274 The Animal Mind 



environment, and to assist it in foreseeing and providing 

 for 'the future/ Its function seems, then, to have been a 

 prophetic one; it was a means to what we may term remote 

 adaptation. . . . The past, being less important than the 

 future, must have been known as such later " (23). 



It is in making possible the anticipation of a coming 

 stimulus, thus preparing the way for reaction, that the mem- 

 i ory image is most fundamentally useful. Can we form any 

 conception of the conditions under which it would most 

 naturally make its appearance, in its simplest, most rudi- 

 mentary form ? Let us suppose that an animal's behavior in 

 a certain case requires a definite series of stimulations for its 

 guidance. The acts concerned have been performed several 

 times, so that when the reaction to number one in the series 

 has occurred, the motor apparatus concerned in the reaction 

 to number two is slightly innervated, although the actual 

 giving of the second stimulus is necessary to produce the 

 movement. Now if the stimuli follow each other in quick 

 succession, this tendency for one movement to help, as it 

 were, in starting the next, would result finally in the perform- 

 ance of the whole set of reactions " automatically," with 

 lapsing consciousness. But suppose the sequence is slow, 

 or that one stimulus in the series is delayed. It is important, 

 perhaps, that the series of movements shall not go on until 

 the delayed stimulus acts. During this time of waiting, it 

 may weH be that the nervous energy prepared for the next 

 reaction, besides innervating to some degree the motor 

 mechanism that will be needed, overflows into the sensory 

 centres which the anticipated stimulus is to stir to full activity. 

 The result for consciousness is an idea, an image, though 

 perhaps rather vague, of the stimulus waited for. Why, it 

 may be asked, have we made the process by which motor 

 centres become " associated," so that habits are formed, and 



