated. And the question is whether at the moment or afterwards we can make <>02 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE the essential features of this appreciative enjoyment the object of intellectual contemplation. It is not easy to make one's meaning clear. When we are reading with full interest and attention, we are not interested in our interest, we are not attending to our attention. The " eds " of interest and attention are all in the subject-matter. Yes ! But afterwards, in reflection and retrospection, can we not then make the process of attending the object of our subsequent attention ? Can we not even, on re-reading in psycho- logical mood, squint round at our mental process to see how our enjoyment is getting on and what it is like. Surely it will be said we can think about our appreciative enjoyment, can discourse on it, and write aesthetic treatises which deal with it. But are the concepts we employ other than suggestive, other than symbolic of that which can only be reached through direct awareness in enjoyment ? It may be urged that all concepts, as cognita, are symbolic in universa- lized form of the concrete particulars which are directly experienced. Yes ! But here both particulars and universals belong to the realm of the experience. Both are what Dr. Alexander terms non-mental, in the sense that they are set before the mind for con- templation. The distinguishing feature of appreci- ative enjoyment is that it is not, in this sense, before the mind ; it is, so to speak, at the back of the mind. It is not what is appreciated ; it is a qualification of conscious process as appreciating. Can, then, the enjoyment of architecture, of sculpture, of painting, of music, of literature, with their subtle values in, rather than for, consciousness, be made the objects of contem- plation ? To this question, I take it, Dr. Alexander's NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 203 reply * would be that in no way can we make enjoy- ment an object of contemplative thought. I am not prepared to go quite so far. None the less I feel that in translating the aesthetic enjoyment as such into the cognitional terms in which it must be presented to the intellect, we do in large measure transform it. And it is only with this transformed material that science is able to deal. 1 Cf M S. Alexander " Self as Subject and as Person," "Proc. Aristo- telian Soc," vol. xi., p. 18 (191 1). Berkeley recognized that the enjoy- ment of the " ing " is different from the contemplation of the " ed " and suggested the term notion for phases of the " ing " since the term ideas, in his usage, was applicable only to the "eds" of experience, Cf., " Principles of Human Knowledge," § 27, " Siris," § 308. CHAPTER VII THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT WE tend to think, or, at any rate, to express our thought, in terms of antithetical contrast. A century ago Sydney Smith said * : — " The most common notion, now prevalent, with respect to animals is, that they are guided by instinct; that the discriminating circumstance between the minds of animals and of men is, that the former do what they do from instinct, the latter from reason." And he emphasizes the contrast when he says : — " When I call that principle upon which the bees or any other animals proceed to their labours, the principle of instinct, I only mean that it is not a principle of reason. However the knowledge is gained, it is not gained as our knowledge is gained. It is not gainedby experience or imitation. ... It cannot be invention, or the adaptation of means to ends ; because as the animal works before he knows what event is going to happen, he cannot know what the end is, to which he is accommodating the means : and if he be actuated by any other than these, the generation of ideas in animals is . . . very different 1 Sydney Smith, " Sketches of Moral Philosophy " (Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in the years 1804, 1805 and 1806), p. 240. 204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 205 from the generation of ideas in men " (p 247). 14 Ants and beavers," he tells us, " lay up magazines. Where do they get their knowledge that it will not be so easy to collect food in rainy weather as it is in the summer? Men and women know these things, because their grandpapas and grandmammas have told them so : ants, hatched from the egg artificially, or birds hatched in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition, without the smallest com- munication with any of their relations " (p. 244). We have here the contrast between two different kinds of knowledge — two kinds which may indeed coexist in the same living creatures but which are essentially antithetical, or, at least, complementary in their nature — the knowledge that is innate and intuitive and the knowledge that is begotten of experience. And these two different kinds of know- ledge are the expression of, or are due to, two diverse principles or faculties ; the faculty of instinct and the faculty of reason. In our own day M. Bergson, in the philosophical doctrine of instinct to a consideration of which most of this chapter is devoted, also regards instinct and intelligence as, opposite and complementary kinds of knowledge. Although they arise as differentiations of a vital activity common to both, they are diverse expressions of divergent processes of evolution. More or less commingled in any given organism, it is the proportion that one bears to the other that differs. " There is no intelligence in which some traces of instinct are not to be discovered, more especially no instinct which is not surrounded by a fringe of intelligence. It is this fringe of intelligence that 206 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE has been the cause of so many misunderstandings. From the fact that instinct is more or less intelligent, it has been concluded that instinct and intelligence are things of the same kind, and that there is only a difference of complexity or perfection between them, and, above all, that one of the two is expressible in terms of the other. In reality they accompany each other only because they are complementary, only because they are different, what is instinctive in instinct being opposite to what is intelligent in i ntelligence." l Instinct and intelligence thus involve two radically different kinds of knowledge. But "while both involve knowledge, thrs knowledge is rather acted and unconscious in the case of instinct, thought and conscious in the case of intelligence" (p. 153). The relation of instinct to consciousness in M. Bergson's philosophy is a little difficult clearly to grasp. Here he speaks of knowledge as " acted and unconscious " in instinct. But elsewhere he says that consciousness is " the characteristic note of the . . . actually lived, in short of the active " (" Mat. and Mem." p. 181). This indeed is a dominant note in M. Bergson's philosophy. Our consciousness — the consciousness we enjoy — is always a conscious- ness of the insinuation of spirit in the present moment of action. Furthermore he tells us that "instinct and intelligence stand out from the same background which for want of a better name, we may call consciousness in general, and which must be co-extensive with universal life " (" C. E." p. 196). 1 " Creative Evolution" (translation of " L'Evolution Creatrice," by Arthur Mitchell) (1911), p. 143. THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 207 Again and again he seems to identify life and consciousness. But on these terms, if instinctive be- haviour is essentially a vital act one would suppose that it is also essentially a conscious act. M. Bergson, however, draws a distinction between two kinds of unconsciousness, that in which consciousness is absent {nulle) and that in which it is nullified (annulet). Both are equal to zero, but in the one case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, in the other that we have two equal quantities of opposite sign which compensate and neutralize each other. The unconsciousness of a falling stone is of the former kind ; that of instinct (in extreme cases) is of the latter kind (p. 151). Even here I find difficulties ; for even in the fall of a stone as a physical process I had gathered that, for M. Bergson, there is consciousness annulled. " No doubt," he says, " the material universe itself ... is a kind of consciousness, a consciousness in which everything compensates and neutralizes everything else, a consciousness of which all the potential parts balancing each other by a reaction which is always equal to the action, reciprocally hinder each other from standing out" (" Mat. and Mem." p. 313). But we are here concerned only with the annulling of consciousness in instinct. We must contrast it with intelligence. In intelligent action there is first a representation of the act to be performed, and then follows the performance of the act. Such repre- sentation is a measure of our possible action upon bodies, it is an outline in matter of our eventual action upon it. Now hesitation or choice is a sign of the inadequacy of the act at once to fulfil and 208 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE thus to neutralize the representation ; and this inade- quacy of the one to neutralize the other is emergent consciousness — a consciousness "which may be de- fined as an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity. It measures the interval between representation and action." But if this interval be annulled, if representation and performance coalesce, consciousness is neutralized. "The representation of the act is held in check by the performance of the act itself, which resembles the idea so perfectly, and fits it so exactly, that consciousness is unable to find room between them. Representation is stopped up by action." Consciousness however does not even then cease to exist ; for if the accomplish- ment of the act be arrested or thwarted by an obstacle, consciousness may emerge. The interval between representation and action is reconstituted. Hence in instinctive behaviour " where consciousness appears, it does not so much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject ; it is the deficit of instinct, the distance between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness" (p. 152). When we remember that it is only in extreme cases that representation is thus stopped up by action, we may perhaps fairly assume that these extreme cases illustrate instinctive behaviour carried to its ideal limits ; in other words that they are those cases which, according to my interpretation, are strictly speaking instinctive — those in which pre-perception does not intervene between the constellation of stimuli and the resulting response. On the other hand in those cases in which some intelligent pre-perception, THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 209 in my sense of the word intelligent, does play a part in determining behaviour, we have the " deficit of instinct" which has a conscious accompaniment. I take it that for M. Bergson, that which is insinuated between stimulation and response, that which breaks the coalescent sequence of pure automatism, is " pure memory," the characteristic of which is to become conscious in action. If this be so, his insertion of " pure memory " in the guidance of behaviour is analogous to the presence of factors of revival in my interpretation ; and we both should regard such behaviour as showing something more or something less than instinctive purity — as exhibiting therefore a deficit of instinct as such. In so far as " pure memory " is insinuated as choice within the interstices of an otherwise automatic and strictly instinctive sequence the activity is really vital. For we must bear in mind that when M. Bergson bids us identify life and consciousness, it is life as " free " and u creative " — not merely mechanized and automatized routine — to which reference is made. It is true that automatism is the result of life, but it is the result of life's surrender of its essential activity, a lapse into mechanical routine. If, however, as mere biologists, we understand by life the sum-total of the physiological processes of which the organism is the privileged centre, an indefinitely large proportion of consciousness is "annulled" and hence, for mere business purposes of interpretation, may be safely regarded as non-existent. If so, the conception may perhaps be brought into some sort of relation with the view held by some earlier exponents of physio- logical psychology, according to which consciousness p 210 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE is correlated with a measure of obstruction or tension in the cerebral cortex — with some resistance to be overcome, of which delay in response is an indication ; whereas consciousness is absent when the molecular disturbances in the cortex, initiated by sensory stimu- lation, are rapidly and smoothly drafted off along channels pre-established through heredity or through constant habit, leading to automatic response. " In the latter case," said Romanes, 1 "the routes of nervous discharge have been well-worn through use ; in the former case these routes have to be determined by a complex play of forces amid the cells and fibres of the cerebral hemispheres. And this complex play of forces which finds its physio- logical expression in a lengthening of the time of latency, finds its psychological expression in the rise of consciousness." I do not wish to suggest that M. Bergson's conception of the relation of conscious- ness to the phenomena of brain-physiology is at all like that of Romanes. Indeed they are poles asunder. But there seems to be this in common ; that when automatism is complete, consciousness is absent ; or, as M. Bergson would say, is annulled. It will be remembered that M. Bergson distin- guishes and contrasts two orders, that of the vital and the willed, in opposition to that of the inert and the automatic. The brain in all its parts belongs entirely to the latter order, it is only a cunningly arranged set of neurones, an elaborate and complex switch-board, which Life has made for its use, which Life has in large measure allowed to descend to materialized auto- matism, but within which Life has contrived, with 1 G. J. Romanes, "Mental Evolution in Animals" (1885), p. 74. THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 211 some success in the higher vertebrates and with much greater success in man, to leave room for the insertion of its free and creative activity. The measure of success in man is such that his brain has become a perfect " reservoir of indeterminism " — that is to say a system full of opportunities for the insinuation of choice between alternatives. It is essential to the proper understanding of M. Bergson's philosophical doctrine that we should remember that the function of the brain is to provide a vast number of alternative routes by which afferent impulses due to stimulation may be conducted to the effector organs which sub- serve behaviour. It is in itself wholly and solely a mechanism of conduction. It is in no sense a store- house of memories ; for memories are preserved in the realm of spirit which is extra-spatial. From this realm they play down upon the switch-board of the nervous system. In so far, therefore, as choice is insinuated and an action is free and creative, this is in no sense a function of the brain ; its Source is in the unconscious sphere of "pure memory" — which is the sphere of spirit, — only at the point of its insertion into present action does it glow with the light of consciousness. We have, therefore, two, if not three kinds of unconsciousness: (i) that of the falling stone; (2) that of automatism (consciousness annulled) ; and (3) that of pure memory when it is not being insinuated in the present moment of action. I separate (2) and (3) in accordance with the statement in " Creative Evolution," though it seems to conflict with that of " Matter and Memory " {supra, p. 207J. A word or two must be added with regard to (3). Pure memory 212 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE is the continuous existence of mind or spirit, and this is the vital impetus — the Source of all process. As pure memory it abides in the still existent past, outside the plane of space within which the material body and brain are rendered perceptible to the senses and the intellect. But this mind, this spirit, this pure memory, exists, not as what we are aware of as consciousness, but as a mode of the unconscious. Unless I misunderstand the teaching of " Matter and Memory," M. Bergson is convinced that a refusal to recognize the fact that the greater part of one's pure memory is an unconscious form of real existence, is tantamount to a refusal to recognize the existence of Life and Spirit as Reality — as active and forceful duration. And that which, according to M. Bergson» leads us to deny the existence of unconscious mind is our persistent neglect of the fact that the conscious- ness of which we have intuitive knowledge, is always in alliance with some present phase of practical activity. To guide this activity is the business of consciousness in and for the organism ; only at its points of insertion in our mundane life of space- occupancy, does mind and memory glow with what, for us, in whom this insertion takes place, is conscious awareness. In a sense we may say that what we feel as consciousness is the friction of unconscious spirit as it traverses unconscious brain matter. But the Spirit which exists in time, which is duration, and which is only occasionally inserted in the mundane affairs of inert space, though it is itself unconscious, and contains only the potentiality of that consciousness which is actualized in the present moment of choice, is never inactive ; nay, rather it is THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 213 pure activity, the Source of all change. It is the Source of instinctive behaviour. Now, in instinctive behaviour, the current of life passes through the organism ; and, as it passes, it glows with instinctive knowledge, though much of the consciousness may be annulled through the stopping up of the chinks of choice. I am not quite clear as to M. Bergson's position with regard to the relation of pure memory to hereditary sequence. But I take it that the current of life which streams through any organism, let us say a newly emergent bee or a newly hatched chick, contains unconsciously, in the sphere of pure memory, a complete unbroken and continuous record of the whole history of its particular line of racial descent to the most remote past, all of which is for M. Bergson still existent in the sphere of duration. But of this immense fund of pure memory, only that small fraction which is useful to that bee or chick in its present activities has the conscious instinctive glow. Still, it is this accumu- lated knowledge of the past, just in so far as it is inserted in present behaviour, that is the psychical basis of instinct as a form, not merely of mechanized automatism, but of life and duration and knowledge. Thus, I think, would M. Bergson explain the hereditary nature of instinctive behaviour. Thus does he elaborate a philosophy of instinct. If we divorce his theory of instinct from his doctrine of pure memory, with its storage in continuous existence of the whole of past life-history, we must fail to grasp its significance within his system of thought. The naturalist and the man of science may find in it little to their taste. But it is not meant for them. 214 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE They seek merely to describe and state in general terms the correlated stages of an intra-mundane sequence of observable or inferable phenomena. The whole of this elaborate theory of pure memory — interesting as it is as a metaphysical speculation, touched with poetry — may be ignored by the naturalist. It does not afford any clue to scientific interpretation. Here, however, we seek to understand M. Bergson, and must therefore take him on his own terms. In instinct, a small but very useful portion of an in- definite fund of the potential knowledge of pure memory is rendered actual — just that which is wanted for the business purposes of life. But this is true also of all life-processes, "so that we cannot say . . . where organization ends and where instinct begins." " When we see," says M. Bergson, " in a living body thousands of cells working together for a common end, dividing the task between them, living each for itself at the same time as for others, preserving itself, feeding itself, reproducing itself, responding to the menace of danger by appropriate defensive reactions, how can we help thinking of so many instincts ? And yet they are the natural functions