CHAPTER XIX 

 OUTPOSTS OF THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 



(a) GENERAL AND INTRA-C OMMUNAL RECEPTORS 



" By mine eye. I do not know tliat I see, or by mine eai' that I licar, bnt by my 

 eommon sense who jiidgeth of sonnd and eoloiirs." Burtox. 



If an organism is to adapt itself to changes in the environment, 

 there must exist within it some mechanism whereby it is '' made 

 aware " of these changes. It is as if the Cabinet and the various 

 Local Government Boards of a country were shut up in seclusion 

 and had to learn of the progress of the areas governed and of the 

 various happenings abroad by messages sent in by agents from 

 without. These agents could transmit their information by special 

 messenger (hormones, CO^, etc.) or by coded telegram, either to 

 the special body controlling an area (local nerve centres), or a 

 function {e.g. respiratory centre), or to the central governing body 

 (consciousness). It is clear that a nation has to set up machinery 

 to provide itself with two different kinds of intelligence. First 

 it needs to know how its orders are being carried out by the 

 civilian population as well as by the military. The internal or 

 interoceptive intelligence staff is distributed among the factory 

 workers, along lines of transport and in the various effective units 

 of the army. Their duty is to report on the conditions in their 

 sector. Before a shortage of raw material has become so marked 

 as to cause an outcry from, or mayhap, a strike of some part of 

 the population, the outposts of the intelligence staff should have 

 their report " on the wires." The other intelligence staff operates 

 on matters outside the organism. They are exteroceptors. 



1. Threshold. The agents or receptors are specialised organs, so 

 constructed as to have a lower threshold for one particular type of 

 change in the environment than for all other changes. For 

 example, the eye is specially adapted for the reception of waves 

 in ether over a well-defined range of frequencies of quite a low 

 intensity. It can, however, respond to other forms of stimulation, 

 mechanical, chemical and electrical, if their intensity is sufficiently 

 great. That is, a specialised receptor responds readily to one 

 particular form of environmental change, even though that change 



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