48 CONSCIOUSNESS 
shall therefore assume that evidence for such coalescent 
association is also evidence of the presence of effective 
consciousness. 
Tt may still be said, however, that in selecting an example 
from so highly organized an animal as a bird, we are taking 
for granted that a complex case of controlled behaviour may 
fairly be accepted as a type of more simple cases. Unfortunately 
the only being with whose power of conscious control we have 
any. first-hand acquaintance is possessed of a nervous system 
even more complex than that of the chick. Our psychological 
interpretations are inevitably anthropomorphic. All we can 
hope to do is to reduce our anthropomorphic conclusions to 
their simplest expression. The irreducible residuum seems to 
be that wherever an animal, no matter how lowly its station in 
the scale of life, profits by experience, and gives evidence of 
association, it must have some dim remembrance, or, let us now 
say, Some re-presentation, of the results of previous behaviour 
which enters into and remodels the conscious situation ; that 
through the re-presentative elements behaviour is somehow 
guided ; and, further, that the centre of conscious control is 
different from the centre of response over which the control is 
exercised. 
Il.—Txe Earty Stages or Mentat DEVELOPMENT 
We use the phrase “ mental development” in its broadest 
acceptation as inclusive of, and applicable to, all phases of 
effective consciousness. We shall assume that throughout 
this development there is a concomitant development of nerve- 
centres and of their organic connections. And we shall further 
assume that experience, as such, is not inherited. 
The nature of the grounds on which the latter assumption 
is based must first be briefly indicated. It is commonly 
asserted that fear of man, the inveterate hunter and sportsman, 
is inherited by many animals, as is also that of other natural 
enemies. This is, however, questioned, or even denied, by 
many careful observers. Mr, W. H. Hudson has an excellent 