of the cell, the constitutive elements of its vitality. ... In both cases, in the instinct of the animal and in the vital properties of the cells, the same knowledge and the same ignorance is shown. All goes on as if the cell knew, of the other cells, what concerns itself; as if the animal knew, of other animals, what it can utilize — all else remains in shade" (pp. 174-176). Even in the automatism of the vital processes, such as those of nutrition, or the development of the embryo, pure THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 2i5 memory embracing the whole history of the past is operative. Just that part of the accumulated fund which subserves vital utility is insinuated. This selective part is knowledge, all the rest is an un- utilized balance of ignorance. There is choice just in so far as there is this selective discernment of what is here and now useful. For though the material structures — the cells, tissues, and organs that we see — have been materialized and mechanized, process and change are the sole prerogative of life. It is the Life of the universe that gives it movement and flow ; otherwise it would be a mere row of static or immobile snap-shots of the inert. But in the organized flow of vital processes, the consciousness is annulled ; and in the instinct that is reduced to the level of automatic flow of organized routine (the "extreme cases") the knowledge is of the unconscious order. One would like to be told in language altogether free from ambiguity what the nature of this knowledge with consciousness annulled actually is. The concept is difficult to grasp. But we may now turn to other aspects of M. Bergson's treatment of instinct. For as we follow his discussion in its further implications, the development of the subject proceeds as if instinct were a kind of knowledge not less radiantly conscious than intelligence. Let us accept this position without seeking to harmonize the doctrine of the annulling of conscious- ness in extreme, and one would therefore have thought typical, cases of instinct, with that of the specific nature of the instinctive consciousness as such. Instinct, then, is a kind of conscious knowledge co-ordinate with that of intelligence ; but it is a 216 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE radically different kind of knowledge (p. 150). It reaches its highest development in the arthropods, and especially in the insects, as intelligence reaches its highest development in the vertebrates, especially in man. " We may surmise," says M. Bergson, in a passage which I must quote in full, " that they began by being implied in each other, that the original psychic activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a matter which they are not yet able to control. If the force immanent in life were an unlimited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct and intelli- gence together, and to any extent, in the same organisms. But everything seems to indicate that this force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself in its very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far in several directions at once : it must choose. Now, it has the choice between two modes of acting on the material world : it can effect this action directly by creating an organized instrument to work with ; or else it can effect it indirectly through an organism which, instead of possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself construct it by fashioning in- organic matter. Hence, intelligence and instinct, which diverge more and more as they develop, but which never entirely separate from each other. On the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the insect is accompanied by gleams of intelligence, if only in the choice of place, time, and materials of construction. THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 217 . . . But, on the other hand, intelligence has even more need of instinct than instinct has of intelli- gence ; for the power to give shape to crude matter involves already a superior degree of organization, a degree to which the animal could not have risen, save on the wings of instinct. So, while nature has frankly evolved in the direction of instinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost all the vertebrates the striving after rather than the expansion of intelli- gence. It is instinct which still forms the basis of their psychical activity ; but intelligence is there, and would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not succeed in inventing instruments ; but at least it tries to, by performing as many variations as possible on the instinct which it would like to dispense with. It gains complete self-possession only in man, and this triumph is attested by the very insufficiency of the natural means at man's disposal for defence against his enemies, against cold and hunger. This in- sufficiency, when we strive to fathom its significance, acquires the value of a prehistoric document ; it is the final leave-taking between intelligence and instinct" (pp. 149, 150). I have quoted this passage at length because it well illustrates M. Bergson's picturesque and imaginative treatment of one phase of creative evolution. He pictures the vital impetus standing at the parting of the ways, and choosing instinctive development for the arthropods, intelligent for the vertebrates and man. Of course it must be taken as a poetic rendering of the drama of life rather than as an attempt at scientific interpretation. M. Bergson enters sympathetically into the evolutionary process ; 218 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE he feels the onward push of the vital impetus ; he is borne now along the stream of instinct, and now down the current of intelligence ; he seeks to know them from within as life alone can be known. And we too, if we would, in some degree, profit by his insight, must enter sympathetically into the current of his thought ; must endeavour to place ourselves at his point of view ; must try to catch the breath of his intuition. I, too, stand at the parting of the ways. And I choose that of instinctive sympathy so far as in me lies. I do not propose, therefore, to discuss from the scientific point of view, the biological aspect of the doctrine of two divergent paths, one of which has led to the instincts of arthropods and the other to the intelligence of vertebrates. The observable differences of behaviour in bees and in birds, for example, are correlated with differences of general structure and internal anatomy, with differences of sensory endowment and build of the nervous system, with differences of mode of development, with differences of ancestral history, with differences of environment, with different kinds of relationship to their companions and to other organisms, and so forth. All of these would need careful consideration — preliminary analysis and subsequent synthesis — if the divergence of the evolutionary products at the end of such divergent routes were to be interpreted in the spirit of science. We should have to estimate with care the value of the evidence for so marked a con- centration of instinct in the arthropods as a group, and so marked a concentration of intelligence in the vertebrates as M. Bergson takes as a THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 219 basis for his position. Mr. Wildon Carr 1 has laid even more stress on it, and in a more un- compromising manner, than M. Bergson himself. Mr. McDougall 2 has criticized it, claiming for the solitary wasps " a degree of intelligence which (with the doubtful exception of the higher mammals) approaches most nearly to the human." These questions, however, interesting as they undoubtedly are, may be left on one side. It suffices for M. Bergson's doctrine that the instinctive kind of know- ledge largely predominates in the behaviour of certain organisms, and that the intelligent kind of knowledge largely predominates in the behaviour of certain other organisms ; what is essential is that the two kinds of knowledge, though they may both be present in differing proportions are radically diverse in kind, " what is instinctive in instinct being opposite to what is intelligent in intelligence." Where shall we seek the exact nature of this deep- seated distinction ? We are here faced by a difficulty which is seemingly at first sight insurmountable. For, owing to the radical nature of the incompatibility, "that which is instinctive in instinct cannot be expressed in the terms of intelligence, nor, consequently, can it be analysed " (p. 177). If, then, we seek intelligently and intelligibly to express the distinction between two modes of knowing, to the nature of one of which no expression in terms of intelligence can be given, we appear to be seeking that which the very conditions of the quest preclude us from finding. But life is in the same predicament 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 232. 2 Ibid, p. 255. 220 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE as instinct ; for " the intellect is characterized by an inherent inability to comprehend life" (p. 174). These are hard sayings ; and yet like other hard sayings they contain a central core of truth. It is of this central core that we are in search. May we say that through instinct an organism knows without having to learn, whereas the know- ledge of intelligence comes through a process of learning ? No ! this does not express the fundamental difference, though it leads up to the consideration of a distinction. Instinct does indeed know many things without having learned them ; knows, for example, how to use those parts of the body which are its organized instruments (p. 146). But M. Bergson tells us that if we look at intelligence from the same point of view, we find that it also knows certain things without having learned them (p. 155). For him the distinction here lies rather in the difference in the mode of knowing and in what is known. In both instinct and intelligence there is innate knowledge. But whatever in instinct and intelligence is innate knowledge, bears in the first case on things, and in the second on relations. Here, so far as intelligence is concerned, M. Bergson reverts to the constitutive categories. In whatever way we make an analysis of thought, he says (p. 156), we always end with one or several general categories of which the mind possesses innate knowledge since it makes natural use of them. Hence, in the language of philosophy, " intelligence, in so far as it is innate, is the knowledge of zform; instinct implies a know- ledge of a matter" (p. 157), 1 and he claims that this 1 By "matter " we should not understand M. Bergson to mean the THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 221 entirely formal knowledge of intelligence has an immense advantage over the material knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty, may be filled with any number of things in turn (p. 159). I believe, however, that this time-honoured distinction between things and their relations, between the matter and the form of that which is experienced, leads us away from and not towards the central core of truth in M. Bergson's doctrine. It is, indeed, true that only intelligence, and only highly developed intelligence, can distinguish analytically between things and their relationships, between matter and form. Relationship and form are concepts of intellectual thought. By that thought they are rendered explicit. But if " the behaviour of the insect involves, or rather evolves, the idea of definite things existing or being produced in definite points of space and time, which the insect knows without having learned them" (p. 154), surely the relationships thus " involved or evolved " are there and are constitutive of that instinctive knowledge. The distinction between instinct and intelligence in this respect is therefore that for the former the relation- ship and form are implicit, while for the latter they are rendered explicit. This may be true enough ; but I conceive that the radical difference lies deeper than this. How, then, does M. Bergson himself sum up the net result of his preliminary considerations with regard to the radical distinction ? " The difference," he says material order, for that is known by intelligence and the intellect. Should we understand him to mean the substance of life— the reality of process ? Cf. " as two activities," infra, p. 224. Zn INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE (p. 159), " that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out. We may formulate it thus : — There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find ; but it will never seek them." I can myself accept this formula which accords well with my conception of instinct. For instinct never seeks though, within its range of behaviour, it is remarkably successful in finding. It is true that we should say, in the language of popular speech, that an animal instinctively seeks its food, seeks a mate, and so forth. But, in strictness, to seek surely involves an anticipation of that which, through seeking, may be found ; and within the instinctive consciousness I can only provisionally admit the presence of a form of pre-perception so dim and vague that such anticipation of what is to be sought and may be found is, in my interpretation, practically negligible as a guide to behaviour. Instinct, however, does none the less effectively provide, in a biological fashion, those preliminary findings, which afford the opportunities for subsequent revival, and which thus render possible intelligent seeking. The things which instinct finds, though it seeks them not, are those things which subserve the preservation of the in- dividual, and, through the individual, of the race ; and these things, when they are subsequently sought, are sought just because their like have previously been found through instinctive behaviour. I do not of course claim that this represents M.Bergson's meaning. His distinction, I believe, here, as elsewhere, is that between the intuitive " knowledge " that life alone can THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 223 give ; and the system of cinematographical snap-shots which intelligence takes of the external world in space, and from which all our intellectual knowledge is elaborated. We are getting nearer to the central core of M. Bergson's doctrine. For instinct is moulded on the very form of life ; and the order of its knowledge belongs to the order of the vital, whereas the know- ledge of intelligence and the intellect always deals with the materialized, the spacialized, translating everything into the order of the inert. Hence the intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life. It can only deal with the material- ized products of life. But we normally think in an atmosphere of intelligence ; and it is this that prevents us from grasping the inner meaning and essential character either of life or of instinct. Even M. Bergson himself has again and again, to use modes of expres- sion which, till one has in some degree mastered his whole thesis, are apt to lead to grave misunderstanding. Let me exemplify. The solitary wasp, Ammophila, stings its caterpillar prey in the nerve-centres along the ventral line of the body. Dr. and Mrs. Peckham have, indeed, shown that the instinctive accuracy, with resulting paralysis and not death, has been exaggerated. But this does not much matter. Relying on M. Fabre's observations, M. Bergson says : — " When a paralysing wasp stings its victim in just those parts where the nervous centres lie, so as to render it motionless without killing it, it acts like a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon rolled into one " (p. 153). On first reading this passage one supposes that, though the knowledge is not gained by 224 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE the wasp as it is gained by the entomologist and the surgeon, yet it is like their knowledge. One is perhaps influenced by what one has been taught by many writers on instinct with regard to inherited experience, the implication being that the experience has been won by the race, as we gain experience, and has been transmitted in perfected form. That, how- ever, is not M. Bergson's view. The knowledge is different in kind and comes in a wholly different way. Hear what M. Bergson says, some thirty pages later (p. 183). "The whole difficulty comes from our desire to express the knowledge of the Hymenoptera in terms of intelligence. It is this that compels us to compare the Ammophila with the entomologist, who knows the caterpillar as he knows everything else — from the outside without having on his part a special or vital interest. The Ammophila, we imagine, must learn one by one, like the entomologist, the positions of the nerve-centres of the caterpillar — must acquire at least the practical knowledge of these positions by trying the effects of his sting. But there is no need for such a view if we suppose a sympathy (in the etymological sense of the word) between the Ammophila and his victim, which teaches it from within, so to say, the vulnerability of the caterpillar. This feeling of vulnerability might owe nothing to outward perception, but result from the mere presence of the Ammophila and the caterpillar considered no longer as two organisms but as two activities. It would express, in a concrete form, the relation of one to the other." Do we find this suggestion of a specialized and selective sympathetic rapport between life and life more akin to poetry than to science ? I THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 225 am inclined to think that M. Bergson would agree ; he would assuredly agree if we substitute philosophy for poetry. " Certainly," he says, " a scientific theory cannot appeal to considerations of this kind. It must not put action before organization, sympathy before perception and [intellectual] knowledge. But once more, either philosophy has nothing to see here, or its r61e begins where that of science ends" (p. 183). The burden of M. Bergson's message is that a philosophy of life is not, and cannot be the outcome of a science which deals with the organism, a science built up of concepts based on intellectual snap-shots in the world of space. By the cinematographical method we are bound to get a mechanical result ; and that is what the intellect, as such, always provides. It is incapable (as defined by M. Bergson) of providing anything else. He admits, nay, contends, that " organization can only be studied scientifically if the organized body has first been likened to a machine. . . . This is the standpoint of science. Quite different in our opinion is that of philosophy " (p. 98). We must take M. Bergson on his own terms. In his philosophy life is extra-mundane — the Source of all process. It is beyond the reach of science; the intellect can nowise grasp it. But by intuition, which is instinct raised to its highest power, it is aware of itself ; and by sympathy it is directly aware of other process, most directly of other process in living organ- isms. A difficult concept this — if indeed that can be called a concept which belongs to the antithetical kind of knowledge within which clean-cut concepts have no place. M. Bergson does his best to help us to live our- selves into his mode of thinking. He therefore appeals Q 226 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE to experience as experienczVz^. "Though instinct," he says, " is not within the domain of intelligence, it is not situated beyond the limits of mind. In the phenomena of feeling, in unreflecting sympathy and antipathy, we experience in ourselves — though under a much vaguer form and one too much permeated with intelligence, — something of what must happen in the consciousness of an insect acting by instinct. . . . Intelligence is, before anything else, the faculty of relating one point of space with another, one material object to another ; it applies to all things, but remains outside them ; and of a deep cause it perceives only the effects spread out side by side. Whatever be the force that is at work in the genesis of the nervous system of the caterpillar, to our eyes and our intelli- gence it is only a juxtaposition of nerves and nerve- centres. It is true that we thus get at the whole outer effect of it. The Ammophila no doubt discerns but a very little of that force, just what concerns itself ; but at least it discerns it from within, quite otherwise than by a process of [intellectual] knowledge — by an intuition (Jived rather than represented), which is probably like what we call divining sympathy" (pp. 184-5). Here we are at the very heart of M. Bergson's doctrine of instinct. " Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations — just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into matter. For — we cannot too often repeat it — intelligence and instinct are turned in opposite directions, the former towards inert matter, the latter towards life. ... It is towards the very THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 227 inwardness of life that intuition leads us — by intuition I mean," says M. Bergson, " instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely" (p. 186). I cannot follow up in detail M. Bergson's treatment of the higher modes of intuition. Something must, however, be said on the subject since it throws further light on his doctrine of instinct with which we are here concerned. Remembering (i) that instinct is moulded on life, (2) that life is fundamentally im- pulsion, (3) that this impulsion is of the psychological order, (4) that instinct is sympathy, and (5) that intuition is instinct become self-conscious, as a form of enjoyment leading us to the very inwardness of life ; — remembering these points, we find that in the operations of the human mind the essential feature of intuition is that it is vital impulsion, diverse from, and yet always co-operating with, the intellect. We find that pure intuition, external or internal, is that of an undivided continuity. 