v INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 73 



when hungry ? Suppose, that is to say, that the apparently 

 intelligent performance is taken as a case of unconscious 

 correlation. How are we to meet the suggestion ? How 



OO 



do we distinguish between the indirect effects of related 

 experiences on the reaction to stimulus, and the direct 

 effects of a correlation established within consciousness? 

 The reply is that among human beings the distinction is. 

 made clear in the first place by careful attention to the 

 contents that come before consciousness, and in the second 

 place by the nature of the action involved. It is the differ- 

 ence, for example, between my perception of the wall in 

 which, as we have seen, the experiences of solidity, etc. y 

 qualify the actual content of vision, and the explicit judg- 

 ment That is a brick wall ' not a painted or reflected wall 

 which to mere vision might equally possess the * solid ' char- 

 acter. It is the difference between the emotion of fear 

 which a thunderclap may produce and the explicit judgment 

 that in a moment we may be struck dead. In action the 

 differences are still more marked. The habits bred by un- 

 conscious correlation are habits of type-reaction to type- 

 stimuli. True, as we have seen, these reactions may be 

 graded and refined in detail to meet the variation of indi- 

 vidual cases. But all these cases fall under a type, which 

 as a type produces a generic form of motor reaction and 

 attendant feeling. Now in the search for my book there is 

 nothing of this. The need of a book in general or of that 

 particular book does not discharge in me the set of motions, 

 that take me from wherever I happen to be to my bedroom. 

 The whole case is unique, and its uniqueness depends on 

 the particular concrete relations of the book which fall 

 within my explicit memory or at any rate within explicit 

 past experience. What we achieve at the present stage 

 then is the appreciation of the different relations in which 

 things stand to one another, even though these relations 

 are not present to perception, together with the power of so 

 using them as to gain our ends. The concrete circum- 

 stances in which any living being is placed are always 

 varying. Any element in its surroundings stands in many 

 relations, and any one of these relations, seen or unseen, 

 near or remote, may in fact be relevant to the life and pur- 



