THE CONCEPTUAL WORLD 9 



images of somewhat similar things, and of the effects 

 of these. The train of events that now proceeds in our 

 central nervous system becomes radically different 

 from that which proceeded in our former, rather aim- 

 less, series of actions. The stimuli no longer pass easily 

 through the " lower " ganglia of the brain, but flash 

 upwards into the cortical regions, where they become 

 confronted with the possibility of innumerable alterna- 

 tive paths and connections with all the parts of the 

 body. They waver, so to speak, before adopting one or 

 other, or a combination of these paths ; there is hesita- 

 tion, deliberation, and finally choice of a path, with the 

 result that a series of muscular organs become inervated 

 and motor actions, of a type more or less competent 

 to the situation in which we find ourselves, are set up. 

 In this hesitation and deliberation perception arises. 

 It is when the animal may act in a certain way as the 

 result of a stimulus which is not a continually recurrent 

 one, but at the same time may refrain from acting, 

 or may act in one of several different ways, that 

 perception of external things and their relations arises. 

 That is to say, we perceive and think because we 

 act. We do not look out on the environment in which 

 we are placed in a speculative kind of way, merely 

 receiving the images of things, and classifying and 

 remembering them, while all the time we are passive 

 in so far as our bodily activities are concerned. If 

 the results of modern physiology teach us anything 

 in an unequivocal way they teach us this — that the 

 organs of activity, muscles, glands, and so on, and the 

 organs of sense and communication, are integrally 

 one series of parts, and that apart from motor activity 

 nervous activity is an aimless kind of thing. It is 

 because we act that we think and disentangle the images 

 of things presented to us by our organs of sense, and 



