The Analysis of Mind

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Title: The Analysis of Mind

Author: Bertrand Russell

Release date: February 1, 2001 [eBook #2529]
Most recently updated: December 9, 2008

Language: English

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THE ANALYSIS OF MIND

By Bertrand Russell

1921

MUIRHEAD LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY

An admirable statement of the aims of the Library of Philosophy was
provided by the first editor, the late Professor J. H. Muirhead, in his
description of the original programme printed in Erdmann's History of
Philosophy under the date 1890. This was slightly modified in subsequent
volumes to take the form of the following statement:

"The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was designed as a contribution to
the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads: first of Different
Schools of Thought--Sensationalist, Realist, Idealist, Intuitivist;
secondly of different Subjects--Psychology, Ethics, Aesthetics,
Political Philosophy, Theology. While much had been done in England in
tracing the course of evolution in nature, history, economics, morals
and religion, little had been done in tracing the development of thought
on these subjects. Yet 'the evolution of opinion is part of the whole
evolution'.

"By the co-operation of different writers in carrying out this plan it
was hoped that a thoroughness and completeness of treatment, otherwise
unattainable, might be secured. It was believed also that from writers
mainly British and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy
than it had hitherto received might be looked for. In the earlier series
of books containing, among others, Bosanquet's "History of Aesthetic,"
Pfleiderer's "Rational Theology since Kant," Albee's "History of English
Utilitarianism," Bonar's "Philosophy and Political Economy," Brett's
"History of Psychology," Ritchie's "Natural Rights," these objects were
to a large extent effected.

"In the meantime original work of a high order was being produced both
in England and America by such writers as Bradley, Stout, Bertrand
Russell, Baldwin, Urban, Montague, and others, and a new interest in
foreign works, German, French and Italian, which had either become
classical or were attracting public attention, had developed. The scope
of the Library thus became extended into something more international,
and it is entering on the fifth decade of its existence in the hope that
it may contribute to that mutual understanding between countries which
is so pressing a need of the present time."

The need which Professor Muirhead stressed is no less pressing to-day,
and few will deny that philosophy has much to do with enabling us to
meet it, although no one, least of all Muirhead himself, would regard
that as the sole, or even the main, object of philosophy. As Professor
Muirhead continues to lend the distinction of his name to the Library
of Philosophy it seemed not inappropriate to allow him to recall us to
these aims in his own words. The emphasis on the history of thought also
seemed to me very timely; and the number of important works promised
for the Library in the very near future augur well for the continued
fulfilment, in this and other ways, of the expectations of the original
editor.

H. D. Lewis

PREFACE

This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different
tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of which
I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they might seem
inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists, especially those
of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what is essentially a
materialistic position, as a matter of method if not of metaphysics.
They make psychology increasingly dependent on physiology and external
observation, and tend to think of matter as something much more solid
and indubitable than mind. Meanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein
and other exponents of the theory of relativity, have been making
"matter" less and less material. Their world consists of "events," from
which "matter" is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for
example, Professor Eddington's "Space, Time and Gravitation" (Cambridge
University Press, 1920), will see that an old-fashioned materialism can
receive no support from modern physics. I think that what has permanent
value in the outlook of the behaviourists is the feeling that physics is
the most fundamental science at present in existence. But this position
cannot be called materialistic, if, as seems to be the case, physics
does not assume the existence of matter.

The view that seems to me to reconcile the materialistic tendency of
psychology with the anti-materialistic tendency of physics is the view
of William James and the American new realists, according to which the
"stuff" of the world is neither mental nor material, but a "neutral
stuff," out of which both are constructed. I have endeavoured in this
work to develop this view in some detail as regards the phenomena with
which psychology is concerned.

My thanks are due to Professor John B. Watson and to Dr. T. P. Nunn
for reading my MSS. at an early stage and helping me with many valuable
suggestions; also to Mr. A. Wohlgemuth for much very useful information
as regards important literature. I have also to acknowledge the help
of the editor of this Library of Philosophy, Professor Muirhead, for
several suggestions by which I have profited.

The work has been given in the form of lectures both in London and
Peking, and one lecture, that on Desire, has been published in the
Athenaeum.

There are a few allusions to China in this book, all of which were
written before I had been in China, and are not intended to be taken by
the reader as geographically accurate. I have used "China" merely as
a synonym for "a distant country," when I wanted illustrations of
unfamiliar things.

Peking, January 1921.

CONTENTS

I. Recent Criticisms of "Consciousness"
II. Instinct and Habit
III. Desire and Feeling
IV. Influence of Past History on Present Occurrences
in Living Organisms
V. Psychological and Physical Causal Laws
VI. Introspection
VII. The Definition of Perception
VIII.Sensations and Images
IX. Memory
X. Words and Meaning
XI. General Ideas and Thought
XII. Belief
XIII.Truth and Falsehood
XIV. Emotions and Will
XV. Characteristics of Mental Phenomena

THE ANALYSIS OF MIND

LECTURE I. RECENT CRITICISMS OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"

There are certain occurrences which we are in the habit of calling
"mental." Among these we may take as typical BELIEVING and DESIRING.
The exact definition of the word "mental" will, I hope, emerge as
the lectures proceed; for the present, I shall mean by it whatever
occurrences would commonly be called mental.

I wish in these lectures to analyse as fully as I can what it is that
really takes place when we, e.g. believe or desire. In this first
lecture I shall be concerned to refute a theory which is widely held,
and which I formerly held myself: the theory that the essence of
everything mental is a certain quite peculiar something called
"consciousness," conceived either as a relation to objects, or as a
pervading quality of psychical phenomena.

The reasons which I shall give against this theory will be mainly
derived from previous authors. There are two sorts of reasons, which
will divide my lecture into two parts:

(1) Direct reasons, derived from analysis and its difficulties;

(2) Indirect reasons, derived from observation of animals (comparative
psychology) and of the insane and hysterical (psycho-analysis).

Few things are more firmly established in popular philosophy than the
distinction between mind and matter. Those who are not professional
metaphysicians are willing to confess that they do not know what mind
actually is, or how matter is constituted; but they remain convinced
that there is an impassable gulf between the two, and that both belong
to what actually exists in the world. Philosophers, on the other hand,
have maintained often that matter is a mere fiction imagined by mind,
and sometimes that mind is a mere property of a certain kind of matter.
Those who maintain that mind is the reality and matter an evil dream are
called "idealists"--a word which has a different meaning in philosophy
from that which it bears in ordinary life. Those who argue that matter
is the reality and mind a mere property of protoplasm are called
"materialists." They have been rare among philosophers, but common,
at certain periods, among men of science. Idealists, materialists, and
ordinary mortals have been in agreement on one point: that they knew
sufficiently what they meant by the words "mind" and "matter" to be able
to conduct their debate intelligently. Yet it was just in this point, as
to which they were at one, that they seem to me to have been all alike
in error.

The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my
belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than
either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of
which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense
above them both, like a common ancestor. As regards matter, I have set
forth my reasons for this view on former occasions,* and I shall not now
repeat them. But the question of mind is more difficult, and it is this
question that I propose to discuss in these lectures. A great deal of
what I shall have to say is not original; indeed, much recent work, in
various fields, has tended to show the necessity of such theories as
those which I shall be advocating. Accordingly in this first lecture
I shall try to give a brief description of the systems of ideas within
which our investigation is to be carried on.

* "Our Knowledge of the External World" (Allen & Unwin),
Chapters III and IV. Also "Mysticism and Logic," Essays VII
and VIII.

If there is one thing that may be said, in the popular estimation, to
characterize mind, that one thing is "consciousness." We say that we are
"conscious" of what we see and hear, of what we remember, and of our own
thoughts and feelings. Most of us believe that tables and chairs are
not "conscious." We think that when we sit in a chair, we are aware
of sitting in it, but it is not aware of being sat in. It cannot for
a moment be doubted that we are right in believing that there is SOME
difference between us and the chair in this respect: so much may be
taken as fact, and as a datum for our inquiry. But as soon as we try to
say what exactly the difference is, we become involved in perplexities.
Is "consciousness" ultimate and simple, something to be merely accepted
and contemplated? Or is it something complex, perhaps consisting in our
way of behaving in the presence of objects, or, alternatively, in the
existence in us of things called "ideas," having a certain relation
to objects, though different from them, and only symbolically
representative of them? Such questions are not easy to answer; but until
they are answered we cannot profess to know what we mean by saying that
we are possessed of "consciousness."

Before considering modern theories, let us look first at consciousness
from the standpoint of conventional psychology, since this embodies
views which naturally occur when we begin to reflect upon the subject.
For this purpose, let us as a preliminary consider different ways of
being conscious.

First, there is the way of PERCEPTION. We "perceive" tables and chairs,
horses and dogs, our friends, traffic passing in the street--in short,
anything which we recognize through the senses. I leave on one side for
the present the question whether pure sensation is to be regarded as a
form of consciousness: what I am speaking of now is perception, where,
according to conventional psychology, we go beyond the sensation to the
"thing" which it represents. When you hear a donkey bray, you not only
hear a noise, but realize that it comes from a donkey. When you see a
table, you not only see a coloured surface, but realize that it is hard.
The addition of these elements that go beyond crude sensation is said to
constitute perception. We shall have more to say about this at a later
stage. For the moment, I am merely concerned to note that perception
of objects is one of the most obvious examples of what is called
"consciousness." We are "conscious" of anything that we perceive.

We may take next the way of MEMORY. If I set to work to recall what
I did this morning, that is a form of consciousness different from
perception, since it is concerned with the past. There are various
problems as to how we can be conscious now of what no longer exists.
These will be dealt with incidentally when we come to the analysis of
memory.

From memory it is an easy step to what are called "ideas"--not in the
Platonic sense, but in that of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, in which they
are opposed to "impressions." You may be conscious of a friend either
by seeing him or by "thinking" of him; and by "thought" you can be
conscious of objects which cannot be seen, such as the human race,
or physiology. "Thought" in the narrower sense is that form of
consciousness which consists in "ideas" as opposed to impressions or
mere memories.

We may end our preliminary catalogue with BELIEF, by which I mean that
way of being conscious which may be either true or false. We say that a
man is "conscious of looking a fool," by which we mean that he believes
he looks a fool, and is not mistaken in this belief. This is a different
form of consciousness from any of the earlier ones. It is the form which
gives "knowledge" in the strict sense, and also error. It is, at least
apparently, more complex than our previous forms of consciousness;
though we shall find that they are not so separable from it as they
might appear to be.

Besides ways of being conscious there are other things that would
ordinarily be called "mental," such as desire and pleasure and pain.
These raise problems of their own, which we shall reach in Lecture III.
But the hardest problems are those that arise concerning ways of being
"conscious." These ways, taken together, are called the "cognitive"
elements in mind, and it is these that will occupy us most during the
following lectures.

