Intelligence and the Acquisition of Habits. 145 



done. There is no need to teach the organic mechanism 



how certain activities are to be performed, for they are 



already carried out automatically. The intelligence 



department, with its special senses and so forth, is 



already organized so far as the supply of information 



is concerned. The commissariat department, digestive 



organs, heart, lungs, and the rest, is in pretty good 



working order, and eagerly on the look-out for supplies. 



Many complex activities, adaptive actions of the reflex 



kind and of the type we have termed instinctive, are at 



once performed under appropriate conditions without the 



guidance of consciousness. Consciousness merely looks 



on and makes a memorandum of what is going forward. 



The number and the complexity of those instinctive 



activities that consciousness thus finds ready to its hand 



varies in the different grades of animal life ; being at a 



i maximum in such forms as insects and spiders. They are 



more marked in birds than in mammals, and seem to be 



inconspicuous or difficult to trace in man. There are, 



however, also many more or less isolated activities, with 



! very little initial adaptive value ; and these resemble raw 



recruits. Such are the comparatively aimless and random 



| limb movements of the human infant, as he lies helpless 



; on his mother's lap. Consciousness has to combine and 



j organize these vague efforts in directions that are useful 



for the purposes of animal life, and adapted to the condi- 



! tions under which the forces of that life are employed ; 



| gradually to bring the effective work done by the several 



i companies, represented by groups of muscles, into due 



i relation to each other, and, assuming the supreme com- 



j mand, to carry on the battle of life at the best advantage. 



Such an analogy as this must not be pressed too far. 



It is adduced merely for the purpose of illustration. The 



i drill-sergeant, for example, is dealing with intelligent 



