328 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



through which this tendency works. In the case of 

 sensori-motor action, however, I think we can identify the 

 element which corresponds to the idea of a more developed 

 purpose. As the organism moves towards an object, e.g. 

 its prey, it is guided, i.e. its motions and efforts are deter- 

 mined, by the sense-perception of their relation to the 

 object. But if we carefully exclude every ideal element 

 from the sense-perception, we must banish with it every 

 reference to what is about to come, or likely to come, out of 

 the effort of the movement. We are thus left with the 

 change which the effort is at any given time effecting, and 

 the gratification or displeasure which it yields. We may 

 readily conceive this attendant feeling to be a condition of 

 the continuance of the effort in any given direction or of a 

 modification thereof. In that case sensori-motor action 

 will be controlled from moment to moment through its 

 present tendency, e.g. the sense of approach to the prey will 

 be directly gratifying. The suitability of the feeling, i.e. 

 the adjustment of this passing gratification to final success 

 in the effort, must be established a priori by those circuitous 

 methods which we examined in Chapter III. The sensori- 

 motor act, however, would come under our broad defini- 

 tion of purposive, as it would still be its tendency,, 

 though its tendency as measured in consciousness in 

 the changes it is at the moment effecting, that condi- 

 tions its action. We may, I think, carry this conception 

 down to the lowest levels of conscious life, as we may 

 suppose, e.g. that any movement giving relief from dis- 

 comfort is thus sustained by the dim feeling of what it is 

 doing. Finally, it is at any rate the simplest hypothesis to 

 suppose that all true organic actions as distinct from the 

 reactions of a perfected living mechanism are guided by 

 some psychic element of this kind, and that it is through this 

 psychic element that the residual state of the organism reacts 

 on the behaviour of any given part. If that is so, every 

 element of living tissue capable of genuine organic self- 

 adaptation is affected, along with its mechanical inter- 

 actions, by a psychic factor operating, whether with the 

 rudimentary or fully developed character of a purpose. 

 Be this as it may, the question whether any particular cause 