There is one element which SEEMS obviously in common among the different
ways of being conscious, and that is, that they are all directed to
OBJECTS. We are conscious "of" something. The consciousness, it seems,
is one thing, and that of which we are conscious is another thing.
Unless we are to acquiesce in the view that we can never be conscious
of anything outside our own minds, we must say that the object of
consciousness need not be mental, though the consciousness must be. (I
am speaking within the circle of conventional doctrines, not expressing
my own beliefs.) This direction towards an object is commonly regarded
as typical of every form of cognition, and sometimes of mental life
altogether. We may distinguish two different tendencies in traditional
psychology. There are those who take mental phenomena naively, just as
they would physical phenomena. This school of psychologists tends not to
emphasize the object. On the other hand, there are those whose primary
interest is in the apparent fact that we have KNOWLEDGE, that there is a
world surrounding us of which we are aware. These men are interested in
the mind because of its relation to the world, because knowledge, if
it is a fact, is a very mysterious one. Their interest in psychology
is naturally centred in the relation of consciousness to its object, a
problem which, properly, belongs rather to theory of knowledge. We may
take as one of the best and most typical representatives of this school
the Austrian psychologist Brentano, whose "Psychology from the Empirical
Standpoint,"* though published in 1874, is still influential and was the
starting-point of a great deal of interesting work. He says (p. 115):

* "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte," vol. i, 1874.
(The second volume was never published.)

"Every psychical phenomenon is characterized by what the scholastics of
the Middle Ages called the intentional (also the mental) inexistence of
an object, and what we, although with not quite unambiguous expressions,
would call relation to a content, direction towards an object (which is
not here to be understood as a reality), or immanent objectivity. Each
contains something in itself as an object, though not each in the same
way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is
acknowledged or rejected, in love something is loved, in hatred hated,
in desire desired, and so on.

"This intentional inexistence is exclusively peculiar to psychical
phenomena. No physical phenomenon shows anything similar. And so we
can define psychical phenomena by saying that they are phenomena which
intentionally contain an object in themselves."

The view here expressed, that relation to an object is an ultimate
irreducible characteristic of mental phenomena, is one which I shall be
concerned to combat. Like Brentano, I am interested in psychology, not
so much for its own sake, as for the light that it may throw on the
problem of knowledge. Until very lately I believed, as he did, that
mental phenomena have essential reference to objects, except possibly in
the case of pleasure and pain. Now I no longer believe this, even in
the case of knowledge. I shall try to make my reasons for this rejection
clear as we proceed. It must be evident at first glance that the
analysis of knowledge is rendered more difficult by the rejection; but
the apparent simplicity of Brentano's view of knowledge will be found,
if I am not mistaken, incapable of maintaining itself either against
an analytic scrutiny or against a host of facts in psycho-analysis and
animal psychology. I do not wish to minimize the problems. I will
merely observe, in mitigation of our prospective labours, that thinking,
however it is to be analysed, is in itself a delightful occupation,
and that there is no enemy to thinking so deadly as a false simplicity.
Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and
it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast
countries still very imperfectly explored.

The view expressed by Brentano has been held very generally, and
developed by many writers. Among these we may take as an example his
Austrian successor Meinong.* According to him there are three elements
involved in the thought of an object. These three he calls the act, the
content and the object. The act is the same in any two cases of the same
kind of consciousness; for instance, if I think of Smith or think
of Brown, the act of thinking, in itself, is exactly similar on both
occasions. But the content of my thought, the particular event that
is happening in my mind, is different when I think of Smith and when I
think of Brown. The content, Meinong argues, must not be confounded with
the object, since the content must exist in my mind at the moment when
I have the thought, whereas the object need not do so. The object may
be something past or future; it may be physical, not mental; it may
be something abstract, like equality for example; it may be something
imaginary, like a golden mountain; or it may even be something
self-contradictory, like a round square. But in all these cases, so
he contends, the content exists when the thought exists, and is what
distinguishes it, as an occurrence, from other thoughts.

* See, e.g. his article: "Ueber Gegenstande hoherer Ordnung
und deren Verhaltniss zur inneren Wahrnehmung," "Zeitschrift
fur Psychologie and Physiologie der Sinnesorgane," vol. xxi,
pp. 182-272 (1899), especially pp. 185-8.

To make this theory concrete, let us suppose that you are thinking of
St. Paul's. Then, according to Meinong, we have to distinguish three
elements which are necessarily combined in constituting the one thought.
First, there is the act of thinking, which would be just the same
whatever you were thinking about. Then there is what makes the character
of the thought as contrasted with other thoughts; this is the content.
And finally there is St. Paul's, which is the object of your thought.
There must be a difference between the content of a thought and what it
is about, since the thought is here and now, whereas what it is about
may not be; hence it is clear that the thought is not identical with St.
Paul's. This seems to show that we must distinguish between content
and object. But if Meinong is right, there can be no thought without an
object: the connection of the two is essential. The object might exist
without the thought, but not the thought without the object: the three
elements of act, content and object are all required to constitute the
one single occurrence called "thinking of St. Paul's."

The above analysis of a thought, though I believe it to be mistaken, is
very useful as affording a schema in terms of which other theories can
be stated. In the remainder of the present lecture I shall state in
outline the view which I advocate, and show how various other views
out of which mine has grown result from modifications of the threefold
analysis into act, content and object.

The first criticism I have to make is that the ACT seems unnecessary and
fictitious. The occurrence of the content of a thought constitutes
the occurrence of the thought. Empirically, I cannot discover anything
corresponding to the supposed act; and theoretically I cannot see that
it is indispensable. We say: "_I_ think so-and-so," and this word "I"
suggests that thinking is the act of a person. Meinong's "act" is the
ghost of the subject, or what once was the full-blooded soul. It is
supposed that thoughts cannot just come and go, but need a person to
think them. Now, of course it is true that thoughts can be collected
into bundles, so that one bundle is my thoughts, another is your
thoughts, and a third is the thoughts of Mr. Jones. But I think
the person is not an ingredient in the single thought: he is rather
constituted by relations of the thoughts to each other and to the body.
This is a large question, which need not, in its entirety, concern us
at present. All that I am concerned with for the moment is that the
grammatical forms "I think," "you think," and "Mr. Jones thinks," are
misleading if regarded as indicating an analysis of a single thought.
It would be better to say "it thinks in me," like "it rains here"; or
better still, "there is a thought in me." This is simply on the
ground that what Meinong calls the act in thinking is not empirically
discoverable, or logically deducible from what we can observe.

The next point of criticism concerns the relation of content and object.
The reference of thoughts to objects is not, I believe, the simple
direct essential thing that Brentano and Meinong represent it as being.
It seems to me to be derivative, and to consist largely in BELIEFS:
beliefs that what constitutes the thought is connected with various
other elements which together make up the object. You have, say, an
image of St. Paul's, or merely the word "St. Paul's" in your head. You
believe, however vaguely and dimly, that this is connected with what
you would see if you went to St. Paul's, or what you would feel if you
touched its walls; it is further connected with what other people see
and feel, with services and the Dean and Chapter and Sir Christopher
Wren. These things are not mere thoughts of yours, but your thought
stands in a relation to them of which you are more or less aware. The
awareness of this relation is a further thought, and constitutes
your feeling that the original thought had an "object." But in pure
imagination you can get very similar thoughts without these accompanying
beliefs; and in this case your thoughts do not have objects or seem to
have them. Thus in such instances you have content without object. On
the other hand, in seeing or hearing it would be less misleading to
say that you have object without content, since what you see or hear is
actually part of the physical world, though not matter in the sense of
physics. Thus the whole question of the relation of mental occurrences
to objects grows very complicated, and cannot be settled by regarding
reference to objects as of the essence of thoughts. All the above
remarks are merely preliminary, and will be expanded later.

Speaking in popular and unphilosophical terms, we may say that the
content of a thought is supposed to be something in your head when you
think the thought, while the object is usually something in the outer
world. It is held that knowledge of the outer world is constituted by
the relation to the object, while the fact that knowledge is different
from what it knows is due to the fact that knowledge comes by way of
contents. We can begin to state the difference between realism and
idealism in terms of this opposition of contents and objects. Speaking
quite roughly and approximately, we may say that idealism tends to
suppress the object, while realism tends to suppress the content.
Idealism, accordingly, says that nothing can be known except thoughts,
and all the reality that we know is mental; while realism maintains that
we know objects directly, in sensation certainly, and perhaps also in
memory and thought. Idealism does not say that nothing can be known
beyond the present thought, but it maintains that the context of vague
belief, which we spoke of in connection with the thought of St. Paul's,
only takes you to other thoughts, never to anything radically different
from thoughts. The difficulty of this view is in regard to sensation,
where it seems as if we came into direct contact with the outer world.
But the Berkeleian way of meeting this difficulty is so familiar that I
need not enlarge upon it now. I shall return to it in a later lecture,
and will only observe, for the present, that there seem to me no valid
grounds for regarding what we see and hear as not part of the physical
world.

Realists, on the other hand, as a rule, suppress the content, and
maintain that a thought consists either of act and object alone, or of
object alone. I have been in the past a realist, and I remain a realist
as regards sensation, but not as regards memory or thought. I will try
to explain what seem to me to be the reasons for and against various
kinds of realism.

Modern idealism professes to be by no means confined to the present
thought or the present thinker in regard to its knowledge; indeed, it
contends that the world is so organic, so dove-tailed, that from any
one portion the whole can be inferred, as the complete skeleton of an
extinct animal can be inferred from one bone. But the logic by which
this supposed organic nature of the world is nominally demonstrated
appears to realists, as it does to me, to be faulty. They argue that,
if we cannot know the physical world directly, we cannot really know
any thing outside our own minds: the rest of the world may be merely our
dream. This is a dreary view, and they there fore seek ways of escaping
from it. Accordingly they maintain that in knowledge we are in direct
contact with objects, which may be, and usually are, outside our own
minds. No doubt they are prompted to this view, in the first place, by
bias, namely, by the desire to think that they can know of the existence
of a world outside themselves. But we have to consider, not what led
them to desire the view, but whether their arguments for it are valid.

There are two different kinds of realism, according as we make a thought
consist of act and object, or of object alone. Their difficulties are
different, but neither seems tenable all through. Take, for the sake of
definiteness, the remembering of a past event. The remembering occurs
now, and is therefore necessarily not identical with the past event.
So long as we retain the act, this need cause no difficulty. The act
of remembering occurs now, and has on this view a certain essential
relation to the past event which it remembers. There is no LOGICAL
objection to this theory, but there is the objection, which we spoke
of earlier, that the act seems mythical, and is not to be found by
observation. If, on the other hand, we try to constitute memory without
the act, we are driven to a content, since we must have something that
happens NOW, as opposed to the event which happened in the past. Thus,
when we reject the act, which I think we must, we are driven to a theory
of memory which is more akin to idealism. These arguments, however, do
not apply to sensation. It is especially sensation, I think, which is
considered by those realists who retain only the object.* Their views,
which are chiefly held in America, are in large measure derived from
William James, and before going further it will be well to consider
the revolutionary doctrine which he advocated. I believe this doctrine
contains important new truth, and what I shall have to say will be in a
considerable measure inspired by it.

* This is explicitly the case with Mach's "Analysis of
Sensations," a book of fundamental importance in the present
connection. (Translation of fifth German edition, Open Court
Co., 1914. First German edition, 1886.)

William James's view was first set forth in an essay called "Does
'consciousness' exist?"* In this essay he explains how what used to be
the soul has gradually been refined down to the "transcendental ego,"
which, he says, "attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition,
being only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience IS
KNOWN. It loses personal form and activity--these passing over to the
content--and becomes a bare Bewusstheit or Bewusstsein uberhaupt, of
which in its own right absolutely nothing can be said. I believe (he
continues) that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this
estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether.
It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first
principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo,
the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of
philosophy"(p. 2).

