INTRODUCTION. 
2 
of the operations of my own individual mind, and the 
activities which in my own organism they prompt, I 
proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities 
of other organisms what are the mental operations that 
underlie them. 
Now, in this mode of procedure what is the kind of 
activities which may be regarded as indicative of mind ? 
I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the 
blowing of the wind. Why? First, because the objects 
are too remote in kind from my own organism to admit of 
my drawing any reasonable analogy between them and 
it ; and, secondly, because the activities which they pre- 
sent are of invariably the same kind under the same cir- 
cumstances ; they afford no evidence of feeling or purpose. 
In other words, two conditions require to be satisfied before 
we even begin to imagine that observable activities are 
indicative of mind : first, the activities must be displayed 
by a living organism ; and secondly, they must be of a 
kind to suggest the presence of two elements which we 
recognise as the distinctive characteristics of mind as 
such — consciousness and choice. 
So far, then, the case seems simple enough. Wherever 
we see a living organism apparently exerting intentional 
choice, we might infer that it is conscious choice, and 
therefore that the organism has a mind. But further 
reflection shows us that this is just what we cannot do ; 
for although it is true that there is no mind without the 
power of conscious choice, it is not true that all apparent 
choice is due to mind. In our own organisms, for in- 
stance, we find a great many adaptive movements per- 
formed without choice or even consciousness coming into 
play at all — such, for instance, as in the beating of our 
hearts. And not only so, but physiological experiments 
and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in 
other organisms the mechanism of the nervous system is 
sufficient, without the intervention of consciousness, to 
produce muscular movements of a highly co-ordinate and 
apparently intentional character. Thus, for instance, if a 
man has his back broken in such a way as to sever the 
nervous connection between his brain and lower extremi- 
