no HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



which draw the substance towards it. These 

 pseudopodia are temporary organs, ill-defined 

 (there comes in the element of mechanism), but 

 everything seems to happen as if there were at 

 least a rudiment of intention on the part of the 

 little organism, a certain choice of appropriate 

 movements. 



It appears, therefore, as if from the top to the 

 bottom of the animal scale there is present 

 (although the lower we go, the more vaguely it 

 is seen) the faculty of choice, and more particu- 

 larly the choice of action, of combined move- 

 ments, in response to stimulation arising from 

 without. This is what we find in pursuing our 

 second line of facts. Now, observe that the point 

 we come out at is pretty close to that to which the 

 first line led us. We said, you will remember, 

 that the function of consciousness seemed 

 primarily to retain the past and to anticipate the 

 future. That is quite natural if its function is to 

 preside over actions which are chosen. For 

 choice implies that one thinks of what is to be, 

 of the immediate future, with a view to creating 

 this future to some extent; and that cannot be 

 done save by profiting from past experience by 

 retaining the past in order to project it within the 

 future. 



But all this gives no answer as yet to the ques- 

 tion we put : Does consciousness cover the whole 

 domain of life? and if it does not extend every- 

 where, where does it stop? 