* "Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods," vol. i, 1904. Reprinted in "Essays in Radical
Empiricism" (Longmans, Green & Co., 1912), pp. 1-38, to
which references in what follows refer.

He explains that this is no sudden change in his opinions. "For twenty
years past," he says, "I have mistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity;
for seven or eight years past I have suggested its non-existence to my
students, and tried to give them its pragmatic equivalent in realities
of experience. It seems to me that the hour is ripe for it to be openly
and universally discarded"(p. 3).

His next concern is to explain away the air of paradox, for James
was never wilfully paradoxical. "Undeniably," he says, "'thoughts' do
exist." "I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to
insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I
mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of
which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are
made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform,
and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That
function is KNOWING"(pp. 3-4).

James's view is that the raw material out of which the world is built
up is not of two sorts, one matter and the other mind, but that it is
arranged in different patterns by its inter-relations, and that some
arrangements may be called mental, while others may be called physical.

"My thesis is," he says, "that if we start with the supposition that
there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff
of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure
experience,' then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort
of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience
may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one of its
'terms' becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the
other becomes the object known"(p. 4).

After mentioning the duality of subject and object, which is supposed
to constitute consciousness, he proceeds in italics: "EXPERIENCE, I
BELIEVE, HAS NO SUCH INNER DUPLICITY; AND THE SEPARATION OF IT INTO
CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONTENT COMES, NOT BY WAY OF SUBTRACTION, BUT BY WAY
OF ADDITION"(p. 9).

He illustrates his meaning by the analogy of paint as it appears in a
paint-shop and as it appears in a picture: in the one case it is just
"saleable matter," while in the other it "performs a spiritual function.
Just so, I maintain (he continues), does a given undivided portion
of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a
knower, of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in a different
context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing
known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as
a thought, in another group as a thing"(pp. 9-10).

He does not believe in the supposed immediate certainty of thought. "Let
the case be what it may in others," he says, "I am as confident as I am
of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize
emphatically as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when
scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my
breathing. The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all
my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them"(pp.
36-37).

The same view of "consciousness" is set forth in the succeeding essay,
"A World of Pure Experience" (ib., pp. 39-91). The use of the phrase
"pure experience" in both essays points to a lingering influence of
idealism. "Experience," like "consciousness," must be a product, not
part of the primary stuff of the world. It must be possible, if James is
right in his main contentions, that roughly the same stuff, differently
arranged, would not give rise to anything that could be called
"experience." This word has been dropped by the American realists, among
whom we may mention specially Professor R. B. Perry of Harvard and Mr.
Edwin B. Holt. The interests of this school are in general philosophy
and the philosophy of the sciences, rather than in psychology; they have
derived a strong impulsion from James, but have more interest than he
had in logic and mathematics and the abstract part of philosophy. They
speak of "neutral" entities as the stuff out of which both mind and
matter are constructed. Thus Holt says: "If the terms and propositions
of logic must be substantialized, they are all strictly of one
substance, for which perhaps the least dangerous name is neutral-stuff.
The relation of neutral-stuff to matter and mind we shall have presently
to consider at considerable length." *

* "The Concept of Consciousness" (Geo. Allen & Co., 1914),
p. 52.

My own belief--for which the reasons will appear in subsequent
lectures--is that James is right in rejecting consciousness as an
entity, and that the American realists are partly right, though not
wholly, in considering that both mind and matter are composed of a
neutral-stuff which, in isolation, is neither mental nor material. I
should admit this view as regards sensations: what is heard or seen
belongs equally to psychology and to physics. But I should say that
images belong only to the mental world, while those occurrences (if any)
which do not form part of any "experience" belong only to the physical
world. There are, it seems to me, prima facie different kinds of causal
laws, one belonging to physics and the other to psychology. The law
of gravitation, for example, is a physical law, while the law of
association is a psychological law. Sensations are subject to both kinds
of laws, and are therefore truly "neutral" in Holt's sense. But entities
subject only to physical laws, or only to psychological laws, are not
neutral, and may be called respectively purely material and purely
mental. Even those, however, which are purely mental will not have that
intrinsic reference to objects which Brentano assigns to them and which
constitutes the essence of "consciousness" as ordinarily understood. But
it is now time to pass on to other modern tendencies, also hostile to
"consciousness."

There is a psychological school called "Behaviourists," of whom the
protagonist is Professor John B. Watson,* formerly of the Johns Hopkins
University. To them also, on the whole, belongs Professor John Dewey,
who, with James and Dr. Schiller, was one of the three founders of
pragmatism. The view of the "behaviourists" is that nothing can be known
except by external observation. They deny altogether that there is a
separate source of knowledge called "introspection," by which we can
know things about ourselves which we could never observe in others.
They do not by any means deny that all sorts of things MAY go on in
our minds: they only say that such things, if they occur, are not
susceptible of scientific observation, and do not therefore concern
psychology as a science. Psychology as a science, they say, is only
concerned with BEHAVIOUR, i.e. with what we DO; this alone, they
contend, can be accurately observed. Whether we think meanwhile, they
tell us, cannot be known; in their observation of the behaviour of human
beings, they have not so far found any evidence of thought. True, we
talk a great deal, and imagine that in so doing we are showing that we
can think; but behaviourists say that the talk they have to listen to
can be explained without supposing that people think. Where you might
expect a chapter on "thought processes" you come instead upon a chapter
on "The Language Habit." It is humiliating to find how terribly adequate
this hypothesis turns out to be.

* See especially his "Behavior: an Introduction to
Comparative Psychology," New York, 1914.

Behaviourism has not, however, sprung from observing the folly of men.
It is the wisdom of animals that has suggested the view. It has always
been a common topic of popular discussion whether animals "think." On
this topic people are prepared to take sides without having the vaguest
idea what they mean by "thinking." Those who desired to investigate such
questions were led to observe the behaviour of animals, in the hope that
their behaviour would throw some light on their mental faculties.
At first sight, it might seem that this is so. People say that a
dog "knows" its name because it comes when it is called, and that it
"remembers" its master, because it looks sad in his absence, but wags
its tail and barks when he returns. That the dog behaves in this way is
matter of observation, but that it "knows" or "remembers" anything is an
inference, and in fact a very doubtful one. The more such inferences are
examined, the more precarious they are seen to be. Hence the study of
animal behaviour has been gradually led to abandon all attempt at mental
interpretation. And it can hardly be doubted that, in many cases of
complicated behaviour very well adapted to its ends, there can be no
prevision of those ends. The first time a bird builds a nest, we can
hardly suppose it knows that there will be eggs to be laid in it, or
that it will sit on the eggs, or that they will hatch into young birds.
It does what it does at each stage because instinct gives it an impulse
to do just that, not because it foresees and desires the result of its
actions.*

* An interesting discussion of the question whether
instinctive actions, when first performed, involve any
prevision, however vague, will be found in Lloyd Morgan's
"Instinct and Experience" (Methuen, 1912), chap. ii.

Careful observers of animals, being anxious to avoid precarious
inferences, have gradually discovered more and more how to give
an account of the actions of animals without assuming what we call
"consciousness." It has seemed to the behaviourists that similar methods
can be applied to human behaviour, without assuming anything not open
to external observation. Let us give a crude illustration, too crude for
the authors in question, but capable of affording a rough insight into
their meaning. Suppose two children in a school, both of whom are asked
"What is six times nine?" One says fifty-four, the other says fifty-six.
The one, we say, "knows" what six times nine is, the other does not. But
all that we can observe is a certain language-habit. The one child has
acquired the habit of saying "six times nine is fifty-four"; the other
has not. There is no more need of "thought" in this than there is when
a horse turns into his accustomed stable; there are merely more numerous
and complicated habits. There is obviously an observable fact called
"knowing" such-and-such a thing; examinations are experiments for
discovering such facts. But all that is observed or discovered is a
certain set of habits in the use of words. The thoughts (if any) in the
mind of the examinee are of no interest to the examiner; nor has the
examiner any reason to suppose even the most successful examinee capable
of even the smallest amount of thought.

Thus what is called "knowing," in the sense in which we can ascertain
what other people "know," is a phenomenon exemplified in their physical
behaviour, including spoken and written words. There is no reason--so
Watson argues--to suppose that their knowledge IS anything beyond the
habits shown in this behaviour: the inference that other people
have something nonphysical called "mind" or "thought" is therefore
unwarranted.

So far, there is nothing particularly repugnant to our prejudices in the
conclusions of the behaviourists. We are all willing to admit that
other people are thoughtless. But when it comes to ourselves, we feel
convinced that we can actually perceive our own thinking. "Cogito, ergo
sum" would be regarded by most people as having a true premiss. This,
however, the behaviourist denies. He maintains that our knowledge of
ourselves is no different in kind from our knowledge of other people.
We may see MORE, because our own body is easier to observe than that of
other people; but we do not see anything radically unlike what we see
of others. Introspection, as a separate source of knowledge, is entirely
denied by psychologists of this school. I shall discuss this question at
length in a later lecture; for the present I will only observe that
it is by no means simple, and that, though I believe the behaviourists
somewhat overstate their case, yet there is an important element of
truth in their contention, since the things which we can discover by
introspection do not seem to differ in any very fundamental way from the
things which we discover by external observation.

So far, we have been principally concerned with knowing. But it might
well be maintained that desiring is what is really most characteristic
of mind. Human beings are constantly engaged in achieving some end
they feel pleasure in success and pain in failure. In a purely material
world, it may be said, there would be no opposition of pleasant and
unpleasant, good and bad, what is desired and what is feared. A man's
acts are governed by purposes. He decides, let us suppose, to go to a
certain place, whereupon he proceeds to the station, takes his ticket
and enters the train. If the usual route is blocked by an accident,
he goes by some other route. All that he does is determined--or so it
seems--by the end he has in view, by what lies in front of him, rather
than by what lies behind. With dead matter, this is not the case.
A stone at the top of a hill may start rolling, but it shows no
pertinacity in trying to get to the bottom. Any ledge or obstacle will
stop it, and it will exhibit no signs of discontent if this happens. It
is not attracted by the pleasantness of the valley, as a sheep or cow
might be, but propelled by the steepness of the hill at the place
where it is. In all this we have characteristic differences between the
behaviour of animals and the behaviour of matter as studied by physics.

Desire, like knowledge, is, of course, in one sense an observable
phenomenon. An elephant will eat a bun, but not a mutton chop; a duck
will go into the water, but a hen will not. But when we think of our
own desires, most people believe that we can know them by an immediate
self-knowledge which does not depend upon observation of our actions.
Yet if this were the case, it would be odd that people are so often
mistaken as to what they desire. It is matter of common observation that
"so-and-so does not know his own motives," or that "A is envious of B
and malicious about him, but quite unconscious of being so." Such people
are called self-deceivers, and are supposed to have had to go through
some more or less elaborate process of concealing from themselves what
would otherwise have been obvious. I believe that this is an entire
mistake. I believe that the discovery of our own motives can only be
made by the same process by which we discover other people's, namely,
the process of observing our actions and inferring the desire which
could prompt them. A desire is "conscious" when we have told ourselves
that we have it. A hungry man may say to himself: "Oh, I do want my
lunch." Then his desire is "conscious." But it only differs from an
"unconscious" desire by the presence of appropriate words, which is by
no means a fundamental difference.

