CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXPERIENCE 249 



part it plays in maintaining an inclusive, expand 

 ing, connected course of experience. Our problem 

 as psychologists is to learn its modus operandi, its 

 method. 



The paleontologist is again summoned to our 

 aid. In a given district he finds a great number 

 and variety of footprints. From these he goes to 

 work to construct the structure and the life habits 

 of the animals that made them. The tracks exist 

 undoubtedly ; they are there ; but yet he deals with , 

 them not as final existences but as signs, phe 

 nomena in the literal sense. Imagine the hearing 

 that the critic would receive who should inform the 

 paleontologist that he is transcending his field of 

 scientific activity; that his concern is with foot 

 prints as such, aiming to describe each, to analyze 

 it into its simplest forms, to compare the different 

 kinds with one another so as to detect common ele 

 ments, and finally, thereby, to discover the laws 

 of their arrangement in space ! 



Yet the immediate data are footprints, and foot 

 prints only. The paleontologist does in a way do 

 all these things that our imaginary critic is urging 

 upon him. The difference is not that he arbitrarily 

 lugs in other data; that he invents entities and 

 faculties that are not there. The difference is 

 in his standpoint. His interest is in the animals, 

 and the data are treated in whatever way seems 

 likely to serve this interest. So with the psycholo- 



