IMPULSE, INTEREST, AND EMOTION © 2q1 
which we call pleasure or the reverse. Pleasure or satis- 
faction—however we name that which, though vague and 
indeterminate in outline, is a very real attribute of the con- 
scious situation—affords its sanction to certain modes of 
conation, and may thus be regarded as the psychological end 
of their continuance or their repetition. It is partly, no doubt, 
a direct adjunct of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, and of 
smooth and easy movements of the body and limbs ; but it is 
partly due to a great body of stimulation coming from many 
parts of the organic system. The blood-vessels are dilated 
or contracted, the heart’s action increased or diminished ; 
respiration is deepened or the reverse, and its rhythm may 
be altered; glands are thrown into a state of activity ; 
the tone of the muscles is affected, and there may be either 
incipient contraction or relaxation. ‘These are primarily 
organic effects ; but they influence the conscious situation, and 
are themselves suffused with feeling-tone. For, from all the 
parts so affected, messages are carried in to the brain, and such 
afferent messages afford data to consciousness. It may be 
that the experience of the conative tendency, for which 
Dr. Stout and others claim a distinctive place in consciousness, 
is largely due to afferent messages from the motor organs 
incipiently innervated in preparation for the behaviour which 
follows. In any case these probably form very important 
elements in the conscious situation antecedent to the actual 
response. In what we may term motor attention—the state 
well exemplified by a cat in the strained pause which precedes 
the spring on to the prey, or in ourselves when we poise 
before a dive or hold the billiard cue in preparation for a 
delicate stroke—this incipient innervation, felt through afferent 
messages from the parts thus braced for action, enters with 
much distinctness into the conscious situation. In sensory 
attention, on the other hand, reflex acts have actually taken 
place, having for their end and purpose the focussing of the 
sense organs on the object which stimulates them, so that in 
this way further and more effective stimulation may be received. 
But, as the sense organ is steadily held to the focus, and made 
R 
