v INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 77 



first emergence of an idea consists in the definite direction 

 of effort to something not given, and arises from the joint 

 operation of three conditions, articulate perception, directed 

 conation, and the power of a stimulus to c revive ' a defined 

 effort. 



Whatever the precise genesis of the new process, what 

 has come about is an erfort consciously directed to some- 

 thing absent, a mental state of a new kind which is appar- 

 ently due to an effect of a past perceived relation impinging 

 on a present conation and so defining it. In the full 

 development of this form of correlation such effort involves 

 an anticipation. 1 But if we are to so describe it we must 

 bear in mind that the anticipatory state has its feeling-tone 

 tending to set up the action suited to it. The effect of the 

 development will be that action is now pivoted, not as 

 before on A, but on B itself, and may be varied in accor- 

 dance with any of the relations in which I stand at the 

 moment and which experience suggests as likely to affect B. 



Whether correlation of this order is attained by the most 

 intelligent animals is an open question. The affirmative 

 view might be proved if we could show one of three 

 things, viz. (i) that animals can learn from witnessing the 

 sequence of events or the relations of objects, and not 

 merely by the modification of their own action by attendant 

 feelings. E.g. if a dog sees a bolt pulled and a door opened 

 disclosing food within and then comes to pull the bolt 

 himself, the inference is that he has correlated a little series 

 of events. Experiments on these lines give very varied 

 results, and the interpretations of experimentalists differ. 

 The question cannot be regarded as settled, but upon the 

 whole the evidence shows that such 'learning' is excep- 



1 It cannot be too emphatically stated that an idea at this stage is not 

 a general idea. It is a reference to something to come, that is, something 

 particular. It may in the full development of this form of correlation 

 also be a reference to a particular event in the past, but I have no doubt 

 that Miss Washburn (The Animal Mind, p. 274) is right in contending 

 that the first function of ideas is to guide conation, that is anticipatory. 

 We might call such ideas Images, but that involves a description of their 

 character which is not always easy to verify and is not necessary to the 

 bare statement of their function. That function is direction, or, as I call 

 it, in order to bring out the generic community with other ideas, reference. 



