INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSIONS 141 



historical basis of reacting, if there were not also primary 

 faculties in them ? 



We are here faced by a very fundamental problem of 

 the theory of knowledge in its biological form. "How is 

 experience possible ? >: was the epistemological question of 

 Kant ; " how are the secondary faculties of pyschoids 

 possible ? ' is the biological question. Here again, of 

 course, analogies only are possible. 1 We may say that in 

 order to judge or to know, the general type of judging 

 and of knowing must be given. And the same holds about 

 the analogy to volition : what is willed rests on experience, 

 but willing itself is primary. And, moreover, the effect 

 that is " consciously ' willed in the " secondary " form, 

 depending upon " experience," is always a certain state of 

 the external world. This is accomplished by no means im- 

 mediately ; it is accomplished by muscular motions, and 

 these, on their part, depend on specific innervations. Now of 

 " innervations " the unscientific mind knows nothing at all ; 

 and it by no means " wills ' innervations. But they are 

 performed (in an " unconscious " way), and this fact alone, 

 it seems to me, proves beyond all doubt that primary 



1 I should like to take this opportunity of pointing out that Jennings is 

 mistaken if he thinks that in the case of the righting reactions of the starfish 

 entelechy would in any case not be "final " and "ultimate," since these re- 

 actions in their specificity rest upon the "past history" of the individual. 

 He does not clearly enough separate here the ' ' primary " and the " secondary " 

 characteristics of a special entelechian factor, or rather "psychoid." If the 

 righting reactions were instinctive, then only primary "knowing and willing " 

 would come into account ; now Jennings has proved that they rest upon 

 "experience," and therefore he believes that entelechy is not an elementality. 

 But the possibility of being influenced by the " past history " implies the 

 existence of a new and final natural agent. " Secondary knowing and 

 willing" (i.e. "experience" or the specific "historical basis") implies 

 " primary knowing and willing" (i.e. the iwssiMlity of acquiring a specific 

 "historical basis"). 