The belief that a motive is normally conscious makes it easier to be
mistaken as to our own motives than as to other people's. When some
desire that we should be ashamed of is attributed to us, we notice that
we have never had it consciously, in the sense of saying to ourselves,
"I wish that would happen." We therefore look for some other
interpretation of our actions, and regard our friends as very unjust
when they refuse to be convinced by our repudiation of what we hold to
be a calumny. Moral considerations greatly increase the difficulty of
clear thinking in this matter. It is commonly argued that people are not
to blame for unconscious motives, but only for conscious ones. In order,
therefore, to be wholly virtuous it is only necessary to repeat virtuous
formulas. We say: "I desire to be kind to my friends, honourable in
business, philanthropic towards the poor, public-spirited in politics."
So long as we refuse to allow ourselves, even in the watches of the
night, to avow any contrary desires, we may be bullies at home, shady in
the City, skinflints in paying wages and profiteers in dealing with the
public; yet, if only conscious motives are to count in moral valuation,
we shall remain model characters. This is an agreeable doctrine, and
it is not surprising that men are un willing to abandon it. But moral
considerations are the worst enemies of the scientific spirit and we
must dismiss them from our minds if we wish to arrive at truth.

I believe--as I shall try to prove in a later lecture--that desire,
like force in mechanics, is of the nature of a convenient fiction
for describing shortly certain laws of behaviour. A hungry animal is
restless until it finds food; then it becomes quiescent. The thing which
will bring a restless condition to an end is said to be what is desired.
But only experience can show what will have this sedative effect, and it
is easy to make mistakes. We feel dissatisfaction, and think that
such and-such a thing would remove it; but in thinking this, we are
theorizing, not observing a patent fact. Our theorizing is often
mistaken, and when it is mistaken there is a difference between what we
think we desire and what in fact will bring satisfaction. This is such
a common phenomenon that any theory of desire which fails to account for
it must be wrong.

What have been called "unconscious" desires have been brought very much
to the fore in recent years by psycho-analysis. Psycho-analysis, as
every one knows, is primarily a method of understanding hysteria and
certain forms of insanity*; but it has been found that there is much
in the lives of ordinary men and women which bears a humiliating
resemblance to the delusions of the insane. The connection of dreams,
irrational beliefs and foolish actions with unconscious wishes has been
brought to light, though with some exaggeration, by Freud and Jung and
their followers. As regards the nature of these unconscious wishes,
it seems to me--though as a layman I speak with diffidence--that many
psycho-analysts are unduly narrow; no doubt the wishes they emphasize
exist, but others, e.g. for honour and power, are equally operative and
equally liable to concealment. This, however, does not affect the
value of their general theories from the point of view of theoretic
psychology, and it is from this point of view that their results are
important for the analysis of mind.

* There is a wide field of "unconscious" phenomena which
does not depend upon psycho-analytic theories. Such
occurrences as automatic writing lead Dr. Morton Prince to
say: "As I view this question of the subconscious, far too
much weight is given to the point of awareness or not
awareness of our conscious processes. As a matter of fact,
we find entirely identical phenomena, that is, identical in
every respect but one-that of awareness in which sometimes
we are aware of these conscious phenomena and sometimes
not"(p. 87 of "Subconscious Phenomena," by various authors,
Rebman). Dr. Morton Price conceives that there may be
"consciousness" without "awareness." But this is a difficult
view, and one which makes some definition of "consciousness"
imperative. For nay part, I cannot see how to separate
consciousness from awareness.

What, I think, is clearly established, is that a man's actions and
beliefs may be wholly dominated by a desire of which he is quite
unconscious, and which he indignantly repudiates when it is suggested
to him. Such a desire is generally, in morbid cases, of a sort which
the patient would consider wicked; if he had to admit that he had the
desire, he would loathe himself. Yet it is so strong that it must force
an outlet for itself; hence it becomes necessary to entertain whole
systems of false beliefs in order to hide the nature of what is desired.
The resulting delusions in very many cases disappear if the hysteric or
lunatic can be made to face the facts about himself. The consequence
of this is that the treatment of many forms of insanity has grown more
psychological and less physiological than it used to be. Instead of
looking for a physical defect in the brain, those who treat delusions
look for the repressed desire which has found this contorted mode
of expression. For those who do not wish to plunge into the somewhat
repulsive and often rather wild theories of psychoanalytic pioneers, it
will be worth while to read a little book by Dr. Bernard Hart on "The
Psychology of Insanity."* On this question of the mental as opposed to
the physiological study of the causes of insanity, Dr. Hart says:

* Cambridge, 1912; 2nd edition, 1914. The following
references are to the second edition.

"The psychological conception [of insanity] is based on the view that
mental processes can be directly studied without any reference to the
accompanying changes which are presumed to take place in the brain, and
that insanity may therefore be properly attacked from the standpoint of
psychology"(p. 9).

This illustrates a point which I am anxious to make clear from the
outset. Any attempt to classify modern views, such as I propose to
advocate, from the old standpoint of materialism and idealism, is only
misleading. In certain respects, the views which I shall be setting
forth approximate to materialism; in certain others, they approximate to
its opposite. On this question of the study of delusions, the practical
effect of the modern theories, as Dr. Hart points out, is emancipation
from the materialist method. On the other hand, as he also points
out (pp. 38-9), imbecility and dementia still have to be considered
physiologically, as caused by defects in the brain. There is no
inconsistency in this If, as we maintain, mind and matter are neither of
them the actual stuff of reality, but different convenient groupings of
an underlying material, then, clearly, the question whether, in regard
to a given phenomenon, we are to seek a physical or a mental cause, is
merely one to be decided by trial. Metaphysicians have argued endlessly
as to the interaction of mind and matter. The followers of Descartes
held that mind and matter are so different as to make any action of the
one on the other impossible. When I will to move my arm, they said,
it is not my will that operates on my arm, but God, who, by His
omnipotence, moves my arm whenever I want it moved. The modern doctrine
of psychophysical parallelism is not appreciably different from this
theory of the Cartesian school. Psycho-physical parallelism is the
theory that mental and physical events each have causes in their own
sphere, but run on side by side owing to the fact that every state of
the brain coexists with a definite state of the mind, and vice versa.
This view of the reciprocal causal independence of mind and matter has
no basis except in metaphysical theory.* For us, there is no necessity
to make any such assumption, which is very difficult to harmonize with
obvious facts. I receive a letter inviting me to dinner: the letter is
a physical fact, but my apprehension of its meaning is mental. Here we
have an effect of matter on mind. In consequence of my apprehension of
the meaning of the letter, I go to the right place at the right time;
here we have an effect of mind on matter. I shall try to persuade you,
in the course of these lectures, that matter is not so material and mind
not so mental as is generally supposed. When we are speaking of matter,
it will seem as if we were inclining to idealism; when we are speaking
of mind, it will seem as if we were inclining to materialism. Neither
is the truth. Our world is to be constructed out of what the American
realists call "neutral" entities, which have neither the hardness and
indestructibility of matter, nor the reference to objects which is
supposed to characterize mind.

* It would seem, however, that Dr. Hart accepts this theory
as 8 methodological precept. See his contribution to
"Subconscious Phenomena" (quoted above), especially pp. 121-2.

There is, it is true, one objection which might be felt, not indeed to
the action of matter on mind, but to the action of mind on matter. The
laws of physics, it may be urged, are apparently adequate to explain
everything that happens to matter, even when it is matter in a man's
brain. This, however, is only a hypothesis, not an established theory.
There is no cogent empirical reason for supposing that the laws
determining the motions of living bodies are exactly the same as those
that apply to dead matter. Sometimes, of course, they are clearly the
same. When a man falls from a precipice or slips on a piece of orange
peel, his body behaves as if it were devoid of life. These are the
occasions that make Bergson laugh. But when a man's bodily movements
are what we call "voluntary," they are, at any rate prima facie, very
different in their laws from the movements of what is devoid of life.
I do not wish to say dogmatically that the difference is irreducible;
I think it highly probable that it is not. I say only that the study of
the behaviour of living bodies, in the present state of our knowledge,
is distinct from physics. The study of gases was originally quite
distinct from that of rigid bodies, and would never have advanced to its
present state if it had not been independently pursued. Nowadays both
the gas and the rigid body are manufactured out of a more primitive and
universal kind of matter. In like manner, as a question of methodology,
the laws of living bodies are to be studied, in the first place, without
any undue haste to subordinate them to the laws of physics. Boyle's law
and the rest had to be discovered before the kinetic theory of gases
became possible. But in psychology we are hardly yet at the stage
of Boyle's law. Meanwhile we need not be held up by the bogey of
the universal rigid exactness of physics. This is, as yet, a mere
hypothesis, to be tested empirically without any preconceptions. It may
be true, or it may not. So far, that is all we can say.

Returning from this digression to our main topic, namely, the criticism
of "consciousness," we observe that Freud and his followers, though they
have demonstrated beyond dispute the immense importance of "unconscious"
desires in determining our actions and beliefs, have not attempted the
task of telling us what an "unconscious" desire actually is, and have
thus invested their doctrine with an air of mystery and mythology which
forms a large part of its popular attractiveness. They speak always as
though it were more normal for a desire to be conscious, and as though
a positive cause had to be assigned for its being unconscious. Thus
"the unconscious" becomes a sort of underground prisoner, living in a
dungeon, breaking in at long intervals upon our daylight respectability
with dark groans and maledictions and strange atavistic lusts. The
ordinary reader, almost inevitably, thinks of this underground person as
another consciousness, prevented by what Freud calls the "censor" from
making his voice heard in company, except on rare and dreadful occasions
when he shouts so loud that every one hears him and there is a scandal.
Most of us like the idea that we could be desperately wicked if only we
let ourselves go. For this reason, the Freudian "unconscious" has been a
consolation to many quiet and well-behaved persons.

I do not think the truth is quite so picturesque as this. I believe an
"unconscious" desire is merely a causal law of our behaviour,* namely,
that we remain restlessly active until a certain state of affairs is
realized, when we achieve temporary equilibrium If we know beforehand
what this state of affairs is, our desire is conscious; if not,
unconscious. The unconscious desire is not something actually existing,
but merely a tendency to a certain behaviour; it has exactly the same
status as a force in dynamics. The unconscious desire is in no way
mysterious; it is the natural primitive form of desire, from which the
other has developed through our habit of observing and theorizing (often
wrongly). It is not necessary to suppose, as Freud seems to do,
that every unconscious wish was once conscious, and was then, in his
terminology, "repressed" because we disapproved of it. On the contrary,
we shall suppose that, although Freudian "repression" undoubtedly occurs
and is important, it is not the usual reason for unconsciousness of our
wishes. The usual reason is merely that wishes are all, to begin with,
unconscious, and only become known when they are actively noticed.
Usually, from laziness, people do not notice, but accept the theory
of human nature which they find current, and attribute to themselves
whatever wishes this theory would lead them to expect. We used to be
full of virtuous wishes, but since Freud our wishes have become, in
the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, "deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked." Both these views, in most of those who have held
them, are the product of theory rather than observation, for observation
requires effort, whereas repeating phrases does not.

* Cf. Hart, "The Psychology of Insanity," p. 19.

