232 C. JUDSON HERRICK 



of the process that it cannot be dissociated. Each step is an 

 integral part of a unitary adaptive process to serve a definite 

 biological end, and the animal 's motor acts are not satisfying to 

 him unless they follow this predetermined sequence, though he 

 himself may have no clear idea of the aim. 



These reactions are typically organic circuits. The cycle in 

 some of the instincts of the deferred type comprises the whole 

 life of the individual. In other cases the cycle is annual (as in 

 bird migrations, etc.), diurnal or linked up with definite physio- 

 logical rhythms (e.g., the nidification of birds as described by 

 F. H. Herrick 3 ). In still other cases there is no apparent simple 

 rhythm. But always the process is not a simple sequence of 

 distinct elements, but rather a series of reactions, each of which 

 is shaped by the interactions of external stimuli and a preformed 

 or innate structure which has been adapted by biological factors 

 to modify the response to the stimuli in accordance with a pur- 

 pose, which from the standpoint of an outside observer is teleo- 

 logical, i.e., adapted to conserve the welfare of the species. 



Every intelligently directed response to external stimulation 

 involves a large measure of highly complex unconscious cerebra- 

 tion of this type ; and it is possible to describe with considerable 

 precision the mechanisms of the subcortical activities involved 

 in many of those organic circuits which are commonly regarded 

 as typically cortical. 



Much of that which goes in psychological literature under 

 such contradictory terms as unconscious mind or subconscious 

 mind is in reality the subcortical elaboration of types of action 

 system which ordinarily do not involve the cortex at all but 

 which upon occasion may be linked up with cortical associa- 

 tional processes and then come into consciousness in such a 

 form as to suggest to introspection that they are all of a piece 

 with the conscious process with which they are related. In 

 fact, within the cortex itself there are doubtless many rou- 

 tine activities which do not ordinarily come into consciousness, 

 particularly of the sort known as acquired automatisms or 

 lapsed intelligence ; and these, though of quite different origin 

 from the innate instinctive systems, cannot easily be distin- 

 guished from them in the form in which they are experienced 

 in the adult. 



3 Science, N. S., vol. 25, 1907, pp. 725-726 and 781-782. 