1 It is intelligence that breaks up this continuity into elements laid side by side. It is forced to do so by the needs of practical life and, later, by the needs of scientific thought. But " by unmaking that which these needs have made, we may restore to intuition its original purity and so recover contact with the real." 2 As Mr. Wildon Carr, interpreting M. Bergson, says 3 : — " Beside the intellect and implied in our knowledge of its limit- ations, is a power of intuition, that is of apprehending reality not limited by the intellectual categories, and 1 " Matter and Memory," p. 239. 2 Ibid. p. 241. 3 "British journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 236. 228 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE this reality is the living activity itself apprehended as a real duration." We get at this activity intuitively in the midst of the process of experienc/;^, and we feel that it lies behind the items experience and susceptible of intellectual treatment. " Any one," says M. Bergson in a passage which Mr. Lindsay quotes l : — u Any one who has been engaged in literary production, knows perfectly well that after long study has been given to the subject, when all documents have been collected and all sketches made, one thing more is necessary — an effort, often painful, to set one- self in the heart of the subject and get from it an impulse as profound as possible, when there is nothing more to be done than to follow it. This impulse, once received, sets the spirit on a path where it finds again all the information it had collected and a thousand other details. The impulse develops itself, analyses itself in expressions, whose enumeration might be infinite ; the further you go on, the more is revealed ; never can you say everything that is to be said ; and yet if you turn back to apprehend the impulse that is behind you, it is hidden from you." Hidden, that is, I take it, from the intellect which deals with the multiplicity of things given to experience — the experience — but revealed in the process of ex- perience^* of enjoying — revealed through intuition. For intuition is, it seems, both the consciousness of the vital impetus involved in the higher mental activity, and the realization of this impetus as the source of all invention. When once the profound impetus has been given, the application may be left to 1 "The Philosophy of Bergson," pp. 237-8. Quoted from "The Introduction to Metaphysic" (1903). THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 229 the intellect working in cinematographical fashion with its symbols and its concepts. To intuition we owe " all that is greatest in the exact sciences as well as all that deserves to live in metaphysic." But " if intuition originated the invention it was the symbol alone that made the application possible " ; l and the symbol is the tool that intelligence fashions for its use. It is, I conceive, through internal intuition that we have our knowledge of experienc/;^ — of thinking' — of that aspect of experience which, as I urged at the close of the last chapter, can never become the object of intelligent knowledge — can never (save through some symbolic expression) take its place among the " eds " of experience. It is, I conceive, through the external intuition which M. Bergson calls sympathy, and never by any intellectual process, save through some symbolism verbal or other (the word external being itself, for M. Bergson, an intellectual concept since all intuition is interpenetrating) — it is, I say, through sympathy alone that we can have intuitive knowledge of the mental processes of our fellow men or of animals. Such intuitive sympathy is the special characteristic of the artist ; it is the parent of the animism of primitive times and primitive races. But from what less self-conscious form are this intuition and this sympathy evolved ? From the instinct which, in far-away times past, was interpenetrating with, and scarcely differentiated from, intelligence. The instinctive knowledge of the animal is of the same order as our own intuitive knowledge but always 1 Quoted from " Introduction to Metaphysic," by Lindsay, op. cit., p. 225. 230 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE in the evolutionary process, specialized and selectively concentrated on those objects, or rather those processes, which are provocative of instinctive behaviour. Such I believe to be the kernel of M. Bergson's doctrine of instinct. It is no doubt possible, nay, probable, that I have selectively absorbed those parts of his doctrine which appeal to my own modes of thought. But I elected the stream of sympathy rather than that of criticism and naturally emphasize that part of his treatment with which I can sympathize. I trust, however, that I have not unintentionally mis-represented M. Bergson's central idea. It now remains for me to show how far my own interpretation differs from or accords with that which I find in M. Bergson's pages. In the first place I must set aside all the pure memory business, all reference to extra-mundane life. With these I have no concern. Of course this ruling out of the character of Hamlet from M. Bergson's philosophical drama leaves the play a maimed and mutilated travesty which the author would not acknowledge as representative of his work. I seek, however, the intra-mundane basis which remains when the extra-mundane elements have been removed. Were there no such solid basis I feel convinced that the fabric of the philosophy could not stand. Now, for M. Bergson the characteristic feature of instinct is that it is a form of knowledge which has an inward direction, lifewards — opposite to that of the intellect which is ever directed outwards so as to apprehend objects in space. Even as sympathy instinct is an inner feeling. The Ammophila is taught from within of the vulnerability of the caterpillar ; and this THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 931 instinctive rapport " might owe nothing whatever to outward perception." That seems to me to be an extravagant position. I question whether any form of sympathy can be said to owe nothing whatever to outward perception : it is only called into being in alliance with outward perception. In any case as I interpret instinctive experience it has both an outward and an inward direction — an inner awareness as the enjoyment of experiencing — an outward reference in as much as an external situation is experienced. I freely admit that at the instinctive stage of mental development these are but little differentiated ; indeed the difference of reference can only be apprehended through reflective thought. But M. Bergson's instinct (inner direction) and his intelligence (outward direction) are given together. And I should urge that the business direction of what I should call instinctive experience is towards the experience — not towards the experienczVzg; though both are given at the same time. The practical reference when a chick is pecking at small objects is to the grains or maggots not to the enjoyment, though that is present and essential to the conscious relationship. For me the difference between instinctive experience and the supervening phase of intelligence is that, in the latter, pre-perceptions, due to the revival of previous ex- perience, are present and play their part in determining the behaviour which is thereby rendered intelligent. But in intelligent experience, at this early stage of its genesis, both directions, inner and outward, are still present. There is that which is intelligently ex- perienced and there is an enjoyment of intelligently experiencing. And this is carried up, in further 232 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE development, to the highest limits of our intellectual life. There, too, we have the intellectually experienced concepts and the like, and the enjoyment of intellectual experiencing. Nothing can be experienced, by arthropod or vertebrate, without experiencing ; experiencing is impossible with nothing experienced. None the less, if we may trust our own experience (and what else can we trust?) there may be a marked difference of emphasis. In our intellectual life we may so dwell on the aspect of the known that the process of know- ing becomes merely a background accompaniment. In our emotional life the tide of feeling may rise to such a level of intensity that our whole being seems concentrated at the experiencing pole. This variation of emphasis is a familiar fact of our daily life. It may be that in animal life — in that of the arthropod for example— the emphasis on feeling, on enjoyment pleasurable or the reverse, predominates. Who can say ? Probably nowhere, save in human thought, is the emphasis on the intellectually known and knowable, so highly differentiated until it culminates in the predominantly intellectualist temper of the man of science. And nowhere, save in human thought, is experiencing itself in some measure translated into terms of the known and knowable, so that we can discuss it in conceptual language. Thus we reach the paradox that internal intuition and the external intuition of sympathy are dealt with in a manner so splendidly intellectual as that which M. Bergson employs to win us over to the view that they are not susceptible of intellectual treatment ! THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 233 But it is only by putting ourselves outside the process of experiencing that we can deal with it in terms of intellectual knowledge. We are forced to view it as if from without in order to give it a place in our ideal construction of the natural order. We live in the conscious relationship and, as we live, it is only by intuition that we are aware of its enjoyment direction. But in interpreting our own experience we stand outside it and view it thus translated in relative detachment from the process of knowing it. The correlative process is, however, never absent. No percepts are possible without the process of perceiving ; no concepts without the process of conceiving ; no synthesis of experienced items is possible without the synthetic process of experiencing. In all phases of mental life — in arthropods or verte- brates, — instinct and intelligence (in M. Bergson's sense of the words) intuition and intellect, are the inner and outer directions of the self-same experience. It is part of M. Bergson's method to found on the results of analysis a sundering of orders of existence. An analysis of natural relationships leads us to distinguish the conscious and the organic from the mechanical and the physical. This is straight- way made the basis of a separation of two wholly different orders, that of the vital and that of the inert. Again : some measure of permanence and some measure of change are given together in perceptual experience ; forthwith the permanence is bestowed unreservedly on the order of the inert ; the change is restricted to the order of the vital. But all change involves time-relationships ; and so 234 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE duration becomes the sole prerogative of the vital and the conscious, and the material universe, as such, is left timeless and irretrievably static. Intuition and intellect are blended in mental life ; but the former is moulded on the vital order which can be known through it alone ; the latter deals only with static snap-shots and cannot comprehend life or process. Thus are the results of analysis hypostatized in M. Bergson's philosophy. Now I conceive that M. Bergson is right in contending that time and process, change and motion are primarily given in experience through intuition and enjoyment. We are thus aware of them at first hand. But is he right in restricting time and process and movement to the so-called vital order and leaving the material universe timeless, processless, and immobile ? I believe that he is wholly wrong. Though we may know them outside us only in second-hand reflection ; there they are to be thus known. Let us grant that abstract science, the ultimate triumph of intellectual procedure according to M. Bergson, deals with static snap-shots. As we shall see in the next chapter, mathematicians treat the mechanics of motion in terms of configurations of particles, these particles occupying a series of selected positions ; and any such position is a strictly instantaneous cinematograph picture in thought. No doubt each position is that which is occupied in a given instant of time ; but it is in what M. Bergson would call a spatialized time — a position on a time- chart represented by a point on a line in space which only symbolizes time for the intellect. It, too, is a snap-shot. There is no flow in a point ; the continuous THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 235 progress of real duration is eliminated. Well and good. The method is triumphantly successful. But when we are thinking of the process which is thus dealt with in snap-shots, we think through the positions, and the process of thought restores the real movement, the real duration, the time-flow, which had been eliminated for the purposes of rigidly scientific treatment. Yes ! says M. Bergson. But this movement, this duration, is wholly within the order of the vital ; it is movement and duration of our thinking. And in so far as there is real process outside us, we come into touch with it, through sympathetic intuition, as part of the order of the vital — the Life-impetus of the universe. Now for us, as for M. Bergson there is real movement and real duration in the process, the products of which are experienced. For him, however, the reality is in the order of the vital artificially sundered from the order of the inert. For us the reality is in the constitution of nature, many of the processes of which are not what we should term vital. They are inorganic processes, but none the less exhibiting real changes in time. But how do we get at the movement and the duration of any process which is outside us, since the only process we can enjoy is that of experiencing? M. Bergson says that we do so by sympathy. I should adapt his thought to my own interpretation as follows : — We are privileged centres of relationship within a relational context. Of any other centre of relationships, say another man or animal, we can only realize the nature of its process, by reading ourselves into its very heart. The more of the artist there is in us, the greater the measure of our success. 236 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE For in artistic appreciation intuition and sympathy are all-important. We can only realize, and that imperfectly, the instinctive relationships of bird or bee by putting ourselves in the place of the organism which is behaving instinctively — by feeling its very life. In some such form I can accept M. Bergson's teaching — But how do we come to do it ? Is it through strictly intellectual procedure, the drawing of logical inference in explicit fashion. M. Bergson says No. And here again I can in large measure agree. Its roots surely lie deeper than that. It is through no such intellectual and logical procedure that the cat in some way and in some degree comes to realize the nature of its kitten, — dimly and dumbly no doubt, but still effectively for practical behaviour. The work of logic and the intellect, in us as inter- preters, is concerned rather with the reasonable restriction of a sympathetic tendency which is far more primitive than scientific inference. Does it not, however, seem somewhat strained and extravagant to say that we sympathize with the processes of inorganic nature ? Is not this merely a poetical metaphor ? Can we enter sympathetically into the process of crystallization ? Can we sympathize with the solar system ? In a sense I believe we can, and must do so, even to attain the end of scientific interpretation. If we would follow any movement or process in thought we must always to some extent identify ourselves with the process, must live its flow, must get in some measure inside it, if we are adequately to realize its nature. " How marvellously you seem to know exactly how your motor-car will behave at any moment and THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 237 just what it wants," said a friend to a skilled expert. " I do it by instinct," was the reply ; " but then you see I am a motor-car ! " Some such reading of oneself into the very heart of one's object of thought is the secret of success in all effective interpretation even of inorganic processes. You must in some fashion feel the polarities of the molecules in the crystal, feel the double refraction of the light that passes through it, feel the electrical strains of the ether you invent. It is when a man of science knows the process he seeks to elucidate, as it were from within, that he shoots ahead of his fellows who know only its outer aspect. This is part of his intuition ; his touch of genius. Is this a matter of the intellect as such ? Unquestion- ably in such cases it is, highly intellectualized. But it is probably only the supreme development of a process which permeates the whole of experience, of that which some psychologists term the empathic tendency ; a tendency to be in some measure the object of close attention ; a tendency for the enjoyment of experiencing to diffuse itself over, or to insinuate itself into, that which is experienced in the focus of perception ; a tendency which, as I said above, is at the root of the animism of primitive races. One is forced to put the matter rather vaguely and picturesquely. As M. Bergson would say, it is not readily snap-shotted by the intellect. But if we ourselves endeavour to sympathize with his thought, such considerations seem to justify his view that intuition, sympathy, and instinct, in his sense of the term, point inwards to the reality of process, rather than outwards to its materialized products. 