708 COMPARATIVE AND GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 



Now, it appears to me that recent researches all point to the 

 fact that the mental processes of animals are mainly I do not 

 say entirely, though I myself still incline to that opinion but 

 at all events mainly, on the perceptual plane. They tend to show 

 that animals, even the monkeys, deal with situations as complex 

 unity-wholes. The method of learning is chiefly dependent on 

 practical behavior which, carried out with varied and persistent 

 often restless activity, leads the animal unsy sterna tically 

 to stumble on new associations between such behavior and the 

 situation within which it arises. But it also appears to me that a 

 very large proportion of human process is predominantly upon 

 the perceptual plane. I say "predominantly" because even this 

 section of human activity is inevitably influenced by the idea- 

 tional section which is superinduced thereon. And there is, I re- 

 peat, no little difficulty in determining its range, as perceptual, just 

 because our psychological language almost necessarily leads us to 

 describe it in ideational terms the terms begotten of comparison, 

 analysis, and synthesis. 



It is through such steps, and such steps alone, that, upon the 

 basis of perceptual experience, systems of knowledge can be built. 

 This is the product of ideational process. It involves an ideal or 

 schematic construction. And when situations are viewed from the 

 standpoint of a system of knowledge their salient features have 

 not only meaning for practical behavior, but also significance in 

 relation to that system. They are apperceived as particular ex- 

 amples which illustrate some general scheme or principle. They 

 are subject to the influence of a new environment. And it is here 

 that psychology comes into touch with normative science. No 

 doubt, normative science, as its name implies, deals with stand- 

 ards of reference in ethics, for example, with standards of 

 "ought." But this is only an implication of the fact that the par- 

 ticular act is viewed in its relation to an ethical scheme of conduct. 

 Impulses arise within the situations as they occur and as they are 

 dealt with in and for themselves. But motives, as the term is used 

 in ethics, imply the relations between these several situations and 

 a system of ideals. Only on the ideational plane do there emerge 

 considerations looming up beyond the situations into a prudential, 

 moral, or other scheme; behavior is thus raised to the level of con- 

 duct; and a situation is developed, not only in accordance with the 

 impulse-value arising therein, but in accordance also, and in greater 

 degree, with the motive-worth for a system. 



One of the characteristics of ideational, as contrasted with per- 

 ceptual reference, is, that, whereas in the latter the salient feature 

 of the situation is always the centre of development, in the former 

 the comparison is with independent centres, or an independent 



