242 THE FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 
effectually to cover the stimulating thing, the motor apparatus 
concerned is kept on the strain, and is all the while con- 
tributing data to the conscious situation. 
In primary genesis attention, both motor and sensory, is 
unquestionably organic and reflex in its nature. It is a pro- 
duct, and an invaluable product, of biological evolution. 
Without this as a basis, the higher forms of attention under 
conscious guidance would be impossible. For all these higher 
forms are modifications and complications of what is given in 
organic heritage. Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole 
range of behaviour, consciousness only guides to finer issues 
what is presented to it in rough outline, or in isolated frag- 
ments, as the outcome of biological evolution. But the organic 
responses afford the data which consciousness uses that it may 
mould and fashion the behaviour so as to reach higher and 
more complex modes of adjustment. 
Lest a familiar form of words should give rise to mis- 
apprehension, it may here be stated that, when we say that 
consciousness moulds and fashions behaviour, we do not intend 
to imply that consciousness is an underlying cause. We are 
not using the term consciousness in a metaphysical sense. We 
mean that consciousness is the expression of certain conditions 
under which behaviour is guided. Instead of saying, there- 
fore, that consciousness utilizes certain sensory data, it would 
be more correct to say that it is the sum-total of these data 
which are the psychical expression of certain brain conditions 
under which behaviour, as a matter of fact, takes a given set 
or direction. We use the word consciousness, then, not in its 
metaphysical sense of an underlying cause or force, but in its 
scientific sense, as the concomitant of certain antecedent con- 
ditions. Our common modes of speech lend themselves with 
misleading facility to metaphysical assumptions, all the more 
insidious since they are not consciously acknowledged as such. 
And not only what we comprise under the broader group- 
name ‘ consciousness,” but what we include under narrower 
group-names, such as “impulse,” “volition,” “ instinct,” 
“intelligence,” “reason,” and the like, often do duty as 
