v INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 67 



consciousness, or * assimilates ' something of the character 

 of B, and we may infer that on the physical side a corre- 

 sponding modification occurs. 1 Thus assimilation effects 

 in consciousness the union of a sensory excitement with a 

 feeling originally foreign to it. This feeling determines a 

 response which is in general satisfactory. Hence we may 

 say that through assimilation the elements of an action are 

 correlated with its result. But though this relation is 

 effected by consciousness, it is not itself present as an object 

 to consciousness. It is an underlying fact noted by the 

 observer, but only brought into consciousness at a higher 

 stage. Again, the new adjustment being based on past 

 experience, assimilation may be said to correlate the present 

 with a past situation in the service of the future. The 

 correlation of the successive experiences of the individual 

 is, in fact, precisely the addition made at this stage to corre- 

 lation by heredity and by co-present conditions. But this 

 relation, again, is not an object of consciousness, for there is 

 as yet no idea of past or future. Thus assimilation is a 

 union of elements in consciousness based on relations that 

 do not enter consciousness, effecting correlations that do 

 not enter consciousness. The modified sensory excitement 

 is the product of a body of experience, stimulus, response, 

 and feeling, acting in a mass. The elements of this mass 

 are not sorted out in consciousness, nor can each be cor- 

 related as such with some element of a subsequent experi- 

 ence, as we shall see that it may be at a higher stage. Each 

 acts indirectly as a contributory element in the massed 

 effect, not articulately as a separate datum determining its 

 particular part of the response. We may express this by 

 saying that we have here a massive or inarticulate correlation 

 of successive experiences. 



We may assume that the process involved in the selective 

 correlation of response, as in the acquisition of skill, does 

 not involve more of consciousness or of articulate correla- 

 tion than this. Probably it involves less. Whether there 

 is a distinction of principle cutting deep into the nature of 



1 This has been well brought out by Professor Holmes, 'Pleasure, 

 Pain and the beginning of Intelligence/ Journal of Neurology and 

 Psychology, April, 191.0. 