The interpretation of unconscious wishes which I have been advocating
has been set forth briefly by Professor John B. Watson in an article
called "The Psychology of Wish Fulfilment," which appeared in "The
Scientific Monthly" in November, 1916. Two quotations will serve to show
his point of view:

"The Freudians (he says) have made more or less of a 'metaphysical
entity' out of the censor. They suppose that when wishes are repressed
they are repressed into the 'unconscious,' and that this mysterious
censor stands at the trapdoor lying between the conscious and the
unconscious. Many of us do not believe in a world of the unconscious
(a few of us even have grave doubts about the usefulness of the term
consciousness), hence we try to explain censorship along ordinary
biological lines. We believe that one group of habits can 'down' another
group of habits--or instincts. In this case our ordinary system of
habits--those which we call expressive of our 'real selves'--inhibit
or quench (keep inactive or partially inactive) those habits and
instinctive tendencies which belong largely in the past"(p. 483).

Again, after speaking of the frustration of some impulses which is
involved in acquiring the habits of a civilized adult, he continues:

"It is among these frustrated impulses that I would find the biological
basis of the unfulfilled wish. Such 'wishes' need never have been
'conscious,' and NEED NEVER HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED INTO FREUD'S REALM
OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. It may be inferred from this that there is no
particular reason for applying the term 'wish' to such tendencies"(p.
485).

One of the merits of the general analysis of mind which we shall
be concerned with in the following lectures is that it removes the
atmosphere of mystery from the phenomena brought to light by the
psycho-analysts. Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it
depends upon ignorance. Man has developed out of the animals, and
there is no serious gap between him and the amoeba. Something closely
analogous to knowledge and desire, as regards its effects on behaviour,
exists among animals, even where what we call "consciousness" is hard
to believe in; something equally analogous exists in ourselves in cases
where no trace of "consciousness" can be found. It is therefore
natural to suppose that, what ever may be the correct definition of
"consciousness," "consciousness" is not the essence of life or mind. In
the following lectures, accordingly, this term will disappear until we
have dealt with words, when it will re-emerge as mainly a trivial and
unimportant outcome of linguistic habits.

LECTURE II. INSTINCT AND HABIT

In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena
are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from
the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure
or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that
there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap. It is, of course, POSSIBLE
that there may be, at certain stages in evolution, elements which are
entirely new from the standpoint of analysis, though in their nascent
form they have little influence on behaviour and no very marked
correlatives in structure. But the hypothesis of continuity in mental
development is clearly preferable if no psychological facts make it
impossible. We shall find, if I am not mistaken, that there are no facts
which refute the hypothesis of mental continuity, and that, on the other
hand, this hypothesis affords a useful test of suggested theories as to
the nature of mind.

The hypothesis of mental continuity throughout organic evolution may be
used in two different ways. On the one hand, it may be held that we
have more knowledge of our own minds than those of animals, and that we
should use this knowledge to infer the existence of something similar
to our own mental processes in animals and even in plants. On the other
hand, it may be held that animals and plants present simpler phenomena,
more easily analysed than those of human minds; on this ground it may be
urged that explanations which are adequate in the case of animals ought
not to be lightly rejected in the case of man. The practical effects of
these two views are diametrically opposite: the first leads us to level
up animal intelligence with what we believe ourselves to know about our
own intelligence, while the second leads us to attempt a levelling down
of our own intelligence to something not too remote from what we can
observe in animals. It is therefore important to consider the relative
justification of the two ways of applying the principle of continuity.

It is clear that the question turns upon another, namely, which can we
know best, the psychology of animals or that of human beings? If we
can know most about animals, we shall use this knowledge as a basis for
inference about human beings; if we can know most about human beings, we
shall adopt the opposite procedure. And the question whether we can know
most about the psychology of human beings or about that of animals turns
upon yet another, namely: Is introspection or external observation
the surer method in psychology? This is a question which I propose to
discuss at length in Lecture VI; I shall therefore content myself now
with a statement of the conclusions to be arrived at.

We know a great many things concerning ourselves which we cannot know
nearly so directly concerning animals or even other people. We know when
we have a toothache, what we are thinking of, what dreams we have when
we are asleep, and a host of other occurrences which we only know about
others when they tell us of them, or otherwise make them inferable
by their behaviour. Thus, so far as knowledge of detached facts is
concerned, the advantage is on the side of self-knowledge as against
external observation.

But when we come to the analysis and scientific understanding of the
facts, the advantages on the side of self-knowledge become far less
clear. We know, for example, that we have desires and beliefs, but we
do not know what constitutes a desire or a belief. The phenomena are so
familiar that it is difficult to realize how little we really know about
them. We see in animals, and to a lesser extent in plants, behaviour
more or less similar to that which, in us, is prompted by desires and
beliefs, and we find that, as we descend in the scale of evolution,
behaviour becomes simpler, more easily reducible to rule, more
scientifically analysable and predictable. And just because we are not
misled by familiarity we find it easier to be cautious in interpreting
behaviour when we are dealing with phenomena remote from those of our
own minds: Moreover, introspection, as psychoanalysis has demonstrated,
is extraordinarily fallible even in cases where we feel a high degree of
certainty. The net result seems to be that, though self-knowledge has
a definite and important contribution to make to psychology, it is
exceedingly misleading unless it is constantly checked and controlled
by the test of external observation, and by the theories which such
observation suggests when applied to animal behaviour. On the whole,
therefore, there is probably more to be learnt about human psychology
from animals than about animal psychology from human beings; but this
conclusion is one of degree, and must not be pressed beyond a point.

It is only bodily phenomena that can be directly observed in animals,
or even, strictly speaking, in other human beings. We can observe such
things as their movements, their physiological processes, and the sounds
they emit. Such things as desires and beliefs, which seem obvious
to introspection, are not visible directly to external observation.
Accordingly, if we begin our study of psychology by external
observation, we must not begin by assuming such things as desires and
beliefs, but only such things as external observation can reveal, which
will be characteristics of the movements and physiological processes of
animals. Some animals, for example, always run away from light and hide
themselves in dark places. If you pick up a mossy stone which is lightly
embedded in the earth, you will see a number of small animals scuttling
away from the unwonted daylight and seeking again the darkness of which
you have deprived them. Such animals are sensitive to light, in the
sense that their movements are affected by it; but it would be rash to
infer that they have sensations in any way analogous to our sensations
of sight. Such inferences, which go beyond the observable facts, are to
be avoided with the utmost care.

It is customary to divide human movements into three classes, voluntary,
reflex and mechanical. We may illustrate the distinction by a quotation
from William James ("Psychology," i, 12):

"If I hear the conductor calling 'all aboard' as I enter the depot, my
heart first stops, then palpitates, and my legs respond to the air-waves
falling on my tympanum by quickening their movements. If I stumble as I
run, the sensation of falling provokes a movement of the hands towards
the direction of the fall, the effect of which is to shield the body
from too sudden a shock. If a cinder enter my eye, its lids close
forcibly and a copious flow of tears tends to wash it out.

"These three responses to a sensational stimulus differ, however, in
many respects. The closure of the eye and the lachrymation are quite
involuntary, and so is the disturbance of the heart. Such involuntary
responses we know as 'reflex' acts. The motion of the arms to break the
shock of falling may also be called reflex, since it occurs too quickly
to be deliberately intended. Whether it be instinctive or whether it
result from the pedestrian education of childhood may be doubtful; it
is, at any rate, less automatic than the previous acts, for a man might
by conscious effort learn to perform it more skilfully, or even to
suppress it altogether. Actions of this kind, with which instinct and
volition enter upon equal terms, have been called 'semi-reflex.' The
act of running towards the train, on the other hand, has no instinctive
element about it. It is purely the result of education, and is preceded
by a consciousness of the purpose to be attained and a distinct mandate
of the will. It is a 'voluntary act.' Thus the animal's reflex and
voluntary performances shade into each other gradually, being connected
by acts which may often occur automatically, but may also be modified by
conscious intelligence.

"An outside observer, unable to perceive the accompanying consciousness,
might be wholly at a loss to discriminate between the automatic acts and
those which volition escorted. But if the criterion of mind's existence
be the choice of the proper means for the attainment of a supposed
end, all the acts alike seem to be inspired by intelligence, for
APPROPRIATENESS characterizes them all alike."

There is one movement, among those that James mentions at first, which
is not subsequently classified, namely, the stumbling. This is the
kind of movement which may be called "mechanical"; it is evidently of a
different kind from either reflex or voluntary movements, and more akin
to the movements of dead matter. We may define a movement of an animal's
body as "mechanical" when it proceeds as if only dead matter were
involved. For example, if you fall over a cliff, you move under the
influence of gravitation, and your centre of gravity describes just as
correct a parabola as if you were already dead. Mechanical movements
have not the characteristic of appropriateness, unless by accident, as
when a drunken man falls into a waterbutt and is sobered. But reflex
and voluntary movements are not ALWAYS appropriate, unless in some very
recondite sense. A moth flying into a lamp is not acting sensibly; no
more is a man who is in such a hurry to get his ticket that he cannot
remember the name of his destination. Appropriateness is a complicated
and merely approximate idea, and for the present we shall do well to
dismiss it from our thoughts.

As James states, there is no difference, from the point of view of
the outside observer, between voluntary and reflex movements. The
physiologist can discover that both depend upon the nervous system,
and he may find that the movements which we call voluntary depend upon
higher centres in the brain than those that are reflex. But he
cannot discover anything as to the presence or absence of "will" or
"consciousness," for these things can only be seen from within, if
at all. For the present, we wish to place ourselves resolutely in the
position of outside observers; we will therefore ignore the distinction
between voluntary and reflex movements. We will call the two together
"vital" movements. We may then distinguish "vital" from mechanical
movements by the fact that vital movements depend for their causation
upon the special properties of the nervous system, while mechanical
movements depend only upon the properties which animal bodies share with
matter in general.

There is need for some care if the distinction between mechanical and
vital movements is to be made precise. It is quite likely that, if we
knew more about animal bodies, we could deduce all their movements from
the laws of chemistry and physics. It is already fairly easy to see how
chemistry reduces to physics, i.e. how the differences between different
chemical elements can be accounted for by differences of physical
structure, the constituents of the structure being electrons which are
exactly alike in all kinds of matter. We only know in part how to reduce
physiology to chemistry, but we know enough to make it likely that the
reduction is possible. If we suppose it effected, what would become of
the difference between vital and mechanical movements?

Some analogies will make the difference clear. A shock to a mass of
dynamite produces quite different effects from an equal shock to a mass
of steel: in the one case there is a vast explosion, while in the other
case there is hardly any noticeable disturbance. Similarly, you may
sometimes find on a mountain-side a large rock poised so delicately that
a touch will set it crashing down into the valley, while the rocks all
round are so firm that only a considerable force can dislodge them What
is analogous in these two cases is the existence of a great store of
energy in unstable equilibrium ready to burst into violent motion by
the addition of a very slight disturbance. Similarly, it requires only
a very slight expenditure of energy to send a post-card with the words
"All is discovered; fly!" but the effect in generating kinetic energy
is said to be amazing. A human body, like a mass of dynamite, contains
a store of energy in unstable equilibrium, ready to be directed in this
direction or that by a disturbance which is physically very small,
such as a spoken word. In all such cases the reduction of behaviour to
physical laws can only be effected by entering into great minuteness; so
long as we confine ourselves to the observation of comparatively
large masses, the way in which the equilibrium will be upset cannot be
determined. Physicists distinguish between macroscopic and microscopic
equations: the former determine the visible movements of bodies of
ordinary size, the latter the minute occurrences in the smallest parts.
It is only the microscopic equations that are supposed to be the same
for all sorts of matter. The macroscopic equations result from a process
of averaging out, and may be different in different cases. So, in our
instance, the laws of macroscopic phenomena are different for mechanical
and vital movements, though the laws of microscopic phenomena may be the
same.

