EARLY STAGES OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 53 
bodies, like our watches, as ours and not us. We wind the 
bodily watch, and set its hands from time to time; but we 
did not make it, and it was already going when heredity 
handed it to us over the counter of birth. The first step 
towards reducing the seeming chaos of sensory experience to 
something like order is not due to the selection by conscious- 
ness of this or that element for prominence among the rest, 
but to the thrusting forward of certain modes of behaviour: 
by the conditions of organic life. The differentiation of the 
field of vision in the chick is not effected by any conscious 
determination to fix the attention on that wriggling maggot, 
but through the congenital response it calls forth. This serves 
not only to make the grub stand out clearly amid its surround- 
ings, but also to emphasize a motor group, called into vigorous 
action in the midst of other motor ‘sensations, and, in rapid 
sequence, to lay stress on a sensation of taste suddenly called 
into prominence. 
Nor, as we have seen, do the organic effects cease here. 
The functional action of three sensory centres is thus called 
into play. But they are constituent parts of one nervous system. 
The direct stimulation of each by nerve impulses from eye, 
motor organs, and beak, gives temporary predominance to 
certain sensory data which are termed presentative. But the 
several centres are connected with each other. And thence- 
forward, in subsequent stages of experience, the direct stimula- 
tion of the visual centre indirectly calls into play the other 
two, so that the presentation through sight evolves re-presenta- 
tions of the motor group, and of taste. Hence sentience is 
not sufficient for guidance ; there must be consentience involving 
the presence of several elements. But these elements must not 
be regarded as separate save in our analysis ; they form con- 
stituent parts of the coalescent situation as a whole, of which 
alone the chick is presumably conscious, without analysis of 
detail. 
It is just because the chick is a going concern when con- 
sciousness comes of age and begins to assume control—just 
because a wide range of congenital behaviour is part of the 
