140 Habit and Instinct. 



consciousness due to an afferent backstroke from the 

 incipient innervation of the organs concerned in the 

 response ; and then there succeeds the consciousness which 

 accompanies the actual carrying out of the automatic 

 response by which the general discomfort, and the 

 particular effects of the stimulus, are relieved by an 

 appropriate motor act and its consequences. This again, 

 on our interpretation, is afferent in origin. Now impulse 

 may perhaps be fairly regarded as the condition immedi- 

 ately preceding the actual response which restores stability 

 after the preceding instability generated by a special 

 stimulus acting upon an organism already unstable 

 through the general effects of a want ; such condition 

 being, I repeat, afferent in origin. To put the matter 

 more generally, we may say that such an impulse is 

 the tendency of the organism to satisfy its immediate needs 

 and to fulfil the conditions of its being ; and that accord- 

 ing as this tendency is checked or realized, we speak of 

 the thwarting or the satisfaction of impulse. 



It is right, however, to warn the reader that the term 

 " impulse," like many other terms in psychology, is used in 

 different senses by different authors. The impulse of 

 which we speak is sometimes spoken of as blind impulse — 

 the Trieb of German authors. It is right also to repeat 

 that in the case of the initial performance of an instinctive 

 activity the presence of any such conscious impulse is 

 hypothetical. On the other hand, that the organism under 

 the influence of a stimulus or complex group of stimuli is 

 thrown into a state of unstable equilibrium, and that 

 stability is reached through the appropriate response, seem 

 to be legitimate inferences from the observed facts. And 

 perhaps the safest statement that we can make with 

 regard to the subjective accompaniment is that, if there be 

 such an accompaniment, it may take some such form as 