238 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE As a rider to our discussion of M. Bergson's doctrine of instinct and intuition we may devote a brief space to Dr. C. S. Myers' suggestive thesis to which allusion was made in an earlier chapter. According to M. Bergson, as we have seen, the province of instinct and intuition is to apprehend the inner nature of process, of life and consciousness, while the province of intelligence and the intellect is to know the external order of the inert. " If the consciousness that slumbers in instinct should awake," he tells us ; " if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of life." According to M. Bergson instinct and intuition are moulded on life and feel its inner pulses ; but intelligence and the intellect are moulded on the mechanical and the inert, and mechanize all that they touch. Dr. Myers on the other hand inverts this relationship to the inner life and to objective interpretation. "According to my view, and to my use of the words," he says, 1 " instinct regarded from within becomes intelligence ; intelligence regarded from without becomes instinct." And he correlates instinct with a mechanistic interpretation ; intelligence with a finalistic inter- pretation. According to him instinct and intelligence are different aspects, outer and inner, of one and the same mental process. "We ought," he says (pp. 267-8), "to speak, not of instinct and intelligence, but of instinct-intelligence treating the two as one indivisible mental function. . . . Regarded from the objective standpoint instinct-intelligence appears as instinct ; regarded from the subjective standpoint it 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol iii., p. 218. THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 239 appears as intelligence." Here we have a use of the term instinct which is very different from, almost diametrically opposite to, that which M. Bergson has striven to render current. We must remember, however, that as things now are, no two writers use the term in quite the same sense ! From some passages it seems as if the antithesis which Dr. Myers seeks to emphasize is that between the physiological and the mental. For he says (p. 270) : — " Throughout the psychical world there is but one physiological mechanism; there is but one psychological function — instinct-intelligence." Here instinct appears to be correlated with physiological mechanism ; and intelligence with psychological function. I am doubtful, however, whether I have quite grasped Dr. Myers' full meaning ; for he speaks (p. 269) of instincts as "endowed with per- ceptual and conative dispositions." But if instinct is the physiological aspect of the two-faced unity, the propriety of applying the terms perceptual and conative to this aspect is questionable — so question- able that I fear that I may not be giving a correct summary of Dr. Myers' thesis. In any case, if I understand him aright, the highest development of human intelligence is but one aspect of that which has a strictly correlative instinctive aspect. And this is brought into relation with a philosophical doctrine of the relation of mechanism to finalism. Dr. Myers advocates the thorough-going acceptance of a mechanical aspect of all that, in its psychological aspect, he regards as finalistic. " Some superhuman being," he says (p. 207), " would as surely find our human intelligence 240 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE determined by mechanism as we commonly believe the mental activity of animals to be determined by instinct." We must not, however, infer that Dr. Myers would regard such mechanism as other than the phenomenal appearance of the underlying purpose of which it is the expression. His philosophy is essentially finalistic ; " for ends exist not only in life but throughout the universe " (p. 217). The mechanism of instinct is only an aspect of that fundamental finalism which is characteristic of intelligence. CHAPTER VIII FINALISM AND MECHANISM: BODY AND MIND AT the close of the last chapter we saw that Dr. Myers regards the antithesis between instinct and intelligence as an example of the wider antithesis between mechanism and finalism. " So far as instinc- tive behaviour," he says, " can be regarded from the standpoint of the individual experience of the organism, it appears, however imperfectly, as intelli- gent, — characterized by finalism. So far as intelligent behaviour can be regarded from the standpoint of observing the conduct of other organisms, it appears, however imperfectly, as instinctive — characterized by mechanism." Thus for him intelligence and instinct, finalism and mechanism, are equally true and valid interpretations of the same problem regarded from different standpoints. And the broader antithesis is all-embracing in its range ; " for end exists not only in Life but throughout the Universe, if only we view the Universe as a huge organism }>1 (p. 217). The last sentence suggests the doctrine of panpsychism — to be briefly considered in the sequel. Our present concern is with finalism and mechanism. We will deal with finalism first. 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p, 209. R 241 242 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE What from the empirical point of view does finalism mean ? It means, I suppose, that in some cases we can with advantage interpret a process as proceeding to or towards an end which we can foresee. In what cases ? In those in which we have become acquainted with natural routine. Apart from routine we have -no data on which to base any anticipation of end. Now there is plenty of routine in the inorganic world which we might interpret in this way. But as a matter of fact we seldom do so. Nor do we use the word purposive in such connexions. We do not speak of earth-sculpture as the end of denudation ; nor do we speak of the process of denudation as purposive. When we have occasion to look ahead we are content to predict future stages of routine, without introducing the finalistic concept of end or purpose. We will pass at once, then, to the sphere of organic life. Here we do commonly employ finalistic terms. We say that flight is the end for which wings are developed ; the secretion of bile, one of the ends which the liver subserves. The whole con- ception of adaptation in biology, with its undertone of utility, is a conception implying an end to be attained. I have myself again and again spoken of instinctive behaviour as purposive and laid stress on its survival value — that is its value to the end of escaping elimination. Now it may be urged that, from the strictly scientific point of view, all these modes of expression are unsatisfactory and misleading if they imply that in any single case the present is conditioned by the future or the earlier stage by the later. For the FINALISM AND MECHANISM 243 future is not yet in being, and the later stage is non-existent till it is actually reached. Adaptive behaviour, it will be said, is in all cases to be explained as a heritage of the past ; the well-adapted parents have survived and have transmitted to their offspring the so-called potentiality of like adaptation. This potentiality is just the present structure and constitution of the organism. All this is true enough and sufficiently obvious to all those who have devoted any thought to the subject. And yet there is surely something about the peculiar nature of biological phenomena which justifies the conception of end or purpose — a conception which is current among biologists of all schools. What is that something? Clearly the correlated routine which we sum up under the term heredity. Now we must distinguish between the end fore- seen, however dimly, by a conscious organism, and the end foreseen by the biologist who studies the organism. The former is a pre-perceptive or anticipa- tory conscious relationship developed in the intelligent organism ; the latter is an anticipation in the mind of the observer who interprets. The former may, perhaps, not unreasonably for our present purpose, be excluded in the case of plants. Reading our anticipation into that which we interpret we say, that the acorn contains the potentiality of the oak- tree ; that its end is to become an oak ; or perhaps, more generally, that it is part of the purpose of nature that seeds should develop into plants, shrubs, or trees. And we foresee that any given seed will grow into the likeness of its parents — a likeness which is substan- tially perfect, if for the present we disregard all 244 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE variations and mutations. How have we come to know this ? In brief by the study of life-history in a series of affiliated individuals m> n, o, and p. Such study reveals routine. We find that, in them, the tune of development is played again and again da capo. And having learnt the tune in m i n, o, and p, we foresee the sequence of the organic melody and harmony in q as soon as a few chords have been played. Then we can say that the opening bars are significant of the whole piece — may even say that the simple organic ditty of mucor or the complex symphony of quercus is the end for which the opening bars of development exist. But we can only do so in so far as history repeats itself; and history only repeats itself so far as the constitution of q, and the conditions at any given stage of its development, resemble the constitution of p and o and the condi- tions at like stages of their development. Any "prospective value," apart from constitution and conditions actually present, is entirely in the mind of the interpreter. But here the teleological vitalists will demur. If Dr. Driesch be their spokesman he will urge that we are wholly ignoring the really important question : — Why the sequence in any given case is what, as a matter of fact, we observe it to be : we are ignoring his reply to this question, namely, that entelechy is the ground and Source of development and organization. With entelechy as Source I have here no concern ; we do not seek the why of any natural process in this sense. And to entelechy as ground I raise no serious objection. It is just the inherited constitution under another name. If it be found FINALISM AND MECHANISM 245 convenient to name the ground of organization in yeast or amoeba, in alga or mollusk, in oak-tree or man, its entelechy, I do not see what reasonable objection can be taken ; so long as scientific interpre- tation is furthered, and so long as it avowedly labels the specific characteristic of processes which are just part of the natural order ; so long, in short, as it is not hypostatized as a controlling entity. A little way back we disregarded the occurrence of variations or mutations. Now, granted that both modes of organic change obtain ; granted that biolo- gists will some day be able to elucidate more clearly the conditions of their natural origin ; granted that mutations occur beyond the field of hybridization ; granted that in some more or less modified form the Mendelian laws may be fully established ; nay, more, granted that it may hereafter be proved that, quite apart from natural selection, in which the environment is so potent a factor, organic evolution occurs along lines determined by the intrinsic constitution of the evolving organisms. Let all this be granted in a spirit of generous concession. We are indeed granting more than, in my opinion, is at present proven ; still I see no reason why all this should not be conceded for the sake of argument. For the sake of what argument ? The argument for finalism. And what does this argument come to ? This : — that in organic nature up to date we find definite tendencies in apparently determinate directions ; and that we may, in some cases, foretell from the trend of the evolutionary curve up to date, its probable course in the future. But the natural order is throughout replete with determinate tendencies of such a character 246 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE that we can with some confidence predict what will occur if things go on in the time to come as they have gone on in the time that is past, wherein our observations have been carried out. Such finalism, then, is really nothing other than our old friend scientific prediction under another name. But what if the variations or mutations are genuinely new departures — are creative, as M. Bergson would say ? What if they are unforeseeable and unpredictable because they are off the line of previous routine ? I have already urged that this would not be a matter for surprise, since nature is replete with events which could not be predicted because the routine of their occurrence had not yet been presented for observation — the appropriate conditions had not yet occurred. But surely such unpredictable new departures cannot for one moment be regarded as affording any evidence for finalism, at our present stage of its consideration, since their essential characteristic lies in the fact that the end cannot be foreseen. For empirical treat- ment finalistic interpretation is based on routine : non-routine events wholly escape the meshes of .its net. So far we have considered a finalistic interpreta- tion of processes in which we have assumed the conscious relationship to be absent. We have con- sidered purposive processes — that is, processes which we interpret as proceeding to an end which we can foresee. Only where an intelligent being is guided in virtue of the presence of conscious relation- ships towards an end which he can dimly or clearly foresee do we have finalistic behaviour or conduct FINALISM AND MECHANISM Ml and not merely a finalistic interpretation — purpose- ful behaviour, and not merely behaviour which we may regard as purposive like many of the tropisms in plants and lowly animals. Now there can surely be no doubt that in human life, where elementary meaning for practical behaviour has risen to significance for conceptual thought and conduct, wherein interest is far-reaching and conative process has become fully volitional, wherein the out- look towards the possible or probable future has become open-eyed and rational ; — there can surely be no doubt that here purpose and end are concepts essential for adequate interpretation of the facts. Nor can there be any doubt that what we may fairly speak of as the same end may be reached by different means. This is a salient feature] of the higher mental life. It is not distinctive of the higher mental life, nor of intelligent process. It is seen in in- stinctive behaviour, and is abundantly illustrated in biology where somewhat similar structural features — such as those of the eye in vertebrates and in some mollusks — have been reached by different evolu- tionary routes, and where the regeneration of lost parts takes place in diverse manners and even in some cases, it seems, from tissues of different em- bryonic origin. I do not even say that this apparent identity of effect reached through a series of different conditions is restricted to the mental and the organic spheres. Even in the inorganic realm, though we may assert with some confidence that the same assemblage of conditions will always, in a system similarly constituted, be the antecedent of the same effect, we cannot convert this proposition, and 248 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE say that an apparently identical effect is always the consequence of the same assemblage of conditions. Still in the inorganic world we can work back from effect to correlated conditions with much greater security than we can in the realm of the living, where such a method of procedure is proverbially insecure. Nor is this surprising when one remembers how com- plexity and unity are combined in the organism as they are combined nowhere else in nature ; and when one remembers that stability in constitution amid varying conditions has, perhaps more than anything else, the hall-mark of survival value ; is, perhaps more than anything else, what we should expect to find under vigorous natural selection. Nowhere is com- plexity in unity carried to higher level than in man ; nowhere is constitutional stability (which we com- monly speak of as the triumph of character over circumstances) more pronounced ; nowhere does the end more markedly dominate the means. In any case it is a sufficiently familiar fact that what we roughly call the same end may be attained by very different means. But when we say that in human life the present is big with the future, which it will beget, that the child has the potentialities which will be realized in later years, that the end in view precedes and dominates the devising of means to its attainment, do we mean, can we seriously mean, that the present is determined by the future ? The future is not yet in being. How can that which is non-existent deter- mine conduct, or thought, or anything else ? It is an inversion of the natural order of sequence to speak, in any natural sense, of the future as a condition of FINALISM AND MECHANISM 249 present process. The true statement of the matter is surely this : — That among the conditions, then and there actually present, are certain anticipations of, or desires for, a further development more or less clearly foreseen as possibilities in the future ; and that just in so far as these are present may we speak of a purpose and end and so-called final cause. Some form of at least pre-perception, if not of definite anticipation, is essential. If this and nothing more than this be finalism, then are we all finalists in our interpretation of human life. And there is nothing to differentiate the natural course of process in this case from that in any other case, save only the presence among the existent relationships of the psychological factors which we name prospective significance and interest. These, of course, do differentiate ; and that in a most important manner, which must nowise be ignored, but which must just be accepted where pre-perceptive relationships have been established and highly developed. And such conscious relationships count, really count, every whit as much as any other natural relationships. They are not merely epiphenomenal phosphorescence ; they are real conditions of the course of process, both mental and bodily. Now, wherever we have evidence of conscious relationships with prospective reference functioning in this way, we have a genuinely teleological factor. It is just because I am not satisfied that there is evidence of such conscious relationships in the life of plants, in the development of the embryo, in the reflex actions of the spinal animal, and in instinctive behaviour from the biological standpoint, that, as at 250 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE present advised, I cannot accept a finalistic interpre- tation of such processes. But others, as we shall presently have occasion to show, accept it, and base their whole interpretation of organic process upon it. And what about universal finalism ? This implies not only a conscious relationship, but one of un- limited range, and one that embraces the whole not yet of the future. Am I putting the matter fairly in stating it thus? If with Dr. Myers we view the universe as a huge organism which embraces the whole duration of the natural order from start to finish within a single and immediate span of consciousness, then a fore-knowledge of end would qualify the whole of consciousness and be a condition of natural process. Would this satisfy the universal finalist? I think not. Does not such finalism generally, if not always, involve the concept of Source ? Will not the finalist say that the conscious- ness of the universe is not only aware of the end as a condition of the direction taken by process, but is also, and essentially, the Agency through which the whole natural order is made to achieve that end ? If this be so, then, in so far as universal finalism involves the concept of Source or Agency it is out- side the sphere of our considerations here. We could here only accept universal teleology as an expression of universal intelligibility. Antithetical to finalistic interpretation is mech- anistic interpretation. I feel sure that finalists will regard much that I have written in preceding paragraphs as a vain and futile attempt to interpret the evidence for finalism in terms of mere mechanism. The term mechanism, and the adjectives mechanistic FINALISM AND MECHANISM 251 and mechanical are, however, somewhat ambiguous. " Mechanics/' said Kirchoff, " is the science of motion. We define as its object the complete description in the simplest possible manner of such motions as occur in nature." We may here, I take it, regard the laws of equilibrium as special cases which can be brought under the laws of motion. Now motion is a concept reached by the scientific analysis and re- synthesis of certain changes in the routine of the phenomenal world which are presented to observa- tion. It is essential to remember that mechanics, as a science of motion, is a product of ideal construction ; it furnishes a very much simplified conceptual map or model which enables us to interpret observable phenomena. And as the motion itself is purely conceptual, so, too, for mechanics, is that which moves ; whether it be an indefinitely complex object, such as a planet, or a molecule, or an atom, or an electron, or a point. These are statistical units employed as occasion arises, and as may be convenient in relation to the problem in hand ; and they are employed within the conceptual scheme of the thought-model. Within this scheme, the ideal motions of these purely ideal products of scientific thought (particles, let us call them) are dealt with in terms of velocity, and of acceleration as a measure of change in velocity. And the acceleration-measure may be applied either (i) to the quickening or slow- ing off of velocity in the same direction, or (2) to the changes of that direction. The velocity of a particle ideally isolated at any given moment is the net result of the whole of its mechanical history. If, however, the particle be not isolated, but is one among a 252 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE number of others which are related within a con- figuration, then, for mechanics, its acceleration is strictly correlated with, or is a function of, its relation to all the other particles in the configuration in accordance with the constitution of that configuration. We need not trouble about any mathematical