38 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



of the animal, it is an equipment which is less complete 

 in itself and leaves more scope for the exercise of initiative. 

 Man has many instinctive tendencies, but few instincts 

 complete in themselves. 



At any rate, what we have to emphasise here as of the 

 first importance to the student of consciousness in its 

 development is the existence of a permanent background, 

 the work of the massive inarticulate action of ancestral 

 experience as modified by the half-articulate action of per- 

 sonal experience and the social atmosphere. These forces 

 together form that permanent basis of our thought, action 

 and feeling which Lady Welby has called the mother-sense. 

 This is something less specific than instinct, judgment, 

 inference, or will. It is not so much the immediate deter- 

 minant of specific acts, though it does lead to specific acts 

 to precisely those acts which we perform with confidence, 

 though admittedly without being able to give our reasons. 

 It barely enters into consciousness as a distinct force, 

 though it is often what lies close upon the verge of the 

 luminous area when we claim an 'intuitive' certainty of 

 something, when a situation impresses us as hopeful or 

 threatening, or a personality as attractive or repulsive 

 without tangible ground. In another aspect it is itself 

 closely allied to the foundations of that same c personality ' 

 which impresses, or fails to impress, others, in apparent 

 defiance of the qualities that men praise or blame, admire 

 or condemn. It is as the enveloping atmosphere of the 

 conscious life, or to take a different metaphor it is a mother- 

 substance, a matrix out of which clear-cut contents of con- 

 sciousness, explicit judgments, purposes, stated reasons can 

 be taken. But what is to be remarked about the contents 

 so taken is that in the process of cutting they are often 

 more or less mutilated. If we seek, for example, to analyse 

 the qualities of someone whom we admire, we succeed 

 perhaps in fixing certain points. We can formulate the 

 basis of our judgment to a certain extent, but very often 

 we are quite conscious that this is not the whole account 

 of the matter, and when we are not so conscious we no less 

 often mistake ourselves, and impute reasons which are 

 inadequate and unreal. The distinct quality assigned 



