304 THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 
something which may follow; of other sensations with which in 
the course of experience they have coalesced. And they are all 
cut off from the supposed spinal animal. A light touch might 
in some cases forewarn of the shock or severe pressure, which 
would perhaps follow. But the shocks would so often come 
suddenly that it is questionable whether the warning would be 
of much avail. Still, touch is a warning and cognitive sense, 
and through it the environment would acquire -a limited 
amount of meaning. 
Now, the biological value of coalescent association lies in 
this very element of warning. The anticipatory senses, sight, 
hearing, smell, are in their several degrees the “ projective ” 
senses, the senses which carry with them the quantity of “ out- 
ness.” And their “projective” character is the necessary 
psychological expression of their distinctive biological end. 
They must be projective, must carry with them “ outness,” if 
they are to convey what we, following Dr. Stout, have so often 
spoken of as meaning. But if the biological value of co- 
alescent association lies in the expectation it renders possible ; 
and if, in the spinal animal, there are no senses left save touch, 
which could receive from the environment preparatory warning 
of what is coming ; it would seem exceedingly improbable that 
it should develop quasi-independent conscious situations of its 
own. In the unmutilated animal, at any rate, tactual ex- 
perience would most probably coalesce with that derived from 
the senses which more distinctively take the lead in the 
acquisition of meaning. And we may therefore, on these 
grounds, as well as on others, acquiesce in the current view 
that the quasi-independent functioning of the spinal cord and 
its constituent segments is, at best, lit up with those flashes of 
mere sentience of which Sir Michael Foster speaks in the pas- 
sage we quoted in an earlier section.* 
If from the consideration of the isolated spinal animal 
we turn for a moment to that of the isolated cerebral animal, 
we find it in a very different position. It is possessed of the 
warning senses—those which from several points of view are 
* Vide supra, p. 33. 