diffi- culties in calculating the acceleration values. Theoretically, if we know the existing positions and the velocities of all the particles within a configura- tion as a mechanical system in any two moments, and if we know the laws of the type of configuration, that is, its constitution, then we can predict their velocities and positions in any succeeding moment. It should be noted that this statement includes all changes of direction as well as changes of speed. The assertion is often made that changes of direction may occur independently of mechanical relationships. This, however, is never the case within the con- figuration as an ideal construction of the science of mechanics. Such an interpretation as I have briefly sketched above is given by Professor Karl Pearson in the new edition of his "Grammar of Science" (191 1). It is, however, urged by Mr. Bertrand Russell and other mathematicians "that, ultimately, the whole history of a system of material particles is describable in terms of their masses and spatial relations "... and " that in order to predict the future or reconstruct the past of any material system, all we need to know is the geometrical configuration of its particles in any two moments of time." * If this position is accepted, 1 T. Percy Nunn, "Animism and the Doctrine of Energy," "Pro- ceedings Aristotelian Society," 1911-1912, Cp. his " Aims of Scientific FINALISM AND MECHANISM 253 "it is no longer possible to think of a particle as possessing a velocity or an acceleration." For any geometrical position within a mechanical context is purely static. The matter may be put in this way. If in a mechanical system we take an instantaneous flash-photograph or snap-shot, A, of the configuration at a given moment, and a second snap-shot, B, at a subsequent moment, then we can predict the exact configuration which will be given in snap-shot C at a later moment, if the constitution of the system remains unchanged. Each flash-photograph just gives the momentary positions of the particles, and their positions only. But that is all that we need for mathematical treatment. If it be asked what becomes of the motion on this view, the reply, I conceive, is that there may be movements in the changing world which is to be interpreted, and there may be movement of thought in the mind of the interpreter, as he thinks, through A and B to C, but within the ideal construction, as such, we deal only with the snap-shotted positions. It may perhaps be said : — If mechanics deals with ideal constructions, surely its thought-model, and its snap-shots, are merely products of the scientific imagination. Are you not by this method just putting into your ideal construction at the start, all that you get out of it at the finish ? If the premises be granted, no doubt the conclusions necessarily follow. But we want to know the laws of nature, not Method" (1907), § 45, p. 103. I have received, and wish to acknow- ledge, much help from Dr. Nunn in correspondence as well as through his writings. Mr. B. Russell's "Principles of Mathematics" should be consulted, especially i., chap. liv. 254 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE only the laws of your ideal constructions. Quite so 1 And therefore the test of the validity of an ideal construction is whether it can be applied in such a way as to enable us to interpret observable phenomena. Now observable phenomena have a way of being so terribly complex that in thousands of cases we do not know whether the necessary conclusions within a mechanical scheme, as such, are applicable to the observable routine of phenomena. We often know little or nothing about the particles or their positions. We cannot get any mechanical snap-shots. Take a particular case which bears upon our special inquiry. Whether an ideal construction of the strictly mechanical order is applicable within that exceed- ingly complex natural configuration of particles (if such it be) which we call the cortex of the human brain, we simply don't know. I conceive that, as things now are, anything like positive assertion or anything like positive denial is sheer unscientific dogmatism. Some day we may know : to-day we do not know. That is surely the true position of matters. Ought we not to leave it at that ? Reverting now to our ideal construction, let us call the interpretation of a system in which such a snap-shot determination as was described above is practicable, an A B C interpretation. Such an interpretation gives the ABC law in terms of mechanical relationships. There may be all sorts of other relationships very interesting and important in their proper context. But the mechanical relationships are all that mechanics wants and all that mechanics is concerned with. If the constitution of the system changes and with it the mechanical FINALISM AND MECHANISM 255 relationships, we shall have to determine the law of the change, let us say in term of a j3 y. We shall then have to combine an ABC determination with an a j3 y determination. We may next ask whether an A B C interpreta- tion, that is one in strictly mechanical terms of mass- particles and positions, is applicable in the case of some of the complex phenomena with which chemistry deals. I take it that, in any comprehensive sense, it is not yet generally applicable. What, then, is the scientific attitude ? To assert roundly that it is and must be applicable, though we do not yet know how to apply it ? Or to deny that it can be applicable because on other grounds we think it ought not to be applicable ? Or to say that we do not know? I have no hesitation in advocat- ing an honest confession of ignorance. And if this should be our attitude with regard to many chemical phenomena, still more should it be our attitude in presence of complex physiological changes. So far I have tried to keep strictly to the ABC question which I conceive to be the question for the science of mechanics as such. May I now be allowed to apply the term mechanistic to a system interpret- able in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry ? Of course this is putting a number of varied phenomena in one general group ; but we must do this to avoid detailed discussion here out of place. Let us grant that we have passed to a region of scientific inquiry where the strict ABC of mechanics, in terms of mass-particles and positions, cannot, as yet at any rate, be applied. In what way shall we express the 256 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE method of procedure ? We find routine. How shall we deal with it ? Shall we say that for any scientific determination we require a treatment in terms of D E F analogous to (but only analogous to, not identical with) the strictly mechanical treatment? Here D E F stand for three static stages snap- shotted in the changing routine of, let us say, a chemical reaction. If stage D and stage E are known, then stage F can be predicted and the law of the constitution of the system for the purpose in hand may so far be ascertained. No doubt matters are often very much more complicated than this. The to and fro changes are very intricate. The poise of the system alters from moment to moment. But we want to get at certain basal principles of interpretation. I seek to indicate by the formula D E F that the determination is in terms of sequent stages of chemical or physical routine. Now pass to the field of physiology and organic routine. I take it that the term mechanistic (but sometimes mechanical ! ) is commonly applied to the hypothesis that the organic changes are interpretable without remainder in terms of D E F. They may have other relationships very interesting to the physiologist, but from the mechanistic standpoint these are merely epiphenomenal. Many biologists and physiologists, however, cannot regard this hypothesis as tenable. Let us grant that they are right in claiming that certain physiological changes cannot be interpreted in terms of D E F alone ; and let us apply the formula G H I to the law of the remainder — the strictly organic and physiological as such. Then we have the opportunity of correlating FINALISM AND MECHANISM 257 G H I changes with D E F changes without identify- ing the one with the other. As an example of what I mean by interpretation in terms of G H I, we may take the case of Tubularia as formulated by Dr. Driesch. If the head of this hydroid polyp be excised, a new head is restored by the combined work of many parts of the stem. Furthermore " if you cut out of a Tubularia stem pieces which are less than ten millimetres in length, you will find the absolute size of the head restored to be in close relation to the length of the stem piece" (i. 127). Here is a prediction which is fulfilled ; for we may trust Dr. Driesch implicitly in his facts. How then is this explained by him ? He tells us that what we can thus predict — the "prospective value" as he terms it (p. v.) — is a function of the size of the piece of stem (s), the direction of the cut (1) and the constitution of the Tubularia — its entelechy (E). And he gives the equation p. v. (X) = / (s, 1, E). So that given — what must always be given in any interpretable routine — the constitution of the system, and the conditions of the case, the changes which occur can be foretold, so long as the constitution E remains constant. One does not need, however, to seek abnormal cases to exemplify the method of treat- ment. Given the constitution of that complex organic system which we call a hen's egg t and given the conditions under which the process of develop- ment as embryogenic routine runs its course ; then we can apply our G H I principle and predict the state of matters say at the 96th hour. All this I conceive is fully in accordance with the recognized s 258 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE methods of scientific procedure. It remains to be seen whether a physico-chemical interpretation of certain organic changes in terms of D E F can be correlated with (not necessarily identified with) a further interpretation of remainder phenomena in terms of G H I. We come now to psychological interpretation — to avoid ambiguity let us say an associationist interpreta- tion of the synthetic juxtaposition and compounding of the " eds " of experience including thought. Epiphenomenalists claim that psycho-physiological processes, or rather their "ed ''-products, are interpret- able in terms of G H I without remainder. They say that although an intelligent relationship to a pre-perceived end may seem to determine the direction of behaviour, yet, none the less, this does not really count ; if we knew enough about physiology that alone would suffice ; just as if we knew enough about physico-chemical mechanism that would suffice for organic interpretation ; and if we knew enough about mechanics that in turn would suffice for the complete understanding of every material change in the universe. All this, however, is somewhat speculative ; it does not appear to be at present within the sphere of the practical politics of contemporary science. Let us grant then that psychological products, and intelligent behaviour in relation to them, cannot be interpreted in terms of organic G H I without remainder. Let us call the law of the remainder X Y Z. This means that, in any routine of psycho- logical products, if the constitution of the mental system be known, stages X and Y and Z are sequent stages ; and that if you know X and Y you can FINALISM AND MECHANISM 259 foretell Z on the basis of routine. In the absence of routine, of course no scientific predictions are possible in any field of inquiry. Here XYZ are not identified with G H I in the sense that the psychological is merely a phosphorescent accompani- ment of brain-process. They can only be identified, within an ideal construction, in the sense that the same process may have both physiological ^^psychological relationships, just as an organic process may have both physico-chemical and physiological relationships. The business of science is to correlate these several relationships. Both parallelists and inter-actionists claim that there is a complete or partial correlation between what I have called the G H I and the XYZ. But the inter-actionists call in a psychic entity which, according to M. Bergson, dwells in time but not in space; so that, for them, the correlation is only at the locus of inter-action ; for M. Bergson it is along the line of the knife-edge where pure memory gets its wedge-like insertions into the spatial world of the inert. But I shall have somewhat more to say on this subject a few pages later. Now in accordance with the foregoing analysis we have : — 1. Mechanical interpretation in terms of ABC. 2. Mechanistic „ „ „ „ D E F. 3. Organic „ „ „ „ G H I. 4. Psychological „ „ „ „ XYZ. It may be that the chemical and physical phenomena dealt with in terms of D E F will here- after be resolved into complex configurations of mass- particles analytically interpretable in terms of A B C ; and it may be that the organic phenomena dealt 260 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE with in terms of G H I will hereafter be shown to be complex D E F business. But we seem very far off at present from any such resolution of the presented phenomena. Let us, therefore, assume for the sake of argument, that both the D E F phenomena and the G H I phenomena are sui generis. Then I submit that the scientific course is just to accept the fact in each case and to seek to correlate phenomena which will not submit to identification. And my further contention is that if we attempt to explain the facts by saying that we must call in a D E F entity (Energy) as the Source of the D E F phenomena, and must call in a G H I Entity (Life or Entelechy) as the Source of the G H I phenomena ; then, for good or ill, we leave the plane of scientific interpreta- tion. And I should urge that if we do call in Entelechy in this sense as the Source of vital phenomena, then we ought, on precisely analogous grounds, to call in a crystalline entity (perhaps as a mode of Energy) as the Source of the phenomena of crystallization. Apart, however, from this point I seek through the above table to avoid an ambiguity in the use of terms which I find somewhat troublesome. The term mechanistic (and not infrequently the term mechanical) is sometimes applied no further down the above table than 2 ; but they are sometimes applied to 3 and 4 also. Thus Mr. McDougall says, in a passage already quoted, that instinctive action is " incapable of being described in purely mechanical terms." And, as we have seen, Dr. Myers says : — " So far as intelligent behaviour can be regarded from the standpoint of observing the conduct of other organisms, it appears, FINALISM AND MECHANISM 261 however, imperfectly as instinctive — characterized by mechanism." Since such phrases are in current use, it is incumbent on a writer who attempts to deal with instinct and experience to make his own position clear. This I have endeavoured to do at the risk of seeming unduly crabbed and technical. It may, however, be said that these phrases, in such contexts, are not meant to be taken in the narrower sense to which I have attempted to restrict them. In what sense, then, are they to be accepted ? x What does a mechanistic interpretation, from this broader philosophical standpoint imply ? Does it not imply the universal, and perhaps eventually the quantitative correlation of all the happenings within the natural order, as such, without going beyond one natural order within which such correlations afford the data for an ideal " unity of concatenation " ? Now whether such universal correlation obtains throughout the universe of things and thoughts, we do not yet know. There may be some loose-jointed indeter- minism, just a very little of which William James demanded. We are still only beginners and novices in the interpretation of nature. We know just a little about correlation. Bit by bit we are extending this knowledge. But considering the bewildering variety and multiplicity of the events in the midst of which we live, bold indeed is he who ventures to affirm that universal correlation is more than an ideal construction the validity of which has still to be tried 1 For M. Bergson and his interpreters everything which can be ex- plained in intellectual terms is mechanical or mechanistic. All that is not Life (apprehended through intuition and sympathy) belongs to the mechanical order of the inert. 262 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE and tested. After all, the world may be in some measure chaotic. The cosmos may be evolving, not only from an earlier and towards a later cosmic phase, but out of partial chaos. Who can say ? We pass then to some further consideration of universal correlation, the meaning of this phrase being, I trust, sufficiently clear. Can we accept it as an ideal construction which may some day be applicable to the world of events we strive to interpret ? There is (need I again add the qualifying words, within the self-imposed limits of our dis- course ?) — There is one conditio sine qua non of its acceptance. And that is the acceptance as part and parcel of it — the full free and unhesitating acceptance, — of conscious relationships as belonging to the natural order, to be correlated with other relationships, and really counting in any situation within which they are developed. To say that the motions of my fingers as I write are the same that they would be if the conscious relationship were entirely absent, is little short of absurd. To urge that behaviour in any intelligent situation is just what it would be if intelligence were non-existent, seems to me a deliberate ignoring of what for any reasonable interpretation are the facts of the case. I have little remaining space at my command. I can spare none of it to discuss the epiphenomenal doctrine. The argument, I take it, runs thus :— Intelligence is correlated with cortical functioning ; but if the cortical functioning took place without the correlated intelligence, the behaviour would remain the same. (Here comes in unconscious cerebration and the like.) But have we any evidence that the very same cortical functioning which is FINALISM AND MECHANISM 263 developed when intelligence is present, ever does occur in exactly the same way in the absence of such correlated intelligence ? May we rub off the slate an observed or inferred correlation and unblushingly say that it doesn't really count? I must apologize, how- ever, to my epiphenomenal friends and to the shade of my master Huxley, for this cavalier dismissal of their views, and again plead in excuse the exigencies of space. We thus clear the ground and reach a plain issue ; either the conscious relationships are developed within one natural order and are co-ordinate with other relationships ; or there are two independent orders which inter-act ; that of matter, of which the body is part ; and that of life, of which mind is an attribute. It is sometimes asserted that inter-action of mind on body and body on mind is inconceivable. But, regarding the matter from the point of view of inferred correlation of bodily and mental processes, this argument pressed home results in universal inconceivability, and a complete paralysis of inter- pretation, if we are to be precluded from dealing with connexions unless we can explain the "why" of them. Science just accepts correlations as facts. We may, indeed, go somewhat beyond Hume's view that, in the world around us, this and that are merely " conjoined," being "connected" only in our experience through custom. We may firmly believe that they are really connected in nature since nature is a correlated context of which our conscious relation- ships are part. But why within the correlated context of the constitution of nature, this should be connected 264 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE with that, science cannot say. We must just accept the facts as they are given. Why there should be mutual attraction between the earth and the moon, we do not know. And accredited manipulators of that triumph of ideal construction, the ether, assure us that it will not help us over our difficulty. 