RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 709 



scheme, to which many situations may be referred. This may be 

 illustrated by the different attitude of the two types of process 

 to relationships in the surrounding world. For perceptual process 

 these relationships are not disentangled in analysis from the com- 

 plex within which they are imbedded, nor are they synthetically 

 rebuilt into new unity- wholes; but they are none the less contrib- 

 utory, within the complex, to practical behavior. Suppose one 

 is shown into a strange room and deals with the situation in purely 

 perceptual fashion. One assimilates the various impressions in 

 terms of past experience. At any given moment some object 

 say the clock on the mantel-shelf is in the focus of vision. The 

 others are grouped around it in the margin of the visual field 

 the picture above, the fireplace below, the bookcase on one side, 

 the cabinet on the other. These are the spatial relationships within 

 the field for perceptual experience. But in and for the situation 

 as such the centre of reference is always the focus of the field. It 

 is a constantly shifting centre. As the eyes flit from object to 

 object the focal impression changes again and again. And with each 

 change the space-relations of other objects, more dimly seen in the 

 margin of vision, are rearranged. But always for the situation 

 itself, as contrasted with systematic knowledge, the centre of 

 reference is the focus of vision (or other mode of perceptual ex- 

 perience) at the time being. It is an essentially practical centre. 

 It means that so much movement of the eyes or hands or body as 

 a whole, in this or that direction, will bring this or that impression, 

 at present marginal, into the focus. Practically perceptual folk 

 constantly tend to deal with a spatial situation in this way. They 

 picture how they would act in the midst of it. Ask a farmer's lad 

 whereabouts the church is in his native village. He will probably 

 reply that as you leave the Blue Boar public-house (his focal point) 

 you must first turn this way, then that way, and then go straight 

 down the street till you get there. The distinguishing feature is 

 that the spatial relationships which are disentangled in ideational 

 process for the purposes of schematic construction and rebuilt in 

 a conceptual scheme of three dimensions a scheme independent 

 of, but applicable to, particular situations are, for experience 

 on the perceptual plane, parts of a given complex, having mean- 

 ing for practical behavior, but as yet no significance for systematic 

 thought. They are not subject to the influence of an environment 

 of ideational constructions. 



For we are now in a position to extend the conception of con- 

 scious environment. Intelligence, in the perceptual sphere, em- 

 bodying the coalescent representation of concrete situations, plays 

 the part, as I suggested, of environment to the automatic responses. 

 And this undergoes evolution to higher and higher levels in per- 