We may say, speaking somewhat roughly, that a stimulus applied to the
nervous system, like a spark to dynamite, is able to take advantage of
the stored energy in unstable equilibrium, and thus to produce movements
out of proportion to the proximate cause. Movements produced in this way
are vital movements, while mechanical movements are those in which the
stored energy of a living body is not involved. Similarly dynamite may
be exploded, thereby displaying its characteristic properties, or may
(with due precautions) be carted about like any other mineral. The
explosion is analogous to vital movements, the carting about to
mechanical movements.

Mechanical movements are of no interest to the psychologist, and it has
only been necessary to define them in order to be able to exclude them.
When a psychologist studies behaviour, it is only vital movements
that concern him. We shall, therefore, proceed to ignore mechanical
movements, and study only the properties of the remainder.

The next point is to distinguish between movements that are instinctive
and movements that are acquired by experience. This distinction also is
to some extent one of degree. Professor Lloyd Morgan gives the following
definition of "instinctive behaviour":

"That which is, on its first occurrence, independent of prior
experience; which tends to the well-being of the individual and the
preservation of the race; which is similarly performed by all members
of the same more or less restricted group of animals; and which may be
subject to subsequent modification under the guidance of experience." *

* "Instinct and Experience" (Methuen, 1912) p. 5.

This definition is framed for the purposes of biology, and is in
some respects unsuited to the needs of psychology. Though perhaps
unavoidable, allusion to "the same more or less restricted group
of animals" makes it impossible to judge what is instinctive in the
behaviour of an isolated individual. Moreover, "the well-being of
the individual and the preservation of the race" is only a usual
characteristic, not a universal one, of the sort of movements that, from
our point of view, are to be called instinctive; instances of harmful
instincts will be given shortly. The essential point of the definition,
from our point of view, is that an instinctive movement is in dependent
of prior experience.

We may say that an "instinctive" movement is a vital movement performed
by an animal the first time that it finds itself in a novel situation;
or, more correctly, one which it would perform if the situation were
novel.* The instincts of an animal are different at different periods of
its growth, and this fact may cause changes of behaviour which are
not due to learning. The maturing and seasonal fluctuation of the
sex-instinct affords a good illustration. When the sex-instinct first
matures, the behaviour of an animal in the presence of a mate is
different from its previous behaviour in similar circumstances, but is
not learnt, since it is just the same if the animal has never previously
been in the presence of a mate.

* Though this can only be decided by comparison with other
members of the species, and thus exposes us to the need of
comparison which we thought an objection to Professor Lloyd
Morgan's definition.

On the other hand, a movement is "learnt," or embodies a "habit," if it
is due to previous experience of similar situations, and is not what it
would be if the animal had had no such experience.

There are various complications which blur the sharpness of this
distinction in practice. To begin with, many instincts mature gradually,
and while they are immature an animal may act in a fumbling manner which
is very difficult to distinguish from learning. James ("Psychology," ii,
407) maintains that children walk by instinct, and that the awkwardness
of their first attempts is only due to the fact that the instinct has
not yet ripened. He hopes that "some scientific widower, left alone with
his offspring at the critical moment, may ere long test this suggestion
on the living subject." However this may be, he quotes evidence to show
that "birds do not LEARN to fly," but fly by instinct when they reach
the appropriate age (ib., p. 406). In the second place, instinct often
gives only a rough outline of the sort of thing to do, in which case
learning is necessary in order to acquire certainty and precision in
action. In the third place, even in the clearest cases of acquired
habit, such as speaking, some instinct is required to set in motion
the process of learning. In the case of speaking, the chief instinct
involved is commonly supposed to be that of imitation, but this may be
questioned. (See Thorndike's "Animal Intelligence," p. 253 ff.)

In spite of these qualifications, the broad distinction between instinct
and habit is undeniable. To take extreme cases, every animal at birth
can take food by instinct, before it has had opportunity to learn; on
the other hand, no one can ride a bicycle by instinct, though, after
learning, the necessary movements become just as automatic as if they
were instinctive.

The process of learning, which consists in the acquisition of habits,
has been much studied in various animals.* For example: you put a hungry
animal, say a cat, in a cage which has a door that can be opened by
lifting a latch; outside the cage you put food. The cat at first dashes
all round the cage, making frantic efforts to force a way out. At last,
by accident, the latch is lifted and the cat pounces on the food. Next
day you repeat the experiment, and you find that the cat gets out much
more quickly than the first time, although it still makes some random
movements. The third day it gets out still more quickly, and before long
it goes straight to the latch and lifts it at once. Or you make a model
of the Hampton Court maze, and put a rat in the middle, assaulted by the
smell of food on the outside. The rat starts running down the passages,
and is constantly stopped by blind alleys, but at last, by persistent
attempts, it gets out. You repeat this experiment day after day; you
measure the time taken by the rat in reaching the food; you find that
the time rapidly diminishes, and that after a while the rat ceases to
make any wrong turnings. It is by essentially similar processes that we
learn speaking, writing, mathematics, or the government of an empire.

* The scientific study of this subject may almost be said to
begin with Thorndike's "Animal Intelligence" (Macmillan,
1911).

Professor Watson ("Behavior," pp. 262-3) has an ingenious theory as to
the way in which habit arises out of random movements. I think there is
a reason why his theory cannot be regarded as alone sufficient, but it
seems not unlikely that it is partly correct. Suppose, for the sake of
simplicity, that there are just ten random movements which may be made
by the animal--say, ten paths down which it may go--and that only one of
these leads to food, or whatever else represents success in the case in
question. Then the successful movement always occurs during the animal's
attempts, whereas each of the others, on the average, occurs in only
half the attempts. Thus the tendency to repeat a previous performance
(which is easily explicable without the intervention of "consciousness")
leads to a greater emphasis on the successful movement than on any
other, and in time causes it alone to be performed. The objection to
this view, if taken as the sole explanation, is that on improvement
ought to set in till after the SECOND trial, whereas experiment shows
that already at the second attempt the animal does better than the
first time. Something further is, therefore, required to account for the
genesis of habit from random movements; but I see no reason to suppose
that what is further required involves "consciousness."

Mr. Thorndike (op. cit., p. 244) formulates two "provisional laws of
acquired behaviour or learning," as follows:

"The Law of Effect is that: Of several responses made to the same
situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by
satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more
firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will
be more likely to recur; those which are accompanied or closely followed
by discomfort to the animal will, other things being equal, have their
connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs,
they will be less likely to occur. The greater the satisfaction or
discomfort, the greater the strengthening or weakening of the bond.

"The Law of Exercise is that: Any response to a situation will, other
things being equal, be more strongly connected with the situation
in proportion to the number of times it has been connected with that
situation and to the average vigour and duration of the connections."

With the explanation to be presently given of the meaning of
"satisfaction" and "discomfort," there seems every reason to accept
these two laws.

What is true of animals, as regards instinct and habit, is equally
true of men. But the higher we rise in the evolutionary scale, broadly
speaking, the greater becomes the power of learning, and the fewer are
the occasions when pure instinct is exhibited unmodified in adult life.
This applies with great force to man, so much so that some have thought
instinct less important in the life of man than in that of animals.
This, however, would be a mistake. Learning is only possible when
instinct supplies the driving-force. The animals in cages, which
gradually learn to get out, perform random movements at first, which
are purely instinctive. But for these random movements, they would never
acquire the experience which afterwards enables them to produce the
right movement. (This is partly questioned by Hobhouse*--wrongly, I
think.) Similarly, children learning to talk make all sorts of sounds,
until one day the right sound comes by accident. It is clear that the
original making of random sounds, without which speech would never be
learnt, is instinctive. I think we may say the same of all the habits
and aptitudes that we acquire in all of them there has been present
throughout some instinctive activity, prompting at first rather
inefficient movements, but supplying the driving force while more and
more effective methods are being acquired. A cat which is hungry smells
fish, and goes to the larder. This is a thoroughly efficient method when
there is fish in the larder, and it is often successfully practised by
children. But in later life it is found that merely going to the larder
does not cause fish to be there; after a series of random movements it
is found that this result is to be caused by going to the City in the
morning and coming back in the evening. No one would have guessed a
priori that this movement of a middle-aged man's body would cause fish
to come out of the sea into his larder, but experience shows that it
does, and the middle-aged man therefore continues to go to the City,
just as the cat in the cage continues to lift the latch when it has once
found it. Of course, in actual fact, human learning is rendered easier,
though psychologically more complex, through language; but at bottom
language does not alter the essential character of learning, or of the
part played by instinct in promoting learning. Language, however, is a
subject upon which I do not wish to speak until a later lecture.

* "Mind in Evolution" (Macmillan, 1915), pp. 236-237.

The popular conception of instinct errs by imagining it to be infallible
and preternaturally wise, as well as incapable of modification. This is
a complete delusion. Instinct, as a rule, is very rough and ready, able
to achieve its result under ordinary circumstances, but easily misled by
anything unusual. Chicks follow their mother by instinct, but when they
are quite young they will follow with equal readiness any moving
object remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James,
"Psychology," ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the
supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which
lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from
Drever's "Instinct in Man," p. 92:

"According to Fabre's observations, which Bergson accepts, the Ammophila
stings its prey EXACTLY and UNERRINGLY in EACH of the nervous centres.
The result is that the caterpillar is paralyzed, but not immediately
killed, the advantage of this being that the larva cannot be injured by
any movement of the caterpillar, upon which the egg is deposited, and is
provided with fresh meat when the time comes.

"Now Dr. and Mrs. Peckham have shown that the sting of the wasp is NOT
UNERRING, as Fabre alleges, that the number of stings is NOT CONSTANT,
that sometimes the caterpillar is NOT PARALYZED, and sometimes it is
KILLED OUTRIGHT, and that THE DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT APPARENTLY
MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO THE LARVA, which is not injured by slight
movements of the caterpillar, nor by consuming food decomposed rather
than fresh caterpillar."

This illustrates how love of the marvellous may mislead even so careful
an observer as Fabre and so eminent a philosopher as Bergson.

In the same chapter of Dr. Drever's book there are some interesting
examples of the mistakes made by instinct. I will quote one as a sample:

"The larva of the Lomechusa beetle eats the young of the ants, in whose
nest it is reared. Nevertheless, the ants tend the Lomechusa larvae
with the same care they bestow on their own young. Not only so, but they
apparently discover that the methods of feeding, which suit their own
larvae, would prove fatal to the guests, and accordingly they change
their whole system of nursing" (loc. cit., p. 106).

Semon ("Die Mneme," pp. 207-9) gives a good illustration of an instinct
growing wiser through experience. He relates how hunters attract stags
by imitating the sounds of other members of their species, male or
female, but find that the older a stag becomes the more difficult it
is to deceive him, and the more accurate the imitation has to be. The
literature of instinct is vast, and illustrations might be multiplied
indefinitely. The main points as regards instinct, which need to be
emphasized as against the popular conceptions of it, are:

(1) That instinct requires no prevision of the biological end which it
serves;

(2) That instinct is only adapted to achieve this end in the usual
circumstances of the animal in question, and has no more precision than
is necessary for success AS A RULE;

(3) That processes initiated by instinct often come to be performed
better after experience;

(4) That instinct supplies the impulses to experimental movements which
are required for the process of learning;

(5) That instincts in their nascent stages are easily modifiable, and
capable of being attached to various sorts of objects.

