72 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



of consciousness. Indeed the premise itself may fail to be 

 explicit. Without being definitely remembered a past 

 experience may operate unconsciously to supply the rele- 

 vant idea at the moment of action. 1 Explicit inference is 

 not therefore included among the mental processes neces- 

 sarily involved. 



It will be said that, granted this prima facie analysis, 

 it is still absurd to talk of an actual determination of pre- 

 sent by future. What has happened is that the course of 

 experience has generated in the individual the state of 

 tension called Desire. There is in this state a mental refer- 

 ence to something future, of a line of action leading up to 

 the effect and blended therewith an impulse to move along 

 this line of action. But though this is a forward-looking 

 state, still it is a presently-existing state which has grown 

 up out of the past, and by its present character determines 

 future phases. It is not determined by them, because what 

 now is cannot be determined by relation to what will be. 

 We shall discuss this matter more fully at a later stage, and 

 give reasons for rejecting this view, and shall therefore 

 allow ourselves in the meantime to stand by the ordinary 

 way of thought which speaks of a purposive act as deter- 

 mined by its ends. We have only to note that the end is 

 also determined by the purposive act, and that there is 

 therefore a true mutual correlation of act and end. 



This brings us to a further question, how do we dis- 

 tinguish correlation of this kind from the unconscious 

 correlation of the previous stage? Where we have to 

 judge by external behaviour only the distinction is by no 

 means easy to make, and involves some of the most difficult 

 questions of comparative psychology. Thus we ordinarily 

 conceive a dog as begging in order to get food, I.e. intelli- 

 gently, purposively. But suppose it is suggested that pre- 

 vious experiences of the begging posture and attendant 

 gratifications have bred up in the dog the habit of begging 



1 The fact that I left the book may operate in consciousness to engender 

 the anticipation, ' I shall find the book there/ rather than the memory- 

 judgment, 'I left it there this morning/ It must be admitted that 

 in the human mind the one judgment passes into the other, but at 

 a less reflective level it may be otherwise. See below, p. 80 and note. 



