PSYCHIC GRADATIONS. 119 



which have developed a centralised nervous system 

 and elaborate sense-organs. In these cases conscious- 

 ness has been gradually evolved from the psychic 

 reflex activity, and now conscious, voluntary action 

 appears, in opposition to the still continuing reflex 

 action below. However, we must distinguish two 

 different processes, as we did in the question of 

 instinct — primary and secondary reflex action. 

 Primary reflex actions are those which have never 

 reached the stage of consciousness in phyletic 

 development, and thus preserve the primitive 

 character (by heredity from lower animal forms). 

 Secondary reflex actions are those which were 

 conscious, voluntary actions in our ancestors, but 

 which afterwards became unconscious from habit 

 or the lapse of consciousness. It is impossible to 

 draw a hard and fast line in such cases between 

 conscious and unconscious psychic function. 



Older psychologists (Herbart, for instance) con- 

 sidered "presentation" to be the fundamental 

 psychic phenomenon, from which all the others are 

 derived. Modern comparative psychology endorses 

 this view in so far as it relates to the idea of uncon- 

 scious presentation ; but it considers conscious presen- 

 tation to be a secondary phenomenon of mental life, 

 entirely wanting in plants and the lower animals, and 

 only developed in the higher animals. Among the 

 many contradictory definitions which psychologists 

 have given of " presentation," we think the best is 

 that which makes it consist in an internal picture of 

 the external object which is given us in sensation — an 

 "idea," in the broader sense. We may distinguish 

 the following four stages in the rising scale of presen- 

 tative function : — 



