52 CONSCIOUSNESS 
the heir to a wide estate, over which he has no control until 
he comes of age. Up to that time the estate is managed in 
strict accordance with the dictates of the hereditary bequest. 
He may be aware of what is going on, but merely as a spec- 
tator without power of interference. And when he comes into 
possession his first business is to gather up the threads. He 
must learn bit by bit how the estate is being managed, that he 
may have data for the guidance of his own management 
within the wise limits of the hereditary entail. 
Now, when a mammal is born, a bird is hatched, an insect 
emerges from the chrysalis, we have, if not the beginning, at 
any rate a great and sudden extension of the range of effective 
consciousness. In the case of the mammal and bird the 
experience gained in the womb or within the egg-shell is 
presumably of little value for the wider life upon which an 
entrance is made. It is true that an insect has passed through 
a previous stage of active and no doubt consciously guided 
existence as a caterpillar. But we do not know whether the 
experience thus acquired is effectual for use in the later imago 
stage. And we may perhaps infer from the extensive re- 
modelling of the nervous system, which occurs during the 
chrysalis sleep, that this itself serves to break the continuity 
of experience. In any case the newly hatched chick, if it 
inherit no experience, and can have gained little of guiding 
value in the egg, enters upon a situation which from the 
number and variety of the data supplied may well seem to 
us bewildering. If we picture ourselves in such a position, 
with sights, sounds, motor sensations, touches, and pressures 
raining in upon a virgin experience, we wonder how we should 
make a beginning; how we could possibly decide on the first 
step towards reducing this multiplicity and diversity to some- 
thing like unity and order. And perhaps we wonder how we 
ourselves made a beginning when we were pink newly born 
babies. 
If it may be said without paradox, we never did make a 
beginning. The beginning was made for us. For we habitually 
associate ourselves with the control centres, and regard our 
