Consciousness and Instinct. 135 



purely organic matter of the physiological order. But 

 when the activity is carried out thus automatically in 

 response to the appropriate stimulus, its performance 

 is accompanied by consciousness. This is due to complex 

 groups of incoming currents from the parts concerned 

 in the response carried along afferent nerves to the 

 sensorium — probably the cortical centres of the brain. 

 Thus are afforded to consciousness the primary ex- 

 perience-data, already grouped according to the nature of 

 the organic response. This point is of some importance 

 in psychological interpretation. The primary grouping is 

 inherent in the data, and much of the labour of conscious 

 correlation is thus saved. The grouped data constitute what 

 Mr. Rutgers Marshall terms instinct-feelings. To condense 

 the conception into a phrase, we may say that the organic 

 genesis of the brain-changes which accompany the primary 

 experience data is by backstroke (that is to say, afferent 

 in origin). The instinctive motor co-ordination is by 

 outstroke, through the intermediation of efferent nerves, 

 and so far it is a purely physiological and organic matter ; 

 there is, then, an afferent backstroke from the organs 

 concerned in the instinctive response, and by this back- 

 stroke ingoing nerve-currents are conveyed to the higher 

 brain-centres. Here it is that there emerges the initial 

 bit of conscious experience in the light of which subsequent 

 responses of the same kind may be guided to finer issues. 

 For it must be remembered that we are dealing with 

 the very first occasion on which the instinctive response 

 occurs. On this one occasion the accompanying con- 

 sciousness arises wholly by backstroke. On subsequent 

 occasions, under associative suggestion, revivals in 

 consciousness of previous experience-data modify the 

 whole process and introduce the effective guidance of 

 consciousness. 



