50 BASIS OF THE PKOBLEM 



mental process. Effort may be directed to something not given 

 and thus there may be the first sign of the emergence of an idea. 

 Whether this is so or not, such an idea is certainly not a general 

 idea ; it is merely a reference to something to come, and that is 

 all. This is the highest degree of mental development that we can 

 attribute to animals and it may be noticed that, this being so, 

 there can probably be no true memory among animals. Explicit 

 ideas, therefore, among animals, so far as they exist at all, do not 

 give rise to other ideas following one another in sequence. They 

 are isolated and serve merely to guide action. 



9. The highest form of mental process attributable to animals 

 reaches a fuller development among men. This stage of mental 

 development has been called the stage of perceptual correlation. 

 How far the apprehensions of direct relationships in consciousness 

 are developed among animals is doubtful ; there is no doubt 

 that among men such relations are apprehended. Action, there- 

 fore, is not merely connected indirectly with the result, as in the 

 example of the chick ; action is undertaken with an end in view. 

 If the chick came to apprehend the relation between the cater- 

 pillar and the unpleasant taste, it wouild have reached the fully 

 developed stage of perceptual correlation ; we have seen that we 

 have to assume in this case a simpler state of mental process, 

 though in certain cases a study of animal behaviour does suggest 

 some approach to the higher stage. At this stage, which is fully 

 developed only in man, the world ceases to be presented merely 

 as sense-impressions charged with feeling and takes the shape of 

 a mass of objects of perception related together and underlying 

 the sense-impressions and the feelings evoked by them. 



In man there is developed a still higher stage of mental process 

 which is his peculiar possession and chief distinguishing character- 

 istic. This is the stage of conceptual thought. In the perceptual 

 stage activity is guided solely by the presence of the objects 

 perceived. If there is any anticipation of the end, the action from 

 moment to moment is still always guided by what is actually 

 given. In the conceptual stage action is guided by an ideal 

 anticipation of the end. What underlies mental process at this 

 stage is generalization. The situation as given is broken up and 

 analysed ; elements common to it and to previous situations are 

 recognized and synthesized. These two processes of analysis and 

 synthesis go on side by side and concepts are formed which are 



