52 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



type of activity is restored. Among ourselves such efforts, 

 often random enough, are guided by some pressing dis- 

 comfort, and the equilibrium is for us comfort. Whether 

 we can always impute an analogous consciousness when we 

 see similar behaviour may be matter of controversy. What 

 is clear is that here we have actions directed to a certain 

 result and something maintaining them as being so directed. 

 This we shall see is at least the germ of effort and purpose. 

 We may call it conation, defining conation generically as 

 action dependent on the difference between the existing 

 state of the organism and some other state which it directly 

 or indirectly tends to bring about. In the cases taken, 

 the conation involves a correlation of the acts of the animal 

 with the co-existent conditions external and internal in a 

 manner tending to organic equilibrium. Correlation is no 

 longer effected merely by heredity and the past. Whether 

 resting on consciousness or not, it is certainly something 

 effected by the individual in the present for itself. 



(2) Sensori-motor action. 



So far the governing organic activity has been considered 

 mainly as heightening and sustaining type-reactions as long 

 as disturbance continues. We pass next to cases in which 

 it appears to assume a more decided function of direction. 

 Our first illustrations of this may be drawn from human 

 behaviour, and they may best be understood by taking a 

 reflex as the point of departure. 



A reflex response may take the shape of an action directed 

 to, and in a sense by the object which stimulates it. A 

 baby's fingers close automatically on a pencil brought into 

 contact with them. Its lips suck anything with which they 

 come into contact. A few weeks later it grasps at any- 

 thing that it sees and tries to convey it to its mouth. In 

 these cases the reflex response may be regarded as a series 

 of muscular contractions so graded and combined as to 

 result in a movement definitely related to the position which 

 the stimulating object happens to occupy. There is in 

 them, therefore, something individual. There is a certain 

 departure from that bare generic correlation which we 

 regarded above as characteristic of the reflex, and in pro- 



