THE CRITERION OF MIND. 17 



cumstances : they therefore offer no evidence of that which I 

 deem the distinctive character of my own mind as such — 

 Consciousness. In other words, two conditions require to be 

 satisfied before we even begin to imagine that observable 

 activities are indicative of mind; the activities must be dis- 

 played by a living organism, and they must be of a kind to 

 suggest the presence of consciousness. What then is to 

 be taken as the criterion of consciousness ? Subjectively, no 

 criterion is either needful or possible ; for to me, individually, 

 nothing can be more ultimate than my own consciousness, 

 and, therefore, my consciousness cannot admit of any criterion 

 having a claim to a higher certainty. But, ejectively, some 

 such criterion is required, and as my consciousness cannot 

 come within the territory of a foreign consciousness, I can 

 only appreciate the latter through the agency of ambassadors 

 — these ambassadors being, as I have now so frequently said, 

 the observable activities of an organism. The next question, 

 therefore, is, What activities of an organism are to be taken 

 as indicative of consciousness ? The answer that comes most 

 readily is, — All activities that are indicative of Choice ; 

 wherever we see a living organism apparently exerting inten- 

 tional choice, we may infer that it is conscious choice, and, 

 therefore, that the organism has a mind. But physiology 

 shows that this answer will not do ; for, while not disputing 

 whether there is any mind without the power of conscious 

 choice, physiology, as we shall see in the next chapter, is very 

 firm in denying that all apparent choice is due to mind. The 

 host of reflex actions is arrayed against the proposition, and, 

 in view of such non-mental, though apparently intentional 

 adjustments, we find the necessity for some test of the choice- 

 element as real or fictitious. The only test we have is to ask 

 whether the adjustments displayed are invariably the same 

 under the same circumstances of stimulation. The only dis- 

 tinction between adjustive movements due to reflex action, 

 and adjustive movements accompanied by mental perception, 

 (■(insists in the former depending on inherited mechanisms 

 within the nervous system being so constructed as to effect 

 particular adjustive, movements in response to iwrtkvXar 

 stimulations, while the latter are independent of any such 

 inherited adjustment of special mechanisms to the exigencies 

 of special circumstances. Reflex actions, under the influence 

 of their appropriate stimuli, may be compared to the actions 



