D.—ZOOLOGY gI 
We do not know whether these actions are consciously purposive or not, 
but we cannot dismiss the objective facts of striving merely by assuming 
that they are mechanically determined. There are the facts; animal 
_ behaviour is predominantly directive, or in an objective sense purposive, 
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and there is no use closing our eyes to it. 
It is well known too that many animals can learn and profit by experi- 
ence. ‘Thus if you train a puppy to play with a ball, this becomes of 
functional significance to it; it will go and look for its ball, which it 
remembers ; and other objects of a similar size or shape acquire for it 
the functional value of a ball, and are used in play. There is here 
definite evidence of memory, or retentiveness. 
In the same way, there is abundant evidence that animals perceive 
_ their surroundings, singling out those objects and those events that are 
of importance in relation to their needs. Of course we cannot know 
what the quality of these perceptions is, but we can determine by suitably 
planned experiments just what it is to which the animal responds, and 
we often find that the response is to patterns or images or relations, and 
not to a simple summation of physico-chemical stimuli. I shall give 
some examples of this later on. At this stage I merely wish to make the 
point that from the organismal standpoint there is no difficulty in assuming 
that animals perceive and react to an external world of their own ; here, 
as in our own Case, perception may be regarded as a function of organism, 
not of ‘ mind.’ 
This is essentially the attitude of ordinary common sense. In practice 
we treat our fellow men and at least the higher animals as being real 
individuals with perceptions, feelings, desires, similar to our own. And 
common sense is in principle justified, though of course it runs a great 
risk of reading human motives, human ways of thought, into the be- 
haviour of animals, and of assuming without sufficient warrant that their 
perceptual worlds are the same as ours. But because there is a danger of 
faulty interpretation, due mainly to inaccurate or inadequate observation, 
we are not thereby compelled to throw over the general conception that 
the animal organism is capable of perception, conative behaviour, and 
memory, if the facts of observation lead us to this conclusion. I do not 
mean that we should explain behaviour as being due to psychological 
functions labelled conation, perception and memory—that would be an 
empty and barren explanation. We are concerned only with behaviour, 
not with the subjective experience of the animal, which cannot be the 
subject of scientific study. But we must describe the behaviour fully 
and adequately, using if necessary terms of psychological implication, 
refusing to be bound or hampered by the metaphysical notion that the 
animal is merely a machine or can be treated as such. 
In affirming as we do that the animal organism in its behaviour shows 
a kind of activity which cannot be adequately described in terms of 
material configuration we are taking no great risk. Our own immediate 
experience is there to assure us that in one case at least the organism 
certainly does perceive, strive, feel and remember. 
One point more before we go on to consider very briefly how the 
