V INTRODUCTION. 



of the operations of my own individual mind, and the 

 activities which in my own organism they prompt, I 

 proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities 

 of other organisms what are the mental operations that 

 underlie them. 



Now, in this mode of procedure what is the kind of 

 activities which may be regarded as indicative of mind ? 

 I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the 

 blowing of the wind. Why? First, because the objects 

 are too remote in kind from my own organism to admit of 

 my drawing any reasonable analogy between them and 

 it ; and, secondly, because the activities which they pre- 

 sent are of invariably the same kind under the same cir- 

 cumstances ; they afford no evidence of feeling or purpose. 

 In other words, two conditions require to be satisfied before 

 we even begin to imagine that observable activities are 

 indicative of mind : first, the activities must be displayed 

 by a living organism ; and secondly, they must be of a 

 kind to suggest the presence of two elements which we 

 recognise as the distinctive characteristics of mind as 

 such consciousness and choice. 



So far, then, the case seems simple enough. Wherever 

 we see a living organism apparently exerting intentional 

 choice, we might infer that it is conscious choice, and 

 therefore that the organism has a mind. But further 

 reflection shows us that this is just what we cannot do ; 

 for although it is true that there is no mind without the 

 power of conscious choice, it is not true that all apparent 

 choice is due to mind. In our own organisms, for in- 

 stance, we find a great many adaptive movements per- 

 formed without choice or even consciousness coming into 

 play at all such, for instance, as in the beating of our 

 hearts. And not only so, but physiological experiments 

 and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in 

 other organisms the mechanism of the nervous system is 

 sufficient, without the intervention of consciousness, to 

 produce muscular movements of a highly co-ordinate and 

 apparently intentional character. Thus, for instance, if a 

 man has his back broken in such a way as to sever the 

 nervous connection between his brain and lower extremi- 