1 Why the motion of one billiard ball should be com- municated to another by impact — this, it is said, passes the wit of man to tell. Why anything should be correlated with anything else, in this sense of the word why, we do not know ; experience merely acquaints us with the facts of observation ; our scientific explanations only serve to correlate the less familiar with the more familiar types of correlation. All correlation is (if you will) a mystery ; granted two orders of being, there is no more mystery in the kind of correlation suggested by inter-actionists than in any other observed or inferred correlation. And if, on the one-order-of-nature hypothesis, conscious relationships are as a matter of fact found to obtain — Well, there they are, as modes of natural process to be correlated with other modes. Now Mr. McDougall arguing in favour of inter- action rightly urges 2 that it should not be rejected on the score of its being more inconceivable than other modes of correlation. But when he is criticiz- ing the assumed correlation of conscious-processes with cortical brain-processes he speaks with a different voice. "To assume," he says, "that of all physical processes just certain brain-processes are accompanied by conscious concomitants, would leave 1 Cf. Karl Pearson, " The Grammar of Science," vol. i., pp. 301-2. 2 " Body and Mind " (191 1), pp. 207-8, FINALISM AND MECHANISM 265 the relation too obviously mysterious ; the coming into being of the sensation, at the moment of the occurrence of a brain-process of a certain quality would be too decidedly miraculous " (p. 152). Why it should be more mysterious and miraculous than the correlation of certain events in an independent soul order with certain material processes of a second order I am unable to see. Mr. McDougall holds 1 " that the instincts are differentiations of the will to live ... by means of which it pushes on along diverging paths, creating by their agency the various great families of the animal kingdom ; each animated by the great instincts common to all, the tendencies to seek food and to reproduce its kind ; each animated also by special instincts characteristic of the group ; each instinct creating for its own service the bodily organs and the nervous structures best suited to serve as the instruments by which it may secure the satis- faction of its conative impulse." I confess that this interpretation of instinct seems to me to involve quite as much of mystery and miracle, as the assumption that a natural correlation obtains between cortical functioning and conscious process. But might we not wisely drop — both one side and the other — all reference to mystery and miracle ? Opposed to the doctrine of inter-action — the inter- action, be it noted, of two orders of being, — is, in current controversy, that of psycho-physiological parallelism. Now the very term parallelism seems at the outset to imply two orders of process which run side by side and cannot intersect. And even the term concomitance, as commonly accepted, 1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 258. 266 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE carries a like implication. What, then, is the thesis that the upholders of this doctrine are concerned to maintain ? We may summarize it briefly thus : that every psychical process has a parallel physiological process ; that for every differentiation of the former there is a parallel differentiation of the latter ; and, as a corollary, that when any two physiological processes are precisely alike in every respect, and in all their relationships, then, if the one has a given psychological concomitant, that of the other is identical. Obviously this is an ideal construction which far outruns what can be established on empirical data ; hence many psychologists regard it as a working hypothesis. And if this means that they abandon the concept of parallelism and accept only the concept of correlation, for what it is worth and as far as it goes, that is clearly a step in the right direction. If this is spoken of as an appeal to physiology to the end of furthering an explanation of the facts of psychology, let us make the appeal with our eyes fully open. What do we hope to get from the appeal ? An explanation of the conscious relation- ship between this and that? Well and good. But what do we mean by an explanation ? Do we expect to gain from physiology any further informa- tion as to the nature of the conscious relationship as such ? If so, our expectation is futile. Let us not delude ourselves with vain hopes, or, if it be preferred, worry over idle fears. The conscious relationship within a synthetic process comes into being under certain conditions. That is just a fact to be accepted. Physiology will neither make it or mar it. All we FINALISM AND MECHANISM 267 can do is to correlate this fact with other facts. That is where physiology comes in. It furnishes a body of other facts to be correlated with these psychological facts. Why they should be correlated in the context of nature we do not know. All that we can confidently affirm is that some correlations between psychological and physiological happenings seem as well established as any other correlations in the realm of nature. For the experiential relation- ship is, for us, just a natural event which we come to know just as we come to know other natural events. We eschew all the metaphysics of episte- mology. But if some mental states have cortical correlates, may not all ? We ask this as a question to be answered bit by bit through inquiry. We do not make any positive assertion. At most we may accept a provisionally affirmative reply, as part of a policy which spurs us on to further investigation. Even if, however, we grant that only in some cases is there a correlation between the mental and the psychological ; is it not in accordance with scientific method to pass on, with some measure of con- fidence, to the conclusion that, where such correla- tion does obtain, the same physiological happenings in the cortex, will always be correlated with the same states of consciousness and not with other states ? It is just here, however, that difference of opinion and divergence of interpretation come in. There is an alternative view. And, since I am desirous that it should not suffer from inadequate presentation, I will quote from an able paper written by a distinguished exponent of the philosophy of M, 268 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Bergson. " I suppose," says Mr. Wildon Carr, 1 " every one agrees that as a fact every psychological state implies a physiological state. . . . But is it equally agreed that to the same cerebral state there corresponds the same psychical state, and conversely that to an identical psychical state there corresponds an identical cerebral state ? May not different, even totally different, psychical states be accompanied by the same nervous conditions ? There are some cases in which it seems to me," says Mr. Carr, "almost impossible to believe that it is not so. . . . It is not necessarily, nor even probably true that the same cerebral state determines the same psychical state, for there might correspond to the same cerebral state several very different psychical states. . . . Our body is the material instrument of the mind. . . . Why then does this mind seem to spring into being just where our afferent nerves end and our efferent nerves begin, that is to say, in the brain ? Because it is just there that the intellect becomes serviceable, just there that it enables the living creature to control and direct its activity, just there that the free choice with which it endows it becomes realizable. There is no parallelism, nor causality, there is solidarity. The body serves the mind and the mind directs the body. They are inseparable, to quote an illustration of Bergson's, as the knife is inseparable from its edge. The brain is the sharp edge by which con- sciousness penetrates the compact tissue of events, but it is no more co-extensive with consciousness 1 "Proc. Aristotelian Soc." N.S. vol. xi. (1910-1911), pp. 134, 135, 143. FINALISM AND MECHANISM 269 than the edge is co-extensive with the knife." Thus Mr. Carr. One must remember here that the knife belongs to a different order of being from the events into which its edge is inserted. I said above that parallelism implies two orders of being. Here is what Mr. Carr says in the connexion : . — " Parallelism," he writes, " is an attempt to express a relation between two things that belong to different orders, to different kinds of reality. The problem of parallelism comes to us from the two substances of Descartes, the two attributes of Spinoza. It comes to us permeated with the idealist-realist controversy of the eighteenth century. It is on this dualism that the hypothesis of parallelism rests. I do not mean," he adds, "that parallelism may not find its solution in some form of monism ; what I do mean is that it is based on a view of phenomena which divides them into two entirely separated orders of reality, or planes of reality, or meanings of reality, or kinds of reality — qualities and percepts, things and thoughts. Parallelism is not merely based on that view, it is essentially that view; it does not explain dualism, but is the expression of it" (pp. 139, 140). Now it has been my aim to contribute in some slight measure to the translation of the old philosophical antithesis of two orders of being, into other terms involving other concepts. Starting with na'fve perceptual experience, instead of positing the world on the one hand and mind on the other hand as independent terms within different orders of process, I accept the given experiential relationship as one among many relationships within one order 270 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE of being to be interpreted in just the same scientific way; and the old antithesis takes for me the form of that between experiencing and the experienced. But at the lowest level at which we can begin to interpret, as best we may, the experiential relation- ship, it is already extraordinarily complex. Just think of the chain of correlations involved in seeing an " object." And think of the differentiations involved when instead of seeing the object we subsequently have an anticipatory image of it! It is difficult enough to conceive, even in schematic form, how all this comes about — that is to say to trace step by step all the complex correlations. But this difficulty is not in the smallest degree lessened when we assume that much of it takes place in a different order of being. The correlations have to be traced there just as much as here. All we can do in either case is just to accept process as given and endeavour to show how the stages are related. And here comes the stress on process. Whatever else it may be, experiencing is a process. However else we may interpret it, the successive phases of process are correlated. On any hypothesis, there is also a correlation between this process and other processes — whether this process belongs to the mind order and the other processes to the world order, or all are given within one natural order. Now on the two-order hypothesis psychical process in the mental sphere inter-acts with physiological process in the brain. On the one-order hypothesis there are not really two processes, but one process, a psycho- physiological process ; a process, with what M. Bergson would term the unity of interpenetration ; FINALISM AND MECHANISM 271 a process of which the physiologists may study the correlations within the organism, and of which the psychologists may study such correlations as are involved in M. Bergson's doctrine of pure perception. Physiological products and a physiological con-figura- tion or constellation are different from mental pro- ducts and a psychological disposition. But though the products are diverse there is but one emerging life-process, unitary and indivisible so long as the organism functions as a whole. The life-process, however, is an extraordinarily complex one, and the belief in its unitary character does not preclude the belief in interrelations between different phases within the whole. Indeed many of the arguments in favour of inter-action between two orders, the mental and the physiological, are, in my opinion, merely translations into the language of animism, of the unquestionable inter-action between cortical and sub-cortical functioning within the organic process. In a sense too much stress may perhaps be laid on the unitary process of living, that is, if it be regarded as the unity of a blank sheet of paper. But if it be regarded as the unity of a whole with correlated parts — the whole dominating the parts and the parts contributing to the whole ; if it is the kind of unity of which human design is a highly developed example, then the stress seems to be amply justified. In the emphasis on process, and especially in the emphasis on process as one and indivisible, no matter how much distinguishable differentiation may obtain, we come to some extent into line with Mr. Carr who, interpreting M. Bergson, says in a 272 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE passage quoted above: — "There is no parallelism, nor causality, there is solidarity." But for him the solidarity is at the plane of intersection of two different orders of being. It is solidarity along the line of the knife-edge. On what kind of evidence, then, is the existence of an independent mind-order accepted ? It is confidently claimed that there are certain modes of mental process which cannot possibly be correlated with cortical process. Hence they must run their course in the mind independently of bodily happenings. Dr. Driesch takes the case of a man who notices that a lamp recently bought begins to smoke. He examines the mechanism, decides that this or that must be done to stop the nuisance, and stops it. The brain is affected in correlation with certain presented stimuli ; the brain is also instrumental in initiating the appropriate movements of thumb and finger. But the middle portion of the series has " nothing to do with the brain what- ever ... it is not of a cerebral character at all, though at both ends it is in connexion with cere- bral phenomena." The intervening mental events form an " intra-psychical series." This is the business, not of the brain but of the psychoid which uses the brain. The psychoid here invoked is entelechy raised to a higher power. It is the essential agent concerned in action ; and action is that which is determined by past experience. It is that which has a historical basis. But what is the evidence for an intra-psychical series, independent of any physiological series ? For this we may profitably turn to Mr. McDougall's FINALISM AND MECHANISM 273 recent book on " Body and Mind " — a work of great ability in which are skilfully marshalled the argu- ments for a doctrine of animism. It is not easy to grasp firmly the key to the whole position set forth in a portly volume — I believe, however, that this key bears the label " Meaning." 1 We see an object from a dozen points of view, and yet we call it the same object. What, then, is the same ? Not the presentations, for they may be all different, but the meaning. And the appropriate response is determined not by this or that constel- lation of stimuli, but by the meaning they suggest to the mind. The same idea may be expressed in English, French or German. The assemblage of physical marks on paper, the images on the retina, the physiological impulses coursing along the optic nerve, the exact changes in the occipital lobe of the brain are different ; but the meaning for the mind is the same. We may see a sentence printed, or we may hear that sentence spoken. In the one case the visual centre in the occipital lobe is thrown into physiological activity ; in the other case the auditory centre in the temporal lobe. It matters not. The meaning for the mind is the same. A telegram from a friend is received, bearing the words : — " Your son is dead." How different the effect from that produced by the words : — " Our son is dead " ! And yet how slight the difference in visual stimulation ! How minute the difference of cortical change ! The pro- 1 I should myself prefer to reserve the word meaning for secondary meaning in the perceptual sphere, and to apply the word significance to meaning which has conceptual relationships. But to do this here would only confuse the issue. T 274 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE found difference lies in the meaning conveyed to the mind, not in the merely cerebral states. Of course the cerebral states give the'cue to the meaning ; but it is the meaning itself — meaning for the mind — which counts. Or, translating this into psychological terms, as Mr. McDougall puts it, "the sensory content, whether vivid and rich in detail, or dim and scanty, is but a subordinate part, a mere cue to the meaning " (p. 304). But the essential point for Mr. McDougall is that " there exists no unitary neural process correlated with meaning; that in fact meaning has no imme- diate neural correlate which can be regarded as its immediate cause, or its phenomenon, or of which it can be regarded as the psychical aspect " (p. 305). So, too, with conation. " The conditions of conation," he says, " are psychical, and in many cases these psychical conditions are such as have no immediate correlates among the brain processes " (p. 328). Mr. McDougall appears to be convinced that those who provisionally accept a correlation between mind- process and brain-process, are logically committed to an atomistic psychology — to the doctrine that consciousness is compounded of elements (p. 281), and that these elements are ultimately sensations (sensa). Admitting that correlated with these sensa- tions as such, there are cortical events, he claims that these are severally separate and distinct, and can only be united in experience by the relating activity of the soul. After discussing " the psycho-physics of meaning," he says :— " We have seen that even the sensory content of the consciousness of an object has for its physical correlate a [number of discrete FINALISM AND MECHANISM 275 processes in the brain, which in no sense constitute a unitary whole. How much less, then, are we justified in assuming that the unitary psychic whole of sensory-context-plus- meaning has any physical corre- late in the brain" (p. 311). In fine, "the brain- processes could produce no sensations except by acting upon a soul, and their effects are combined in one consciousness only in virtue of their acting upon one soul " (p. 299). Thus Mr. McDougall is confident that the unity of consciousness remains absolutely unintelligible unless we postulate " some ground other than the bodily organization " (p. 366). Such is the animistic thesis. Now Mr. McDougall distinguishes again and again between what I have spoken of as the "eds" and the " ing " of experience, though not in these terms. He speaks, for example, of " those who think of all consciousness and all psychical process, as consisting in what we call the sensory content of consciousness ; for the sensory content does seem like a patchwork." Here we have the juxtaposed and compounded " eds " of experience — those " eds " which Dr. Alexander regards as non-mental. " But," Mr. McDougall continues, " the sensory content and the sensations and images that compose it are abstractions only, achieved by fixing our attention on one aspect of mental process. Sensations are merely incidents in the process of cognition, and no amount of compounding of sensations will result in an act of cognition, a knowing of an object" (p. 170). Here we have the "ing" of experi- ence. Since, however, the " eds " or sensory con- tent have neural correlates, and since they are 276 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE abstractions reached by neglecting the correlative " ing " one may surely urge that this correlative " ing " is also in like manner an abstraction reached by neglecting the correlative " eds." But it is this abstraction that Mr. McDougall hypostatizes as the psychic entity. Furthermore, since mental process is essentially a relating of the "eds " which have brain- correlates, on what valid grounds can Mr. McDougall deny that physiological process is essentially a relating of the brain-correlates? As I conceive physiological process, this is just its essential feature. It is the process through which organization is reached. And why should not the same process which relates and organizes the conscious experience, relate and organize also, within one order, the function- ing of the cortex ? It will perhaps be said that I am ignoring the whole of the argument from meaning. My attitude is rather that of one who accepts all the facts and rejects the conclusion. The facts are familiar to psychologists. There can be no doubt that a number of different but allied presentations may be psychologically connected with what we may term a common meaning-path. Any one of these may then be a condition of the flow of process along that path — any one of the different presentations of what we call the same object for example ; or the spoken word and the written word. But any two presentations may also be differentiated in connexion with different common paths — the words our and your for instance. Furthermore the one presentation, say our, may become allied with