v INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 79 



which bolts for a drain ; next day seeing the rabbit again 

 it makes straight for the drain. Here there are no materials 

 for habituation to work on. It is the perceived relation 

 that operates. A few carefully studied instances of this 

 sort would put the matter beyond dispute, but unfortun- 

 ately evidence of the kind is from the nature of the case 

 anecdotal, and it is not only untrustworthy in its detail but 

 entirely lacking in study of the previous conditions, which 

 would very often put the incident in a different light. 



It must then be admitted that the question whether the 

 animal mind reaches the stage of conscious correlation 

 remains unsettled. In my own view the probabilities 

 favour the affirmative answer, 1 and I shall provisionally 

 assume that this stage in mental evolution is reached before 

 the birth of the human race. There is the more reason for 

 this view in that language, the distinctive characteristic of 

 humanity, the necessary instrument of human thought, the 

 basis of the social mind, is not essential to the correlation 

 of perceptual elements or of the practical means to near 

 and concrete ends. Be this as it may, we have in any case 

 a further stage in the development of Mind to be noted. 

 Its distinctive feature is that a relation such as A-B which 

 before only affected our attitude to A now enters into con- 

 sciousness. We can apprehend terms in their relations and 

 therewith any one term in many relations. On the basis 

 of this articulate experience we form anticipations and ideal 

 constructions, and so far as any of these are imbued with 

 feeling-tone we conceive desires and aversions, and shape 

 our action thereby, i.e. we act with purpose. Articulate 

 perception, idea and desire thus go together as the character- 

 istics of this stage. We have in consciousness a direct 

 correlation of distinct elements of perception on the one 

 hand, and of means and ends on the other. Action is no 



1 Whether if animals do attain this method of correlation they employ 

 the same mechanism as the human mind, i.e. particular or ( practical ' ideas, 

 is a further question, far harder to determine. We cannot look into the 

 animal mind, we can only ascertain at best whether its behaviour involves 

 a function corresponding point for point with one of our own. But the 

 precise nature of that which passes in the animal consciousness is for my 

 purpose of much less importance than the kind of correlation which it 

 achieves. 



