316 G. V. HAMILTON 



physiological events and environmental stimulations. The satis- 

 faction of a given hunger may or may not be conducive to the 

 welfare of either the individual or the species — may or may not 

 correspond to a biological need. The total phenomenon with 

 which the behaviorist is concerned in a given case consists of a 

 sequence of events of which the first member is usually, but not 

 always, an external situation. Then come the physiological 

 processes that produce the hunger-impulsion to which the reaction 

 is to be ascribed. The identification of a reactive tendency 

 becomes possible whenever we are able to predict that the opera- 

 tion of a given hunger-impulsion will be directly followed by a 

 series of activities which conform to a known type. 



The existence and nature of a given hunger is, of course, 

 arrived at by inference; but this does not necessarily call for a 

 departure from a purely objective attitude toward the facts. If, 

 as Watson (4) suggests, the behaviorist may use the term " con- 

 sciousness " as it is used by other natural scientists, no insuperable 

 difficulty ought to be encountered in the construction of criteria 

 for the identification of a hunger as a relatively independent 

 dynamic unit. Such criteria would take into account the facts 

 concerning the physiology of the sense-organs to which we 

 already have access ; and would recognize the various possibilities 

 for experiencing specifically different satisfactions by employing 

 different modes of stimulating the sense-organs. For example, 

 when I entered the laboratory yard this morning carrying a 

 pail of loquats, the coyote leaned against the large meshes of 

 the wire fence that confines him and whined until I scratched his 

 head; the monkeys gave their characteristic food-calls until I 

 gave them loquats; and after the male monkeys had eaten this 

 agreeable addition to their breakfast they sought the females and 

 copulated with them. I did not need to raise a question as to 

 the contents of each animal's state of consciousness to assist me 

 in the identification of the coyote's dog-like hunger for a mild 

 irritation to his cutaneous sense-organs, or the monkeys' hunger 

 for the various stimulations that are derived from eating food, 

 etc. The coyote may or may not have had a mental picture of 

 the head-scratching or the monkeys of the loquats that usually 

 appear these days whenever I put my hand into the little tin 

 pail; but I am quite sure that these animals were clamoring in 

 response to the particular hungers that I have come to recognize, 



