Intelligence and the Acquisition of Habits. 145 



done. There is no need to teach the organic mechanism 

 how certain activities are to be performed, for they are 

 already carried out automatically. The intelligence 

 department, with its special senses and so forth, is 

 already organized so far as the supply of information 

 is concerned. The commissariat department, digestive 

 organs, heart, lungs, and the rest, is in pretty good 

 working order, and eagerly on the look-out for supplies. 

 Many complex activities, adaptive actions of the reflex 

 kind and of the type we have termed instinctive, are at 

 once performed under appropriate conditions without the 

 guidance of consciousness. Consciousness merely looks 

 on and makes a memorandum of what is going forward. 

 The number and the complexity of those instinctive 

 activities that consciousness thus finds ready to its hand 

 varies in the different grades of animal life ; being at a 

 maximum in such forms as insects and spiders. They are 

 more marked in birds than in mammals, and seem to be 

 inconspicuous or difficult to trace in man. There are, 

 however, also many more or less isolated activities, with 

 very little initial adaptive value ; and these resemble raw 

 recruits. Such are the comparatively aimless and random 

 limb movements of the human infant, as he lies helpless 

 on his mother's lap. Consciousness has to combine and 

 organize these vague efforts in directions that are useful 

 for the purposes of animal life, and adapted to the condi- 

 tions under which the forces of that life are employed ; 

 gradually to bring the effective work done by the several 

 companies, represented by groups of muscles, into due 

 relation to each other, and, assuming the supreme com- 

 mand, to carry on the battle of life at the best advantage. 



Such an analogy as this must not be pressed too far. 

 It is adduced merely for the purpose of illustration. The 

 drill-sergeant, for example, is dealing with intelligent 



