OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES. 121 



" We can hardly say that here the movements are 

 co-ordinated like those of a machine ; the acts of the 

 animal are adapted to a special end ; we find in them 

 the characters of intelligence and will, a knowledge 

 and choice of means, since they are as variable as the 

 cause which provokes them. 



" If these, then, and similar acts, were such that both 

 the impressions which produced them and the acts 

 themselves were perceived by the animal, would they 

 not be called psychological? Is there not in them all 

 that constitutes an intelligent act — adaptation of means 

 to ends ; not a general and vague adaptation, but a 

 determinate adaptation to a determinate end ? In the 

 reflex action we find all that constitutes in some sort 

 the very groundwork of an intelligent act — that is to 

 say, the same series of stages, in the same order, with 

 the same relations between them. We have thus, in 

 the reflex act, all that constitutes the psychological act 

 except consciousness. The reflex act, which is physio- 

 logical, differs in nothing from the psychological 

 act, save only in this — that it is without conscious- 

 ness." 



The only remark which suggests itself upon this, is 

 that we have no right to say that the part of the 

 animal which moves does not also perceive its own 

 act of motion, as much as it has perceived the im- 

 pression which has caused it to move. It is plain 

 " the animal " cannot do so, for the animal cannot be 

 said to be any longer in existence. Half a frog is not 

 a frog ; nevertheless, if the hind legs are capable, as 

 M. Ribot appears to admit, of " perceiving the im- 



