70 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



exclude another, to determine the way in which we take 

 things. It fuses with the hereditary substratum, and 

 makes of it a new, though more plastic and modifiable, 

 structure, which operates for the most part altogether with- 

 out self-consciousness. Inarticulate correlation thus oper- 

 ates with elements that arise at higher stages of develop- 

 ment than its own, and helps to form the permanent 

 background of our thinking, our purposes, our emotions. 

 But if we wish to understand its action and measure its 

 achievement as such we must strip away all these higher 

 elements. We must reckon only what it adds to the work 

 of reflex and sensori-motor action. So considered, and 

 taking its two specific forms together, its function is to 

 build up the habits and the skill, which form the basis of 

 sensori-motor action, so far as this is not already determined 

 by heredity. The essential new fact which it introduces is 

 that the experience of the individual co-operates with that 

 of the race in determining action. Past and future are 

 correlated, but the correlation is c massive ' and inarticulate. 

 It is effected by consciousness, but not in consciousness, 

 and the result is a structure which yields type-reactions, not 

 a purpose which can adapt action at need to every variation 

 of circumstances which bears upon the end. 



(4) Articulate Correlation Co-ordination of Concrete 

 Elements. 



Thus far we have supposed the reaction upon a stimulus 

 A to be modified by the effects of the attendant experience 

 B, and have shown how that might happen without any 

 express correlation or co-ordination of A and B. Let us 

 now suppose that this correlation occurs. The individual 

 now has an experience which we may write A-B. It is an 

 experience of two related elements. A is an object to the 

 right of B, or it is an event followed by B. E.g. I want my 

 book, I remember that I left it on the table to the right of 

 the door in my bedroom. To get it I have to go indoors, 

 upstairs, and in at the second door on the left. Here there 

 is a quite explicit reference to a set of related elements. 

 These elements in their relations have entered into my 

 experience, and as such form the basis of my present action, 



