iv MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 53 



portion as the elementary contractions that make up the 

 response are seen to be so co-ordinated as to yield the par- 

 ticular motion required by the circumstances of the moment 

 to be dominated and guided by the position and perhaps 

 even by the motions of the stimulating object there is 

 something which suggests purpose rather than that blind 

 execution of its function by a preformed structure which 

 we took as distinguishing the reflex pure and simple. 

 There is also something more than the mere pressure of 

 continued disturbance maintaining an activity that tends 

 to relieve it. There is a more definite guidance of action 

 in relation to an external object. Now, behaviour of this 

 sort is externally ambiguous in character and it is exceed- 

 ingly hard to decide in any individual case, particularly in 

 the animal world, how it should be classified. What we 

 have to do here however is to distinguish types of action 

 by virtue of the conditions involved, and for the moment 

 we have to deal with a type which differs externally from 

 the reflex by its nicer adjustment to outer objects. 



Among ourselves responses so adjusted are almost all 

 acquired by practice. The grasping reflex is, I believe, an 

 exception, but it is a response of a very simple character. 

 The action of grasping at a thing seen is not an exception. 

 It is at first ill performed the child ' grasps at the moon y 

 and is perfected with practice. The higher adaptations 

 of this kind, e.g. the delicate adjustments required in 

 skating, shaving, cycling, tennis playing, are formed in 

 response to conscious purpose, but the part which purpose 

 plays in forming them is peculiar. It stimulates us to 

 make the effort, to persist in the face of failure, to submit 

 to tuition. But as every learner of a new art knows, it 

 does not serve to direct the particular grade of effort 

 or combination of movements which actually succeeds. 

 Success comes gradually and unconsciously. We do the 

 thing badly many times, and begin, by a process which we 

 cannot explain, to do it well. We keep on falling now to 

 the right and now to the left till slowly we discover that 

 somehow the balance is coming. Thus though conscious 

 purpose inspires the effort it does not tell us how we shape 

 the adjustments through which the effort succeeds, and for 



