v CONATION 6 1 



emotional disturbance imported by ideas of results gets 

 on our nerves, as. we say, and disturbs the coolness which 

 is requisite to the exactness and freedom of our poise. 

 The phenomena of learning point to the same conclusion, 

 for though we certainly set out to learn a game with a 

 purpose, connected ideas play but a very small part in the 

 process. We are roughly told what to do, and then we 

 proceed to do it wrong. We do it wrong many times 

 and we do it a little less wrong. We make a hit, and 

 then, after failures, we make a second hit, and the hits 

 and the failures appear by an automatic process, certainly 

 by a process of which we can give no conscious account, 

 to effect our training. Practice is the divinity which 

 shapes our ends, which conscious purpose merely rough- 

 hews, and the beginner on the bicycle is far more acutely 

 conscious of effort to keep his balance in which he fails, 

 than the expert cyclist who rides merrily along looking at 

 the view or thinking about metaphysics. We conclude 

 that in man the part of consciousness in action of this 

 type is purely perceptual. It is concentrated on the 

 object with mere fringes of survival from past perception, 

 which aid in its interpretation and are strictly subservient 

 to the combination of present elements which is the focus 

 of the whole proceeding. This perceptual consciousness 

 then discharges the required motion, and so we speak of 

 response of this type as sensori-motor action. What, 

 then, is the precise function of consciousness in these 

 actions ? 



" We have as the basis of the skilled act a structure 

 fitted to respond to stimuli of a certain order. But a 

 structure, as we have seen, can only be adapted to general 

 requirements, i.e., to meet a certain type of stimulus, A, 

 with a type of response a, and a type B with a response 

 /3, the response in each case being that which is generally 

 suitable. Now, what happens in any matter requiring 

 much skill in the treatment is that the situations are often 

 unique, that what is wanted is not a or , but a certain 

 combination of a with /3, involving perhaps some grading 

 or modification of each. The function of the close 

 conscious attention to the precise position, distance, move- 



