AS ACCOMPANIMENT OF ORGANIC CHANGES 4s 
constantly influencing present behaviour. Practically speak- 
ing, this is perfectly true: because, practically, under the 
term present we include quite an appreciable period of time— 
say, a few seconds, or even minutes. If we narrow our con- 
ception of the present, as is commonly done in philosophical 
discussions, to the boundary line between past and future, then 
it will be seen that even the guidance of what in popular 
speech is called present behaviour is really exercised on the 
subsequent phases of that behaviour. At the risk of some 
technicality our position must be explained a little more fully. 
It is assumed that the data of consciousness are afforded by 
afferent impulses coursing inwards from the organs of special 
sense, or those concerned in responsive movements. This 
conclusion rests on such a wide body of psychological inference 
that it may be accepted without discussion, at any rate for 
our immediate purpose. The efferent impulses, those which 
effect the orderly contraction of the muscles, are unconscious ; 
but when the movement is produced afferent impulses course 
inwards from the parts concerned in the behaviour, and these 
may then contribute data to consciousness. , 
Now let us suppose that a chick, which has been hatched in 
an incubator, be removed some twelve hours after birth, held 
in the hands for a few minutes until its eyes have grown 
accustomed to the light, and placed on a table near some small 
pieces of hard-boiled egg. Let us watch its behaviour and 
endeavour to interpret it. We shall have occasion to consider 
hereafter whether the conscious experience of parents and 
ancestors is inherited as such ; for the present we will assume 
that it is not. The chick has to acquire for itself its own 
experience. A piece of egg catches the eye of the little bird, 
which then pecks at it, and just fails to seize it. Here is a piece 
of congenital organic behaviour. Taken by itself one might 
find it difficult to say whether it is accompanied by conscious- 
ness or not, just as one finds it difficult to say whether the 
closure of the Venus’s Fly-trap is conscious. But the sub- 
sequent behaviour of the chick leads us to infer that it is a 
sentient animal ; and we may, therefore, fairly assume that it 
