ai4 FROM FISH TO PHILOSOPHER 



pated only by the permutation and recombination of 

 recollected past experiences. This is a game that con- 

 sciousness plays— or that plays itself in consciousness— 

 and that can be called 'take and put':— if I take this and 

 put it there, then so-and-so may happen. Man plays this 

 game in its most elaborate form with abstractions, sym- 

 bols, checkers, chessmen, letters, words, logical and 

 mathematical relations, hypotheses; in this sense, namely 

 in the use of abstraction and symbolization, the chim- 

 panzee is a novitiate, the racoon, dog, cat, and rat in 

 diminishing degree show nascent talent, and below the 

 mammals the game in this form seems scarcely to be 

 played at all: to play it requires, first of all, recognition 

 of the fact that the game exists, that one can 'take and 

 put,' plus the capacity to form abstract concepts. But 

 the game of 'take and put' does not basically involve 

 symbols or abstractions— it has its roots in a simple 

 awareness which is charged with plus- and minus- 

 values, and involves at most the simple motor action of 

 going from here to there. The white rat does not reason, 

 but it can solve problems involving 'triangularity' and 

 'circularity' by the trial-and-error method, and can re- 

 member the solution— if the solution is important to its 

 well-being. At an even lower level, the bird can make an 

 accurate two-point landing on a moving limb, because 

 it is important for it to do so; the fish can strike its swdftly 

 moving prey because it is hungry, and can judge dis- 

 tance, direction, and velocity. This is the game of 'take 

 and put/ of going from here to there, in its elementary 

 form. 



The heavily armored, sluggish ostracoderms were cer- 

 tainly aware, in a dim sort of way, of where they were 

 going, and why, as they squirmed over the muddy bot- 

 toms of the Ordovician-Silurian lakes and rivers. Even 

 at this level we can speak of 'voluntary action,* in so far 

 as the word 'voluntary' indicates some ability to choose 

 between conflicting impulses and to assess the conse- 