All the above characteristics of instinct can be established by purely
external observation, except the fact that instinct does not require
prevision. This, though not strictly capable of being PROVED by
observation, is irresistibly suggested by the most obvious phenomena.
Who can believe, for example, that a new-born baby is aware of the
necessity of food for preserving life? Or that insects, in laying eggs,
are concerned for the preservation of their species? The essence of
instinct, one might say, is that it provides a mechanism for
acting without foresight in a manner which is usually advantageous
biologically. It is partly for this reason that it is so important to
understand the fundamental position of instinct in prompting both animal
and human behaviour.

LECTURE III. DESIRE AND FEELING

Desire is a subject upon which, if I am not mistaken, true views can
only be arrived at by an almost complete reversal of the ordinary
unreflecting opinion. It is natural to regard desire as in its essence
an attitude towards something which is imagined, not actual; this
something is called the END or OBJECT of the desire, and is said to be
the PURPOSE of any action resulting from the desire. We think of the
content of the desire as being just like the content of a belief, while
the attitude taken up towards the content is different. According to
this theory, when we say: "I hope it will rain," or "I expect it will
rain," we express, in the first case, a desire, and in the second, a
belief, with an identical content, namely, the image of rain. It would
be easy to say that, just as belief is one kind of feeling in relation
to this content, so desire is another kind. According to this view, what
comes first in desire is something imagined, with a specific feeling
related to it, namely, that specific feeling which we call "desiring"
it. The discomfort associated with unsatisfied desire, and the actions
which aim at satisfying desire, are, in this view, both of them effects
of the desire. I think it is fair to say that this is a view against
which common sense would not rebel; nevertheless, I believe it to be
radically mistaken. It cannot be refuted logically, but various facts
can be adduced which make it gradually less simple and plausible, until
at last it turns out to be easier to abandon it wholly and look at the
matter in a totally different way.

The first set of facts to be adduced against the common sense view of
desire are those studied by psycho-analysis. In all human beings, but
most markedly in those suffering from hysteria and certain forms of
insanity, we find what are called "unconscious" desires, which are
commonly regarded as showing self-deception. Most psycho-analysts
pay little attention to the analysis of desire, being interested in
discovering by observation what it is that people desire, rather than in
discovering what actually constitutes desire. I think the strangeness of
what they report would be greatly diminished if it were expressed in the
language of a behaviourist theory of desire, rather than in the language
of every-day beliefs. The general description of the sort of phenomena
that bear on our present question is as follows: A person states that
his desires are so-and-so, and that it is these desires that inspire his
actions; but the outside observer perceives that his actions are such
as to realize quite different ends from those which he avows, and
that these different ends are such as he might be expected to desire.
Generally they are less virtuous than his professed desires, and are
therefore less agreeable to profess than these are. It is accordingly
supposed that they really exist as desires for ends, but in a
subconscious part of the mind, which the patient refuses to admit into
consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are
no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without
obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the
underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything
resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe
that only positive self-deception conceals from us that we really wish
for things which are abhorrent to our explicit life.

In the cases in question we have a conflict between the outside observer
and the patient's consciousness. The whole tendency of psycho-analysis
is to trust the outside observer rather than the testimony of
introspection. I believe this tendency to be entirely right, but to
demand a re-statement of what constitutes desire, exhibiting it as a
causal law of our actions, not as something actually existing in our
minds.

But let us first get a clearer statement of the essential characteristic
of the phenomena.

A person, we find, states that he desires a certain end A, and that he
is acting with a view to achieving it. We observe, however, that his
actions are such as are likely to achieve a quite different end B, and
that B is the sort of end that often seems to be aimed at by animals and
savages, though civilized people are supposed to have discarded it. We
sometimes find also a whole set of false beliefs, of such a kind as to
persuade the patient that his actions are really a means to A, when in
fact they are a means to B. For example, we have an impulse to inflict
pain upon those whom we hate; we therefore believe that they are wicked,
and that punishment will reform them. This belief enables us to act upon
the impulse to inflict pain, while believing that we are acting upon
the desire to lead sinners to repentance. It is for this reason that the
criminal law has been in all ages more severe than it would have been if
the impulse to ameliorate the criminal had been what really inspired
it. It seems simple to explain such a state of affairs as due to
"self-deception," but this explanation is often mythical. Most people,
in thinking about punishment, have had no more need to hide their
vindictive impulses from themselves than they have had to hide
the exponential theorem. Our impulses are not patent to a casual
observation, but are only to be discovered by a scientific study of our
actions, in the course of which we must regard ourselves as objectively
as we should the motions of the planets or the chemical reactions of a
new element.

The study of animals reinforces this conclusion, and is in many ways
the best preparation for the analysis of desire. In animals we are
not troubled by the disturbing influence of ethical considerations. In
dealing with human beings, we are perpetually distracted by being told
that such-and-such a view is gloomy or cynical or pessimistic: ages of
human conceit have built up such a vast myth as to our wisdom and virtue
that any intrusion of the mere scientific desire to know the facts is
instantly resented by those who cling to comfortable illusions. But no
one cares whether animals are virtuous or not, and no one is under the
delusion that they are rational. Moreover, we do not expect them to be
so "conscious," and are prepared to admit that their instincts prompt
useful actions without any prevision of the ends which they achieve. For
all these reasons, there is much in the analysis of mind which is more
easily discovered by the study of animals than by the observation of
human beings.

We all think that, by watching the behaviour of animals, we can discover
more or less what they desire. If this is the case--and I fully agree
that it is--desire must be capable of being exhibited in actions, for it
is only the actions of animals that we can observe. They MAY have minds
in which all sorts of things take place, but we can know nothing about
their minds except by means of inferences from their actions; and the
more such inferences are examined, the more dubious they appear. It
would seem, therefore, that actions alone must be the test of the
desires of animals. From this it is an easy step to the conclusion that
an animal's desire is nothing but a characteristic of a certain series
of actions, namely, those which would be commonly regarded as inspired
by the desire in question. And when it has been shown that this view
affords a satisfactory account of animal desires, it is not difficult
to see that the same explanation is applicable to the desires of human
beings.

We judge easily from the behaviour of an animal of a familiar
kind whether it is hungry or thirsty, or pleased or displeased, or
inquisitive or terrified. The verification of our judgment, so far
as verification is possible, must be derived from the immediately
succeeding actions of the animal. Most people would say that they infer
first something about the animal's state of mind--whether it is hungry
or thirsty and so on--and thence derive their expectations as to its
subsequent conduct. But this detour through the animal's supposed mind
is wholly unnecessary. We can say simply: The animal's behaviour during
the last minute has had those characteristics which distinguish what
is called "hunger," and it is likely that its actions during the next
minute will be similar in this respect, unless it finds food, or is
interrupted by a stronger impulse, such as fear. An animal which is
hungry is restless, it goes to the places where food is often to be
found, it sniffs with its nose or peers with its eyes or otherwise
increases the sensitiveness of its sense-organs; as soon as it is near
enough to food for its sense-organs to be affected, it goes to it with
all speed and proceeds to eat; after which, if the quantity of food has
been sufficient, its whole demeanour changes it may very likely lie
down and go to sleep. These things and others like them are observable
phenomena distinguishing a hungry animal from one which is not hungry.
The characteristic mark by which we recognize a series of actions
which display hunger is not the animal's mental state, which we cannot
observe, but something in its bodily behaviour; it is this observable
trait in the bodily behaviour that I am proposing to call "hunger,"
not some possibly mythical and certainly unknowable ingredient of the
animal's mind.

Generalizing what occurs in the case of hunger, we may say that what
we call a desire in an animal is always displayed in a cycle of actions
having certain fairly well marked characteristics. There is first a
state of activity, consisting, with qualifications to be mentioned
presently, of movements likely to have a certain result; these
movements, unless interrupted, continue until the result is achieved,
after which there is usually a period of comparative quiescence. A cycle
of actions of this sort has marks by which it is broadly distinguished
from the motions of dead matter. The most notable of these marks
are--(1) the appropriateness of the actions for the realization of a
certain result; (2) the continuance of action until that result has been
achieved. Neither of these can be pressed beyond a point. Either may
be (a) to some extent present in dead matter, and (b) to a considerable
extent absent in animals, while vegetable are intermediate, and display
only a much fainter form of the behaviour which leads us to attribute
desire to animals. (a) One might say rivers "desire" the sea water,
roughly speaking, remains in restless motion until it reaches either
the sea or a place from which it cannot issue without going uphill, and
therefore we might say that this is what it wishes while it is flowing.
We do not say so, because we can account for the behaviour of water by
the laws of physics; and if we knew more about animals, we might equally
cease to attribute desires to them, since we might find physical and
chemical reactions sufficient to account for their behaviour. (b) Many
of the movements of animals do not exhibit the characteristics of the
cycles which seem to embody desire. There are first of all the movements
which are "mechanical," such as slipping and falling, where ordinary
physical forces operate upon the animal's body almost as if it were
dead matter. An animal which falls over a cliff may make a number of
desperate struggles while it is in the air, but its centre of gravity
will move exactly as it would if the animal were dead. In this case, if
the animal is killed at the end of the fall, we have, at first sight,
just the characteristics of a cycle of actions embodying desire, namely,
restless movement until the ground is reached, and then quiescence.
Nevertheless, we feel no temptation to say that the animal desired what
occurred, partly because of the obviously mechanical nature of the whole
occurrence, partly because, when an animal survives a fall, it tends not
to repeat the experience.

There may be other reasons also, but of them I do not wish to speak yet.
Besides mechanical movements, there are interrupted movements, as when
a bird, on its way to eat your best peas, is frightened away by the boy
whom you are employing for that purpose. If interruptions are frequent
and completion of cycles rare, the characteristics by which cycles
are observed may become so blurred as to be almost unrecognizable. The
result of these various considerations is that the differences
between animals and dead matter, when we confine ourselves to external
unscientific observation of integral behaviour, are a matter of degree
and not very precise. It is for this reason that it has always been
possible for fanciful people to maintain that even stocks and stones
have some vague kind of soul. The evidence that animals have souls is
so very shaky that, if it is assumed to be conclusive, one might just as
well go a step further and extend the argument by analogy to all matter.
Nevertheless, in spite of vagueness and doubtful cases, the existence
of cycles in the behaviour of animals is a broad characteristic by which
they are prima facie distinguished from ordinary matter; and I think it
is this characteristic which leads us to attribute desires to animals,
since it makes their behaviour resemble what we do when (as we say) we
are acting from desire.

I shall adopt the following definitions for describing the behaviour of
animals:

A "behaviour-cycle" is a series of voluntary or reflex movements of an
animal, tending to cause a certain result, and continuing until that
result is caused, unless they are interrupted by death, accident,
or some new behaviour-cycle. (Here "accident" may be defined as the
intervention of purely physical laws causing mechanical movements.)

The "purpose" of a behaviour-cycle is the result which brings it to an
end, normally by a condition of temporary quiescence-provided there is
no interruption.