one complex set of meaning- paths, the other presentation, say your, with a quite FINALISM AND MECHANISM 277 different set. And so forth. It is all terribly complex. But the psychological complexity remains precisely the same for empirical treatment (and Mr. McDougall claims that his doctrine of animism is based entirely on empirical considerations,) whether there are neural correlates or not. We have not to deal with an argument from complexity. Mr. McDougall does not say that all this is too complex to have physiological correlates. He asserts that the nature of meaning is such that it cannot have a physiological correlate. This simplifies the issue. What is the essential characteristic of meaning which is adduced in justification of this assertion ? Now the word meaning, like so many other psychological terms, is used in both those contexts to which I have so often drawn attention — that of the " eds," and that of the " ing," of experience. Mean- ing may be something meant, or it may be — well just meanzV^. When we say that a nauseous caterpillar has acquired meaning for a bird that has seized its like, the meaning is what will be pre- perceiv^. In this sense of the word all meaning within a scheme of knowledge is something known — something meant. It is that which is in some way related within the scheme. Mr. McDougall does not use the word in this sense. He definitely excludes this reference in a footnote (p. 304), and tells us that he uses the word " to denote the consciousness of meaning, or the meaning part of the consciousness of an idea." Unless I wholly misunderstand him this is surely meaning as a distinguishing feature of mental process, as such ; it is meaning as relating one related item 278 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE with another. It is the meaning that has reference not to the related terms, but to the relating process, as that which renders any relationship possible. But for Mr. McDougall the relating activity is the prerogative of the psychic entity — a prerogative all its own. Just as no juxtaposition of associated items presented to sense could possibly constitute experience, were there no psychical activity which, as associate, unites them in one synthesis ; so no collocation of words on a printed page could be other than presented blotches of printer's ink unless the relating activity of the psychic entity gave them meaning. But, stripped of what some of us regard as the non-scientific concept of the psychic entity, what does this Come to ? It reduces to this : — In the absence of synthetizing process there could be no such thing as a synthetic product. To this we can all, I suppose, subscribe. But why do some of us exclude the psychic entity from any place in what we regard as scientific interpretation ? Because it seems to us to be a concept having reference to the Source of the observed synthesis. Because it is put forward as the Agency whose business is that of relating. We again re-echo the words of Henry Sidgwick : — " Why " —for scientific interpretation — " Why do the relations want a Source ? Why cannot they get on without one ? " It is just because Mr. McDougall, as I think, comprises in one synthesis a doctrine of process and a doctrine of its Source, whereas I regard all reference to Source as outside the pale of scientific inquiry, that our conclusions are bound to be widely divergent. If, then, meaning, in my interpretation, is just FINALISM AND MECHANISM 279 part of process itself, why does it so persistently elude our most patient search for it among the juxtaposed or compounded products of mental process ? Because we seek it where it can never be found. Because we look for it among the " eds " of experience. Because, as relating and cognizing, it can never at the same time assume the guise of the related and cognized. As M. Bergson would say, it wholly eludes the photographic camera of the intellectualist. Only through intuition are we directly aware of the flow of process and of the inner nature of experiencing. That is why conation can never be objectified or "ed" ified. It is felt as mental tendency with directed meaning. Its end, as the object of desire which is meant, may be clearly and sharply conceived ; but as it streams onward towards that end it is just mental living — it is process glowing with brilliant awareness and enjoy- ment. Life eludes intellectual thought, save in symbolic concepts, as it eludes the scalpel of the anatomist and all physiological analysis. Mean- ing and conation are moulded on the very form of life ; on life in its highest development. But why should we deny that the process which is life has physiological relationships as well as psychological relationships all along the line ? After all, that great body of unitary physiological process which is the functional correlate of the structural complexity of the cortex, with its millions of neurones, must have soma significance within the ideal construction of the biologist. What precludes us from regarding its imperial business as that of relating the contributory sub-processes within its provincial centres ? 280 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE The printed letters on this page give rise to discrete and separate stimulations of the retinal cones. The impulses are carried inwards by discrete and separate neuronic fibres. Somewhere in the brain, eventually, let us say, in the occipital lobe of the cortex, there occurs the process of relating these several items hitherto only partially related in lower centres. Is this relating in no sense a physiological process ? And where does this physiological process cease ? Suppose that instead of the discrete and sepa- rate retinal stimulations affecting the visual centre of the occipital lobe, there are allied visual and auditory stimulations affecting the relatively distant centres in the occipital and temporal lobes. Seeing the multiplicity of neuronic connexions throughout the cortex, why should we be told with so much confidence that physiological processes in the brain cannot possibly be the ground of the relating of these sub-processes within its empire ? May not the relating activity, so called, be just as reasonably assigned to the physiological process in the cortex and the organism as a whole as to the correlated psychological process, hypostatized as a psychic entity ? Is not a denial of brain-process as relating and integrating, just because we cannot at present tell in detail just how sub-process here is correlated with sub-process there, tantamount to a denial that any physiological interpretation of physiological facts can be given ? Of course this may be so. But why found so much upon our present physiological ignorance? Why not give physiology just a little longer to try its prentice hand at interpretation ? It seems to me that even now, though we may FINALISM AND MECHANISM 281 still be ignorant of many details, the evidence for physiological solidarity is not inconsiderable. At the one end of the scale of animal life, as Mr. McDougall himself indicates (p. 259), the admirable work of Dr. Jennings on the infusoria leads us to infer that the response of the organism to local stimulation is a " total reaction." And at the other end of the scale I venture to submit that the ^physiological inference from Mr. McDougall's own striking research on vision and retinal rivalry is that the cortex responds by total reaction . If a spot of white light be viewed by an observer having a red glass before his left eye and a blue glass before his right eye the spot may appear to be purple. But it may at one moment appear to be red and at another moment appear to be blue. Either colour may pre-dominate or prevail according to the attentive reinforcement or inhibition of the process related to the stimulation in the one retina or the other. So, too, the microscopist learns to use his two eyes separately : and can at will see either the object in the microscope field or the drawing on which his other eye is focussed. " It is difficult," says Mr. McDougall, " to reconcile the alternation of the two colours in consciousness with the view that the excitations of the two optic nerves become physically compounded in visual centres of the cerebrum ; and it is still more difficult to reconcile with this view the possibility of reinforcing, by voluntary effort, either process to the exclusion of the other " (p. 290). For Mr. McDougall voluntary attention is an activity of the psychic entity ; inhibition a secondary effect thereof. For us such attention is the psychological correlate of 282 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE selective processes within the cortex. Both attention and inhibition imply physiological relationships within the context of the nervous system. But this is by the way. Our present concern is with " physical compounding" in a "common centre." When we look at any illuminated surface with both eyes, it appears no brighter than when it is seen with one eye only. This fact again, according to Mr. McDougall, is incompatible with the common view that the optic nerves transmit their excitations to be summed in a common centre. Other such facts based on his own very careful observations are adduced by Mr. McDougall in support of his conclusion that " the fusion of simultaneous sensory stimuli to a unitary resultant is not a physiological or physical fusion or composition, but a purely psychical fusion ... for it is clear that these psychical fusions of effects of sensory stimuli obey, or take place according to, purely psychical laws that have no physical counter- parts . . . the fusion is a psychical process to which no physical process runs parallel " (p. 293). Now we are here invited to make election between two alternatives ; either (1) purely physical com- pounding in terms of resultants in some hypothetical nerve-centre ; or (2) purely psychical integration in terms of a soul-entity whose integrating power is taken for granted to account for the facts. I am not prepared to accept the limitations of election laid down. I am not prepared to agree that if a process is not interpretable in terms of so-called mechanical summation, then we must interpret it in terms of a psychic entity. I have already made confession of my faith that if by vitalism is meant no more than that FINALISM AND MECHANISM 283 there are, in physiological phenomena, organic relationships and modes of synthesis which differ from those in a physico-chemical system, as such, then I am a vitalist. But I may be a vitalist in this sense, without subscribing to the doctrine of animism. Let us, however, scan a little more narrowly inorganic analogies, freely admitting that they are not very close. In the solar system regarded as a gravitative field, there are reciprocal relationships which are the ground of observed attractions. Where is the specific centre in which this ground has its seat ? Is it in the sun ? Then what about perturbations ? Does it not pervade the whole system ? Have we not to take into consideration the total configuration ? Or take physical phenomena which suggest closer, but still distant, analogies. Two coils in which electrical processes occur, reciprocally influence each other. Is it necessary that there should be a third instrumental centre in which the reciprocal influence shall be collected and compounded ? Does not the total field of reciprocal influence suffice ? These are admittedly distant analogies ; perhaps it will be said that they are far-fetched. I submit, however, that they suggest that we should not seek in the physiology of the nervous system for an indepen- dent centre of summation, but should lay stress upon total reaction — should emphasize the whole field of reciprocal influence within the entire cerebral context. Am I false to the scientific flag, if I urge that we are still novices in the interpretation of the integrative processes within the cortex, and if I claim that we ought not to found too much on our present 284 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE ignorance ? No doubt the exact nature of the rein- forcing and inhibiting influence of one cortical sub- process on another or others requires further elucida- tion. Still some of the facts of inhibition of a purely physiological type, say in the spinal cord, are now familiar. A sample of them has been given in our third chapter. Now seeing that it is the normal business of the two eyes to function as one binocular organ, may not the physiological process of one retina be brought into physiological relation with that of the other retina, each normally inhibiting the redundant part of the other, so as to preclude the visual confusion which must arise if there were variable summation of brightness in the course of their joint action ? Much more investigation is needed. I am well aware that this is of the nature of a surmise. But can it be asserted that such reciprocal inhibition is physiologically impossible, or even that it is wholly unsupported by physiological analogies? It seems to me that this is the kind of thing that goes on throughout the whole business of the integrative action of the nervous system. And if some such reciprocal inhibition of cortical sub- processes due to the stimulation of the two retinas has been established through natural selection, I see no reason why emphatic blue in the one, supported by psycho-physiological meaning, should not partially or wholly inhibit the sub-processes normally due to the stimulation of the other retina. The whole matter is difficult to interpret. The question is whether any physiological interpretation, correlated with the psychological interpretation, on some such lines as these or better physiological lines is a sheer FINALISM AND MECHANISM 285 impossibility. For that is Mr. McDougall's contention. It is just because the cortex is one system with a unitary integrative process that the principle of total reaction seems to me to be of the highest physiological importance. The ground of physiological integration correlative with that of psychological integration is to be sought, I conceive, not in some hypothetical summation centre, but in cortical process as a whole. In no cortical centre does physiological change occur without in some measure affecting the total con- stellation of cerebral changes which in their entirety constitute cortical process. Until such a unitary interpretation is shown to be physiologically unsound in principle, I submit that it should be given further trial before we have recourse to a psychical entity independent of physiological correlates. But the trouble is that if one brings forward biological and physiological evidence of such total reaction ; if one adduces instances of sub-cortical inhibition ; if one urges in opposition to extreme vitalistic or animistic interpretation that embryological development proceeds towards an end which we can foresee ; if one lays stress on the fact that the same organic end is often reached by diverse means ; if one turns for illustration to biological evolution ; one is met by the assertion (and I regard it as nothing more than a bare assertion) that all this is evidence of the activity of a teleological psychic entity. One is told that "all the wonderful stability and complexity combined with gradual change throughout the ages ... is in reality an attribute of an enduring psychic existence of which the lives of individual organisms are but successive manifestations" (p. 377). The 286 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE same assemblage of facts which I regard as evidence of the instrinsic nature of the organism as a differen- tiated part of one natural order, is adduced by Mr. McDougall as evidence of the extrinsic inter-action of an animistic principle nowise " mechanistic " but essentially finalistic. So there the matter must rest. One can only say : Utrum horttm mavis accipe. We have come back into touch with the problems of mechanism and finalism ; for the activity of the psychic entity is essentially teleological. In three chapters of his work Mr. McDougall urges the inadequacy of mechanism for the interpretation of biological phenomena — in my judgment with complete success, since the term mechanism is restricted with- in the limits of physico-chemical processes. If the concept of mechanism be thus defined, then I can fully agree with Mr. McDougall and other vitalists that unquestionably a mechanistic interpretation of organic phenomena is inadequate. But it seems to me that there is a great leap from this sound basis to the conception of the soul as an independent psychical entity controlling phenomena — unless it be the leap from the natural ground of phenomena to their Source. In that case the whole problem has to be discussed on a different platform. Here I endeavour to keep on what I conceive to be the plane of scientific interpretation. And just as I hold that the scientific explanation of organic phenomena in terms of physics and chemistry, and in these terms only, is wholly inadequate ; so do I regard the explanation of these phenomena in terms of finalism as wholly speculative — especially as Mr. McDougall himself says that " we have to confess that we cannot FINALISM AND MECHANISM 287 form any conception of the way in which this teleological guidance of morphogenesis is affected " (p. 244) ; and Dr. Driesch tells us that " we are by no means able to understand " it " even in the slightest degree" (op. cit, ii. p. 143). If we could only consent to restrict the term finalism to the interpreta- tion of psychological phenomena in which there is inferential evidence that some pre-perception of end is present, then for scientific interpretation the question would be : — What is the nature and value of such evidence in the case of morphogenesis ? Here, of course, there is plenty of room for difference of opinion. But the issue would be clear and nowise ambiguous. As things are at present, an alternative seems to be presented in this form : there must be either mechanism or finalism ; in organic phenomena physical and chemical mechanism is insufficient for interpretation ; therefore these phenomena must be finalistic. But may there not be a great array of natural phenomena which are neither mechanistic, in the physico-chemical sense, nor finalistic in the sense of involving conscious pre-perception ? That, however, does not satisfy Mr. McDougall. He extends downward the teleological conception and teaches that " not only conscious thinking, but also morphogenesis, heredity and evolution are psycho-physical processes. All alike are conditioned and governed by psychical dispositions that have been built up in the experience of the race " (p. 379). Here the conscious relationship (however we interpret it) is co-extensive with life. As we have already seen, M. Bergson, on the one hand, and Professor Titchener, on the other hand, have given expression 288 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE to similar opinions. Paulsen and his school go further. In their doctrine, all modes of natural process involve relationships which, if not conscious, are at any rate of the conscious order. If this be so, "then we may assume that just as a system of impulses with corresponding feelings runs parallel with the vital processes in animal bodies, a similar but less highly developed inner life corresponds to plant life ; and furthermore that something akin to this appears in the spontaneous movement of inorganic bodies, in chemical and crystalline processes, in processes of attraction and repulsion." * One may here ask whether the suggested consciousness — or, at any rate, that which is of the conscious order — comprises anything analogous to pre-perception. I urged at the beginning of the fourth chapter, that the scientific evidence for consciousness is closely connected with the evidence for pre-perception, and that, where we may reasonably infer the guidance of behaviour by pre-perception, we may fairly assume conscious perception as its natural precursor. What evidence is there of pre- perception in chemical and crystalline processes, in processes of attraction and repulsion? It may be said that inorganic processes lead up to ends which we can in some measure foresee, and that the Source of these processes must therefore have some teleological pre-perception of the end to which nature is passing on in the course of evolution. That, however, I submit, is not the scientific question. The scientific question is whether in, let us say, the 1 Paulsen, "Introduction to Philosophy," English translation by Frank Thilly (1907), p. 120. FINALISM AND MECHANISM 289 crystalline process itself, there is a pre-perception of what is just coming based on !some prior perception of what on a previous occasion has come. I do not think that we have any such evidence as science must demand, that this is the case. But this is by the way. Let us follow the course of the argument. Paulsen leads up to his panpsychic doctrine through psychological considerations. I may perhaps be allowed to bring the question into line with my own method of treatment and to put the matter briefly thus : — If experience be a process, wherein lies the essential feature of the process ? In experiencing, or in the experienced ? In a sense we may reply : In both, since all that is experienced involves the correla- tive actual or possible experiencing. Now, psychol- ogists tend to become members of one or other of two great schools. The adherents of the one school emphasize the " eds " of experience and are associa- tionists and intellectualists ; those of the other school emphasize the " ing " of experience and are, as the phrase goes, voluntaristic. They lay stress on im- pulse, and will, and conative tendency; they lay stress on the consciousness of process in progress. And this experiencing is, and is felt as, a unitary process in contradistinction to the manifold of " eds," relatively discrete, juxtaposed, or compounded. I hold that the voluntaristic school emphasize a fact of the utmost importance — the fact that we intuitively enjoy experiencing as such ; that we are directly aware of the process and flow of the mental life. Paulsen was a voluntarist. And he made this the basis of his panpsychism. He urges that those who lay stress only on what is presented, or conceived or u 290 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE otherwise knowledged (if I may be allowed the word) " will always find it impossible to conceive plants as psychical beings, or to consider the movements of inorganic beings to be the signs of psychical processes." What does this imply ? It implies that all " processing " is of the same order, and always and everywhere of the conscious order — whether it be gravitating, or crystallizing, or organizing, or ex- periencing as we human folk experience. It involves the assumption that the constitutive ground of the natural order is throughout of such a character as to involve conscious, or quasi-conscious relationships. Well, it may be so ! Who can tell ? Most of us have been tempted to indulge in such speculations. 