IMPULSE, INTEREST, AND EMOTION 237 
there any specific consciousness of the conative tendency as 
such? Is there any “peculiar mode of being conscious 
which constitutes the experience which is called conation ” ? 
It is difficult to say. Hence we find differences of opinion 
among psychologists as to what, from the psychological 
point of view, the impulse actually is. Is it simply the 
conscious situation prior to the response? Is it a feeling 
of the change from the initial to the succeeding phase? Or 
are new data introduced apart from those afforded by stimula- 
tion on the one hand and response on the other? We will 
not attempt to decide. Without determining its exact nature 
we may rest content with the very general statement that 
impulse is a concomitant of a change in the conscious situation. 
There is, however, a use of the term concerning which it 
seems necessarily to enter a word of protest. Impulse is by 
- some regarded as the underlying cause of the conative tendency. 
Now science, as such, has nothing whatever to do with under- 
lying causes. If, as a matter of observation and inference, we 
have reason to believe that there is such a tendency, science 
simply accepts the fact, and endeavours to formulate the con- 
ditions under which it arises, and to trace its observed or 
inferred antecedents. No doubt many of us find it difficult or 
impossible to rest content with the strictly scientific position, 
that of unquestioning acceptance of the facts of nature as we 
find them given in experience. We say: Here is an observed 
tendency the conditions and antecedents of which are described 
by science. But what causes the tendency ; what is the im- 
pelling force? Now to such questions science can give no 
answer. Science deals with phenomena, and tries to tell us all 
about their conditions and their antecedents. But whenever 
Science is asked : “ What is the underlying cause of the pheno- 
mena,—that which calls them into being?” Science should 
always give one answer and one only: ‘Frankly, I do not 
know; that lies outside my province; ask my sister Meta- 
physics.” Science ought to have nothing whatever to do with 
force as the underlying cause of anything in this universe of 
phenomena. And impulse, as the impelling force which calls 