An animal is said to "desire" the purpose of a behaviour cycle while the
behaviour-cycle is in progress.

I believe these definitions to be adequate also to human purposes and
desires, but for the present I am only occupied with animals and with
what can be learnt by external observation. I am very anxious that no
ideas should be attached to the words "purpose" and "desire" beyond
those involved in the above definitions.

We have not so far considered what is the nature of the initial stimulus
to a behaviour-cycle. Yet it is here that the usual view of desire seems
on the strongest ground. The hungry animal goes on making movements
until it gets food; it seems natural, therefore, to suppose that the
idea of food is present throughout the process, and that the thought of
the end to be achieved sets the whole process in motion. Such a view,
however, is obviously untenable in many cases, especially where instinct
is concerned. Take, for example, reproduction and the rearing of the
young. Birds mate, build a nest, lay eggs in it, sit on the eggs, feed
the young birds, and care for them until they are fully grown. It
is totally impossible to suppose that this series of actions, which
constitutes one behaviour-cycle, is inspired by any prevision of the
end, at any rate the first time it is performed.* We must suppose that
the stimulus to the performance of each act is an impulsion from behind,
not an attraction from the future. The bird does what it does, at each
stage, because it has an impulse to that particular action, not because
it perceives that the whole cycle of actions will contribute to the
preservation of the species. The same considerations apply to other
instincts. A hungry animal feels restless, and is led by instinctive
impulses to perform the movements which give it nourishment; but the act
of seeking food is not sufficient evidence from which to conclude that
the animal has the thought of food in its "mind."

* For evidence as to birds' nests, cf. Semon, "Die Mneme,"
pp. 209, 210.

Coming now to human beings, and to what we know about our own actions,
it seems clear that what, with us, sets a behaviour-cycle in motion is
some sensation of the sort which we call disagreeable. Take the case
of hunger: we have first an uncomfortable feeling inside, producing a
disinclination to sit still, a sensitiveness to savoury smells, and an
attraction towards any food that there may be in our neighbourhood. At
any moment during this process we may become aware that we are hungry,
in the sense of saying to ourselves, "I am hungry"; but we may have been
acting with reference to food for some time before this moment. While we
are talking or reading, we may eat in complete unconsciousness; but we
perform the actions of eating just as we should if we were conscious,
and they cease when our hunger is appeased. What we call "consciousness"
seems to be a mere spectator of the process; even when it issues orders,
they are usually, like those of a wise parent, just such as would have
been obeyed even if they had not been given. This view may seem at first
exaggerated, but the more our so-called volitions and their causes are
examined, the more it is forced upon us. The part played by words in all
this is complicated, and a potent source of confusions; I shall return
to it later. For the present, I am still concerned with primitive
desire, as it exists in man, but in the form in which man shows his
affinity to his animal ancestors.

Conscious desire is made up partly of what is essential to desire,
partly of beliefs as to what we want. It is important to be clear as to
the part which does not consist of beliefs.

The primitive non-cognitive element in desire seems to be a push, not
a pull, an impulsion away from the actual, rather than an attraction
towards the ideal. Certain sensations and other mental occurrences have
a property which we call discomfort; these cause such bodily movements
as are likely to lead to their cessation. When the discomfort ceases,
or even when it appreciably diminishes, we have sensations possessing a
property which we call PLEASURE. Pleasurable sensations either stimulate
no action at all, or at most stimulate such action as is likely to
prolong them. I shall return shortly to the consideration of what
discomfort and pleasure are in themselves; for the present, it is
their connection with action and desire that concerns us. Abandoning
momentarily the standpoint of behaviourism, we may presume that hungry
animals experience sensations involving discomfort, and stimulating such
movements as seem likely to bring them to the food which is outside the
cages. When they have reached the food and eaten it, their discomfort
ceases and their sensations become pleasurable. It SEEMS, mistakenly, as
if the animals had had this situation in mind throughout, when in fact
they have been continually pushed by discomfort. And when an animal
is reflective, like some men, it comes to think that it had the final
situation in mind throughout; sometimes it comes to know what situation
will bring satisfaction, so that in fact the discomfort does bring the
thought of what will allay it. Nevertheless the sensation involving
discomfort remains the prime mover.

This brings us to the question of the nature of discomfort and pleasure.
Since Kant it has been customary to recognize three great divisions of
mental phenomena, which are typified by knowledge, desire and feeling,
where "feeling" is used to mean pleasure and discomfort. Of course,
"knowledge" is too definite a word: the states of mind concerned are
grouped together as "cognitive," and are to embrace not only beliefs,
but perceptions, doubts, and the understanding of concepts. "Desire,"
also, is narrower than what is intended: for example, WILL is to be
included in this category, and in fact every thing that involves any
kind of striving, or "conation" as it is technically called. I do not
myself believe that there is any value in this threefold division of the
contents of mind. I believe that sensations (including images) supply
all the "stuff" of the mind, and that everything else can be analysed
into groups of sensations related in various ways, or characteristics of
sensations or of groups of sensations. As regards belief, I shall give
grounds for this view in later lectures. As regards desires, I have
given some grounds in this lecture. For the present, it is pleasure and
discomfort that concern us. There are broadly three theories that might
be held in regard to them. We may regard them as separate existing
items in those who experience them, or we may regard them as intrinsic
qualities of sensations and other mental occurrences, or we may regard
them as mere names for the causal characteristics of the occurrences
which are uncomfortable or pleasant. The first of these theories,
namely, that which regards discomfort and pleasure as actual contents in
those who experience them, has, I think, nothing conclusive to be said
in its favour.* It is suggested chiefly by an ambiguity in the word
"pain," which has misled many people, including Berkeley, whom it
supplied with one of his arguments for subjective idealism. We may use
"pain" as the opposite of "pleasure," and "painful" as the opposite of
"pleasant," or we may use "pain" to mean a certain sort of sensation, on
a level with the sensations of heat and cold and touch. The latter use
of the word has prevailed in psychological literature, and it is now
no longer used as the opposite of "pleasure." Dr. H. Head, in a recent
publication, has stated this distinction as follows:**

* Various arguments in its favour are advanced by A.
Wohlgemuth, "On the feelings and their neural correlate,
with an examination of the nature of pain," "British Journal
of Psychology," viii, 4. (1917). But as these arguments are
largely a reductio ad absurdum of other theories, among
which that which I am advocating is not included, I cannot
regard them as establishing their contention.

** "Sensation and the Cerebral Cortex," "Brain," vol. xli,
part ii (September, 1918), p. 90. Cf. also Wohlgemuth, loc.
cit. pp. 437, 450.

"It is necessary at the outset to distinguish clearly between
'discomfort' and 'pain.' Pain is a distinct sensory quality equivalent
to heat and cold, and its intensity can be roughly graded according to
the force expended in stimulation. Discomfort, on the other hand,
is that feeling-tone which is directly opposed to pleasure. It may
accompany sensations not in themselves essentially painful; as for
instance that produced by tickling the sole of the foot. The reaction
produced by repeated pricking contains both these elements; for it
evokes that sensory quality known as pain, accompanied by a disagreeable
feeling-tone, which we have called discomfort. On the other hand,
excessive pressure, except when applied directly over some nerve-trunk,
tends to excite more discomfort than pain."

The confusion between discomfort and pain has made people regard
discomfort as a more substantial thing than it is, and this in turn has
reacted upon the view taken of pleasure, since discomfort and pleasure
are evidently on a level in this respect. As soon as discomfort is
clearly distinguished from the sensation of pain, it becomes more
natural to regard discomfort and pleasure as properties of mental
occurrences than to regard them as separate mental occurrences on their
own account. I shall therefore dismiss the view that they are separate
mental occurrences, and regard them as properties of such experiences as
would be called respectively uncomfortable and pleasant.

It remains to be examined whether they are actual qualities of such
occurrences, or are merely differences as to causal properties. I do not
myself see any way of deciding this question; either view seems equally
capable of accounting for the facts. If this is true, it is safer to
avoid the assumption that there are such intrinsic qualities of
mental occurrences as are in question, and to assume only the causal
differences which are undeniable. Without condemning the intrinsic
theory, we can define discomfort and pleasure as consisting in causal
properties, and say only what will hold on either of the two theories.
Following this course, we shall say:

"Discomfort" is a property of a sensation or other mental occurrence,
consisting in the fact that the occurrence in question stimulates
voluntary or reflex movements tending to produce some more or less
definite change involving the cessation of the occurrence.

"Pleasure" is a property of a sensation or other mental occurrence,
consisting in the fact that the occurrence in question either does not
stimulate any voluntary or reflex movement, or, if it does, stimulates
only such as tend to prolong the occurrence in question.*

* Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., p. 243.

"Conscious" desire, which we have now to consider, consists of desire
in the sense hitherto discussed, together with a true belief as to its
"purpose," i.e. as to the state of affairs that will bring quiescence
with cessation of the discomfort. If our theory of desire is correct,
a belief as to its purpose may very well be erroneous, since only
experience can show what causes a discomfort to cease. When the
experience needed is common and simple, as in the case of hunger, a
mistake is not very probable. But in other cases--e.g. erotic desire in
those who have had little or no experience of its satisfaction--mistakes
are to be expected, and do in fact very often occur. The practice of
inhibiting impulses, which is to a great extent necessary to civilized
life, makes mistakes easier, by preventing experience of the actions to
which a desire would otherwise lead, and by often causing the inhibited
impulses themselves to be unnoticed or quickly forgotten. The perfectly
natural mistakes which thus arise constitute a large proportion of what
is, mistakenly in part, called self-deception, and attributed by Freud
to the "censor."

But there is a further point which needs emphasizing, namely, that a
belief that something is desired has often a tendency to cause the very
desire that is believed in. It is this fact that makes the effect of
"consciousness" on desire so complicated.

When we believe that we desire a certain state of affairs, that often
tends to cause a real desire for it. This is due partly to the influence
of words upon our emotions, in rhetoric for example, and partly to the
general fact that discomfort normally belongs to the belief that we
desire such-and-such a thing that we do not possess. Thus what was
originally a false opinion as to the object of a desire acquires a
certain truth: the false opinion generates a secondary subsidiary
desire, which nevertheless becomes real. Let us take an illustration.
Suppose you have been jilted in a way which wounds your vanity. Your
natural impulsive desire will be of the sort expressed in Donne's poem:

When by thy scorn, O Murderess, I am dead,

in which he explains how he will haunt the poor lady as a ghost, and
prevent her from enjoying a moment's peace. But two things stand in
the way of your expressing yourself so naturally: on the one hand, your
vanity, which will not acknowledge how hard you are hit; on the other
hand, your conviction that you are a civilized and humane person,
who could not possibly indulge so crude a desire as revenge. You will
therefore experience a restlessness which will at first seem quite
aimless, but will finally resolve itself in a conscious desire to change
your profession, or go round the world, or conceal your identity and
live in Putney, like Arnold Bennett's hero. Although the prime cause of
this desire is a false judgment as to your previous unconscious desire,
yet the new conscious desire has its own derivative genuineness, and may
influence your actions to the extent of sending you round the world.
The initial mistake, however, will have effects of two kinds. First,
in uncontrolled moments, under the influence of sleepiness or drink
or delirium, you will say things calculated to injure the faithless
deceiver. Secondly, you will find travel disappointing, and the East
less fascinating than you had hoped--unless, some day,