1 But if we come to regard such a doctrine as somewhat too speculative within the bounds of a philosophy founded on science ; if we cannot fully subscribe to panpsychism ; if we feel that it is safer at present to assume that only some natural processes involve such conscious relationships as those of which we are our- selves aware ; nay, more, if we go further and regard, provisionally, profiting by experience as the best criterion we have of consciousness as an effective relationship, and believe that, in the higher vertebrates, this is correlated with physiological relationships in the cortex of the brain ; may we not incorporate at any rate this result of such considerations as Paulsen voiced : — that just as experiencing is a unitary process, so is living a wider unitary process, and so too is the whole of nature a yet more basal unitary process ? If we speak of the conscious relationship as a property of certain organisms under certain 1 Cf., my " Animal Life and Intelligence " (1890), p. 467. FINALISM AND MECHANISM 291 conditions, we must always remember that it is a consciousness not only of the related, but also of the process of relating. And if, as I have urged, instinctive experience implies the existence of a synthetic group of experienced items ; it involves also the correla- tive synthetic process of experiencing ; if it involves a primary form of conscious relationship to a given situation as experienced, it involves also a primary intuition (in M. Bergson's sense of the word) of the process of relating ; and if in my interpretation it is based on organic foundations, those foundations are grounded in the constitution of the organism as a visible expression of that unitary process which we name living, as living itself is only a differentiation of that vast unitary process of which the contemplated order of nature is the product. Further than this in a book the aim of which, however inadequately attained, is to deal with scientific problems in a scientific spirit, I am not prepared to go. Of the Source of phenomena it is not my province to treat. Science deals with process and its products as somehow existent. I have, throughout spoken of existent process as the ground of observed and observable phenomena. But of only one form or mode of process have we any direct conscious awareness — the process which we enjoy as we live. What, then, is the Source of process ? That is a question for metaphysics, not for science. Can we identify ground and Source ? Can we say that, in the enjoyment of process which is our conscious life, we are in merging unity with the Source of the universe? This metaphysical route leads up to the doctrine of immanence. Or shall we say that process 292 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE as given, implies a Source as Giver? This route leads up to the doctrine of transcendence. But once more I urge that the man of science should leave these questions to be discussed by meta- physicians. Once more I urge that the more clearly we distinguish the scientific problems from the metaphysical problems the better it will be both for science and for metaphysics. INDEX A priori character, common to experiencing and the experi- enced, 190 Admiration, a binary emotional compound, 124 Esthetic appreciation, a form of enjoyment, 201 Alexander, Dr. S., his use of the word enjoyment, 123, 188 ; and contemplation, 134, 188, 201 ; his contention that all sensa and cognita are non-mental, 135 Allied reflexes, 68 Alternating reflexes, 68 Ammophila, instincts of, con- sidered, 223, 226, 230 "Animal Behaviour," references to, 5, 23, 33 Animism, Mr. W. McDougall's advocacy of, III, 275 ff. Annulling of consciousness, M. Bergson's doctrine of, 207 Antagonistic reflexes, 68 Arthropods, instinctive knowledge characteristic of, 216 Associating process and associated products, 52 Bergson, M. Henri on swimming and walking, 17 the unitary nature of experi- encing, 52 the intellectual instincts, 98 interpenetration as con- trasted with juxtaposition, 124, 199 order of inert and order of vital, 159, 182, 210, 233 Bergson, M. Henri on the new and unique in ex- perience, 172 organic routine as due to the Agency of Life, 172 spontaneity of Life, 1 76 science and metaphysics, 1 78 his criticism of Darwin, 179 insistence on importance of process and change, 180 argument that all process is vital, 181 on selective processes, 191 his doctrine of pure memory, 196, 209, 212 pure perception referred to, 197 on the insertion of Life, 198 objects and processes of experience, 200 the capital error of associa- tionism, 200 his doctrine of instinct, 205 ff. on consciousness as annulled, 207 the brain as a switchboard, 210 the brain as a reservoir of indeterminism, 211 kinds of unconsciousness, 211 Life and Spirit as Reality, 212 his position with regard to the relation of pure memory to heredity, 213 on relation of organization to instinct, 214 293 294 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Bergson, M. Henri on the choice presented to Life, 216 the divergence in arthropods and vertebrates, 216 the inherent inability of the intellect to comprehend life, 220 some distinctions between instinct and intelligence, 220 the relation of seeking to finding, 222 the instinct of ammophila, 223, 226, 230 science and philosophy, 225 instinct as sympathy, 226 intuition, 227 the kernel of his doctrine of instinct, 230 his hypostatization of results of analysis, 234 view of the relation of the intellect to mechanical interpretation, 261 Berkeley, Bishop, his use of word " notion," 203 {footnote) Bradley, Mr. F. H., on sentient experience, 126 Brain as switchboard, M. Berg- son's doctrine of, 210 Calkins, Miss M. W., on idealist position, 128 Cat, decerebrate, 77 Carr, Mr, Wildon, referred to, 219; on intuition, 227; on psycho-physiological parallel- ism, 268, 272 Cause, use of term avoided as far as possible, 140 Chemistry and mechanics, 255 Cinematographical snap-shots, 129, 181, 225, 229, 234 Clifford, W. K., on organism as historic being, 160 Common path, physiological principle of, 64 Common meaning path, 276 Conation, equivalent to mental process, 136 Conative aspect of instinct, 41, 43, S3 Concatenation, unity of, 145, 261 Conceptual maps or thought- models, 146 Conditions of world process as a whole : there are none, 141 Conditioning and conditioned, same process as, according to point of view, 141 Congenital dispositions of the cortex, 104 Conscious relationship, a link in a correlated chain, 92 Conscious relationships of the natural order really count, 262 Consciousness, criterion of, 90 ; as annulled, 207 Constellation of reflexes, 69, 73 ; of cerebral changes, 285 Constitution and disposition, 117 Contemplation and enjoyment, 188, 201 Context and meaning, 194 Correlation, use of term, 140 j universal, 261 Cortex and consciousness, 93 Creative departure from routine, 171, 176, 246 Crystal, formation of; conditions and ground, 143 ; prediction of nature of before first formed, 149 Darwin, Charles, criticised by M. Bergson, 179 Decerebrate animal, 74 frog, 74 pigeon, 75 dog, 76 cat, 77 Descartes, his use of the word eminenter^ 138 Disposition and constitution, 117 Divergent paths to insects and to man, M. Bergson's doctrine of, 218 Diving and swimming, 6 Dog, scratching reflex of, 60 INDEX 295 Dog, extensor thrust of, 64 , decerebrate, 76 —■ — , Dr. Pagano's, experiments on, 78 , Dr. Pawlow's observations on association in, 84 Driesch, Dr. Hans brief definition of instinct, 22 doctrine of entelechy, 154 ff., 244 j as applied to Tubularia, 257 on intra-psychical series, 272 on our conception of teleological guidance, 287 Emotional aspect of instinct, 13, 112 Empathic tendency, 237 End, same, reached by different means, 247 Enjoyment as equivalent to ex- periencing, 123, 134, 199 ; con- trasted with contemplation, 188, 201 Entelechy, doctrine of, 154; as ground, 156, 244 ; as Source, 157, 244, in Tubularia, 257 Epiphenomenal doctrine, 262 Epistemology, part of the meta- physics of Source, 165 Evolution contains non-routine factors, 167 Existence of world for experience postulated, 127 Expectation and memory, 195 Experiencing and the experienced, 51 ; in the discussion of emotion, 123; as a double reference, 126, 132; polarized in privileged centres, 134, 192 ; ambiguity to be avoided, 198 ; distinction as drawn by M. Bergson, 200 ; can we contem- plate experiencing ? 201 ; in- stinctive experience involves both, 231 ; with differing em- phasis, 232 ; in relation to meaning, 279; in relation to panpsychism, 289 Eye of vertebrate and pecten, 179 Faculty interpretation of in- stinct, danger of falling into, 118 Fatigue, physiological, 70 Finalism, discussion of, 242 Finding and seeking in M. Berg- son's doctrine of instinct and intelligence, 222 Flight of swallow, 54 Foster, Sir Michael on decerebrate frog, 74 decerebrate pigeon, 75 difference between automatic and voluntary act, 83 Frog, decerebrate, 74 Goltz, Dr. F. on decerebrate dog, 76 Green, T. H. on Source of phenomena, 137 impossibility of a natural history of self-conscious- ness, 164 Groos, Dr. Karl on the value of play, 25 the genesis of the instinctive play response, 87 Ground, use of term, 142 " Habit and Instinct," references to, 4. 23, 55 Hamilton, Sir Wm. on instinctive belief, judgment, and cognition, 97 Hereditary dispositions of cortex, 87 Hereditary transmission, 174 History, and science, 165 ; does it repeat itself? 166, 244 Hume, David, modified quotation from, 138 j on custom as the ground of routine, 166 Huxley, T. H., on human instincts in the intellectual sphere, 102 Ideal construction of mechanics, 253 Idealist and realist, 127 Impetus of Life, 177 Impulse, nature of, 1 18 Impulsive, force of instinct, 1 16, 120 296 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Individual and individuality, 172 Innate mental tendencies, 87 ; distinguished from instincts, 103 ; their range in animal life, 121 Innate capacity and instinct, 96, 103 Instinct and instinctive, defini- tions, 5 ; Dr. Driesch's, 22 ; Dr. Myers', 22, 28, 238 ; Dr. Stout's, 25 ; Mr. McDougalPs, 24, 30 j Dr. Wundt's, 31; Father Wasmann's 3 1 ; Sydney Smith's, 204 ; M. Bergson's, 205 fl. Integration in nervous system, 83, 284 Intelligence, involved in first per- formance of instinctive act, 34 ; definition of, 50 j as process and product, 51 ; as distin- guished from instinct by M. Bergson, 220; and by Dr. Myers, 238 Interaction of mind and body, 263 Internuncial path, 65 Intuition, as described by M, Bergson, 182, 227 James, Wm., on nemo dat quod non habet) 138; on problem of the one and the many, 144 ; on the discontinuity theory, 144; does consciousness exist ? 190 James-Lange, theory of emotion alluded to, 113 Jennings, Dr., observations on infusoria, 91 ; on total reaction, 281 Kirchoff, his definition of me- chanics, 251 Knowledge, instinct as a kind of, 204, 215 Lankester, Sir Ray, on instinct and educability, 94 Life cannot be comprehended by the intellect according to M. Bergson, 220 Life history and routine, 169, 244 Living matter, origin of, 160 Lindsay, Mr. A. D., quotations from his work on " The Philo- sophy of Bergson," 228, 229. Longitudinal section in experi- ence, 189, 193 ; relationships, 195 McDougall, Mr. W. criticises, Dr. Driesch's defini- tion of instinct, 24 on the use of the term instinct, . 30,47 instincts as perceptual systems, 38 definition of intelligence, 50 innately organized instinc- tive inlets, 85 innate re-presentation, e.g. in nest-building, 106 his doctrine of instinct and emotion considered, 108 ff. on intelligence of solitary wasps, 219 his use of term mechanical, 261 on the interaction of mind and body, 264 the doctrine of concomitance, 264, 265 his discussion of meaning, 273 ff. no neural process correlated with meaning, 274 ; or with conation, 274 his animistic interpretation, 275 on retinal rivalry, 281 physical compounding in a common centre, 282 our conception of teleological guidance, 287 Man, principal instincts of, in Mr. McDougall's treatment, 1 1 1 Meaning, primary and secondary, 8, 9 j primary, 193 j secondary, 194; and context, 194; Mr. McDougall's discussion of, 273 ff. Mechanical ideal construction, 251 ff. Mechanism and physiology, 256 INDEX 297 Mechanistic interpretation, 250 ; place of in scientific scheme, 259 Memory, 195 ; pure, M. Bergson's doctrine of, 196, 209, 212 ; not a function of the brain, 211 Modifications and variations, 175 Monistic unity of concatenation, 145 Moorhen, diving, 4, 193 ; swim- ming, 15 J primary experience of, 19 Myers, Dr. C. S. on the beginning of experience, 16, 18, 130 criticises, Dr. Driesch's brief definition of instinct, 22 on relation of instinct to intelli- gence, 28, 238 ff. instinct and reflex action, 56 finalism and mechanism, 240, 241, 260 Natural history of experience, impossible according to T. H. Green, 163 Natural order as contextual net- work of interrelated processes, 186 Noci-ceptive nerves and nocuous stimuli, 72 Non-mental, use of term by Dr. Alexander, 135, 139 Notion, Bishop Berkeley's use of term, 203 {footnote) Nunn, Dr. T. Percy, on the tend- ency to hypostatize energy, 183 (footnote) ; on mechanical inter- pretation, 252 ; help received from acknowledged, 253 Object as meaningful, proleptic use of the word in speaking of instinct, 42 Order of nature as one, 133, 188, 263, 269, 291 Orders of inert and vital wholly separate for M. Bergson, 159, 182, 210, 233 Organization, relation of, to in- stinct, 214 PAGANO, Dr., experiments on newly-born puppies, 78, 109 Panpsychism, doctrine of, 288 ff. Pallial eye of pecten, 179 Parallelism , psycho-physiological, 265 Paths, private, internuncial and common, 65 Paulsen, doctrine of panpsychism, 288 ff. Pawlow, Dr., experiments on association in dog, 84 Pearson, Professor Karl, on routine as grounded in percep- tive faculty, 166 ; interpretation of mechanics, 252 Peckham, Dr. and Mrs., defini- tion of instinct, 88 Perceptual country and concep- tual maps, 146 Philosophy, relation of, to science according to M. Bergson, 225 Physiological interpretation of re- flex action and behaviour, 57 Physiology and mechanism, 256 Physiology and psychology, 266 Pigeon, decerebrate, 75 Postures, reflex, 71 Prediction, limits of, 149 Pre-perception, 37, 55 ; Mr. McDougalPs interpretation of, 38; Dr. Stout's treatment of, 39; in daily life, 44; and cortical spread, 48 ; has domi- nant utility in early stages of experience, 195 5 some form of necessary for finalistic con- duct, 249; and panpsychism, 288 Prepotency of noxious stimuli, 67, 72 Present, specious, 195 Primary instincts of man, 1 1 1 Private path, 65 Process and product, relations of, 143 Process, as synthetic, 129; the nature of psycho-physiological, 270, 276 Products as frozen bits of world- process, 143 298 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE Prospective reference, psychology of, 43 . Prospective value, 257 Protoplasm, could properties of, have been predicted prior to its evolution? 151 Psychic entity, 278, 280, 281, 285 Pugnacity, 118 Pure perception, M. Bergson's doctrine of, referred to, 190, 197 Realist and idealist, 127 Reality as Source, 183 Reflex action and instinct, 54, 74 Reflex arc, 57 Refractory state of diminished excitability, 68 Reid, Dr. Archdall, on the volun- tary nature of instinct, 47 j on acquired characters, 94, 96 Reid, Thomas, on instinctive be- lief, 97 Relationship, conscious, nature of, 184 ; terms of, 185 Remembering and the remem- bered, 196 Repetitive routine, criterion of, 169 Reverence, different ways of treat- ing such an emotion, 122, 124 Revival, factors of, 194 Romanes, G. J., on lapse of con- sciousness in automatism, 210 Routine as basis of science, 166 ; as basis of finalism in interpre- tation of the organic, 243 Russell, Mr. Bertrand, on mathe- matical treatment of mechanics, 252 Scale of potency in reflexes, 72 Schrader, Dr. Max on decerebrate frog, 75 decerebrate pigeon, 75 Self-assertion and subjection, 115 Serviceable aspect of instinctive behaviour, 22 Sherrington, Dr. C. S., on the integrative action of the nervous system, 57 ff. Sidgwick, Henry, criticises Green's doctrine of Source, 137, 278 Smith, Adam, on instinctive belief, 97 Smith, Sydney, on instinct as a kind of knowledge, 204 Seeking and finding in M. Berg- son's doctrine of intelligence and instinct, 222 Source, metaphysics of, to be ex- cluded from science, 3, 136, 138, 140, 157, 178, 180, 183, 186, 278, 291 Specious present, 195 Spinal animal, Dr. C. S. Sher- rington's researches on, 61 ff. Spinal irradiation and induction, 69 Spontaneous reflex, 70 Spontaneity of Life, 176 Stout, Dr. G. F. on primary and secondary meaning, 8, 9 definition of instinct, 25 criticises the author's views, 34-53 on the anticipation involved in instinct, 39, 106 the conative aspect of in- stinct, 41 his term quasi-conative, 105 Subject, the word used in logical sense, 131 Swimming and diving, 6 Sympathy, M. Bergson's use of the term, 224 ff. Synthetic process as only regroup- ing, 168 Teleological factor, in, 249 Terms of conscious relationship, 185 Thomson, Professor J. Arthur, is there one science of nature? 158; on organisms as historic beings, 160 Thomson, Sir J. J., on scientific policies and creeds, 136 Thorndike, Dr., on definition of instinct, 99 INDEX 299 Time-relationships, 189 (footnote) Titchener, Dr. E. B., on first movements of first organisms as conscious, 89; on definition of instinct, 100 Total reaction, 281, 283, 285 Transmission, hereditary, 177 Transverse section of experience, 188 Transverse relationships, 190 , sequence of, as in- stinctive experience, 193 Tyndall, John, Belfast address, Unconsciousness, kinds of, in M. Bergson's doctrine, 211 Unforeseeable variations, attitude towards, 176 Unity of experiencing, 124 Universal finalism, 250 Universals, problem of, 146 Variations, prediction of, 175, 245 , unforeseeable, 176, 246 Vertebrate intelligence contrasted with arthropod instinct, 216 Vital chemistry, 153 Vital force, 152 Vitalism, 152, 244, 283 Vitalistic tendency in thought, 3 Voluntaristic school of psychology, 289 Ward, Dr. James on experience as owned by some one, 126 Wasmann, Father on the definition of instinctive behaviour, 31 "Wundt, Dr. Wilhelm on the definition of instinctive behaviour, 31 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. V* ^ «* f '/ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce? Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 PreservationTechnologid A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATlM 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 I (724)779-2111 1* .v, * x ^. > V > *b 0^'