236 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



led to the development of this vague sense of uneasiness 

 or discomfort, which had the effect of strongly reinforcing 

 and stimulating the efforts made for the removal of the 

 strain. The successful effort, again, was accompanied by 

 a sense of ease or comfort which must have been a real 

 helpful stimulus and have had considerable survival value 

 for the organisms that developed it. We see thus that the 

 tension or strain came to be accompanied by vague feelings 

 which radically transformed it and gave a different meaning 

 and value to it. The feeling became a potent force working 

 behind and inside the organic system for the removal 

 of the tension or strain. This feeling or sense of comfort 

 or discomfort must originally have been of the vaguest 

 possible character, but at any rate it was a beginning, and 

 it performed a useful function in reinforcing the effort or 

 rather tendency for the removal of the strain or uneasiness. 

 It marked an enormous step in advance, and is probably 

 still exemplified in the " tropisms " which characterise 

 the movements of the most primitive plant and animal 

 organisms. 



In the second place, the tension became intensified in 

 another direction. Instead of remaining merely a passive 

 result of the state of disequilibrium, it became an active 

 state or relation between the structure or body affected 

 and the cause of the affection or discomfort. The passive 

 tension became an active ad-tension or attention, and in 

 this transformation we reach the most primitive, most 

 characteristic function of Mind. The living organism no 

 longer suffers passively, blindly and in darkness, so to speak. 

 The worm turns upon the source of its torture. The 

 organism begins to attend to the source of its discomfort; 

 and this attention, at first vague and diffused, gradually 

 develops, until it becomes an awareness or low form of 

 awareness of its object, and consciousness in its most 

 elementary form thus appears. In its most primitive 

 form it showed itself at quite an early stage in animal 

 development, probably not long after sensori-motor 

 mechanisms had been evolved. 



