228 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
Thirdly, the policy of boldness is abundantly justified by the present 
state of the other natural sciences. 
I propose to dwell briefly upon each of the three classes of consideration 
inturn. And in relation to each I desire to urge that the most fundamental 
need of psychology, the first demand to be met by the policy of boldness, 
is the adoption without reserve of the conception of purposive striving 
as valid, useful, nay, indispensable, and therefore true. 
The life of man from birth to death is one long series of purposive 
strivings. Sometimes, as when he plans his career and sets out to build 
up a home and a family, his goal is remote and somewhat vague, defined 
in his mind in general terms only ; sometimes it is precisely and exactly 
defined, as when he goes to eat his favourite dinner at his favourite table 
in his club ; sometimes it is near and yet but vaguely defined, as when, 
with open mouth and feeble movements of head and trunk, he seeks the 
nipple of his mother’s breast ; or when, during an absorbing after-dinner 
conversation, he reaches out to put a piece of candy in his mouth. There 
is a vast range of differences in respect of the nearness or remoteness of 
the goal ; and in respect also of the clearness, fullness, and adequacy with 
which he thinks of his goal. And there is also a wide range of differences 
between his successive strivings in a third respect, namely, in respect of the 
urgency, the intensity, the concentration and output of energy manifested 
in his striving at any movement. Yet, in spite of these wide differences, 
the striving is always one aspect of his waking life. And even in his dreams, 
as we now realise, thanks to Professor Freud, the striving goes on, 
bringing what strange and partial satisfactions it may to the buried, 
thwarted and denied tendencies of his nature. From top to bottom of this 
scale of strivings we have to do with the same fundamental phenomenon. 
In the instances near the top, the more developed modes of mental life, 
involving the solving of a defined problem, the thinking out of a plan, we 
all recognise the purposive nature of the striving. The goal, as envisaged, 
governs the movements of both mind and body. 
In instances at the lower end of the scale, introspection, or rather 
retrospection, inevitably fails to seize and report the thinking of the goal 
as distinct from the perceiving of the situation of the moment. Yet the 
continuity of the series justifies us in regarding its lower members as 
fundamentally of the same nature as its upper members, and in applying 
the term ‘ purposive’ to them all alike. 
Even in laboratory experiment, where the conditions are commonly 
so set asto reduce the striving factor toadead level of uniformity andmono- 
tony, it refuses to be ignored for ever ; and so, after a generation of experi- 
mentation that ignored it, it is rediscovered and reinstalled in its place of 
fundamental importance, disguised under some such terminology as 
‘determining tendency,’ or ‘ motor set,’ or ‘ conditioned reflex,’ or ‘ pre- 
potent reflex,’ or what not. 
Under all three of the types of psychology we have noticed, this most 
vital, essential, distinctive aspect of human life escapes the psychologist. 
For it cannot be described as either a sensation or a configuration (Gestalt). 
And it is not to be discerned by an inspection of the detailed movements 
of the limbs or of other bodily organs, no matter how exact. 
Nor can it be restored or recovered in the psychology of parallel columns. 
It can be discerned in others only by sympathetic observation and inter- 
