Intelligence and the Acquisition of Habits. 151 



between congenital and acquired activities. The answer 

 may be given in two words — association and the suggestion 

 that arises therefrom. The chick's first experience of the 

 cinnabar caterpillar leads to an association between the 

 appearance of the larva and its taste ; or, from the physio- 

 logical point of view, to a direct connection between the 

 several cortical disturbances. On the second occasion 

 the taste is suggested by the sight of the cinnabar larva ; 

 or, physiologically, the disturbance associated with taste 

 is directly called forth by the disturbance associated with 

 sight. It is through association aEd suggestion that an 

 organism is able to profit by experience, and that its 

 behaviour ceases to be merely instinctive and automatic. 

 And such association would seem to be a purely individual 

 matter — founded, no doubt, on an innate basis, linking 

 activities of the congenital type, but none the less wholly 

 dependent upon the immediate touch of individual 

 experience. Hence the development of consciousness as 

 effective for the guidance of life, takes its origin in the 

 linkage, through association, of sentient states. In the 

 absence of such linkage sentience is a mere adjunct 

 accompanying certain organic transactions in the nervous 

 system or elsewhere. 



In watching, then, the behaviour of young birds or 

 other animals, we observe a development which is to be 

 interpreted as the result of conscious choice and selection. 

 For the chick to which a handful of mixed caterpillars is 

 thrown, chooses the nice ones, and leaves the nasty 

 untouched. This selection is dependent upon an innate 

 power of association which needs the quickening touch of 

 individual experience to give it actuality and definition, 

 without which it would lie dormant as a mere poten- 

 tiality. On this conscious selection and choice depends, 

 throughout its entire range, the development of those 



