Early  Journal  Content  on  JSTOR,  Free  to  Anyone  in  the  World  
This  article  is  one  of  nearly  500,000  scholarly  works  digitized  and  made  freely  available  to  everyone  in  
the  world  by  JSTOR.    

Known  as  the  Early  Journal  Content,  this  set  of  works  include  research  articles,  news,  letters,  and  other  
writings  published  in  more  than  200  of  the  oldest  leading  academic  journals.  The  works  date  from  the  
mid-­‐seventeenth  to  the  early  twentieth  centuries.    

 We  encourage  people  to  read  and  share  the  Early  Journal  Content  openly  and  to  tell  others  that  this  
resource  exists.    People  may  post  this  content  online  or  redistribute  in  any  way  for  non-­‐commercial  
purposes.  

Read  more  about  Early  Journal  Content  at  http://about.jstor.org/participate-­‐jstor/individuals/early-­‐

journal-­‐content.    

JSTOR  is  a  digital  library  of  academic  journals,  books,  and  primary  source  objects.  JSTOR  helps  people  
discover,  use,  and  build  upon  a  wide  range  of  content  through  a  powerful  research  and  teaching  
platform,  and  preserves  this  content  for  future  generations.  JSTOR  is  part  of  ITHAKA,  a  not-­‐for-­‐profit  
organization  that  also  includes  Ithaka  S+R  and  Portico.  For  more  information  about  JSTOR,  please  
contact  [email protected].  
VOL. XVIII, No 4. FEBRUARY 17, 1921

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE

ixrHERE matters of fact are in questionit is normallythe office

VAV of the philosopher to trace the broader outlines of accepted
fact rather than to contribute new items of fact. The features of
human nature which have recently been assembled by psychology,
and particularly the newer facts which have been brought to light
by behavioristic and psychiatric observers have already begun to
compose a physiognomy. For the first time since the moralists
and theologians 'divided the soul from the body, man is beginning
to find, a place in nature without being stripped of his most dis-
tinctive characteristics. Ie has begun to move about on the sur-
face of the planet while still retaining possession of his faculties.
This achievement is due primarily to that general psychological
tendency which has acquired the name of behaviorism from one of
its particular and recent manifestations. Behaviorism in the gen-
eralizedi sense is simply a return to the original Aristotelian view
that mind and body are related as activity and organ. Expressed
in more modern terms this means that the mental life consists of
those performances of an organism that immediately involve the
exercise of its nervous system. The difference between psychology
and physiology ceases to be a difference of subject-matter, like the
difference between entomology and ornithology, where each deals
exhaustively and exclusively with a class of objects; and becomes a
difference of method and approach like that between chemistry and
physics, where two sciences deal with interpenetrating type-com-
plexes which contain common elements and are found in the same
objects. Psychology deals with the grosser facts of organic behavior,
and particularly with those external and internal adjustments by
which the organism acts as a unit, while physiology deals with the
more elementary constituent processes, such as metabolism or the
nervous impulse. But in so far as psychology divides the organism
it approaches physiology, and in so far as physiology integrates
the organism it approaches psychology.
There is at present another difference that is likely in the near
future to be obliterated. The nervous system of a highly developed
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

organism plays a double role. Or, as it is more commonly ex-

pressed, there are two nervous systems, the cerebro-spinal or central
system, and the autonomic system. The former regulates the
organism's external affairs and the latter its internal affairs. Now
it is customary for psychology to concern itself primarily with the
former, leaving the latter to physiology. In other words psychology
views behavior as a commerce of the organism with its environment,
in which the organism imports stimuli and exports acts. The
central nervous system receives stimuli at the peripheral sense-
organs and delivers acts at the skeletal muscles. It has also its
executive offices in which a record is kept of all such transactions,
and in which the rate and the form of exchange are determined.
Meanwhile the autonomic nervous system is supposed to keep the
plant in repair and supply the fuel. But as in most forms of busi-
ness, it is difficult to draw any sharp line between up-keep and
out-put. Certainly if the reserves of the human organism are
seriously depleted, or if the machinery breaks down, all hands are
called upon to repair the damage and for a time no other business
is transacted. Indeed the executives would appear to be con-
stantly in receipt of reports on the condition of the plant and
largely to be governed in their policy by what is reported. There
is much to be said even for the view that the care of the plant was
originally the sole object of the business and that its commercial
transactions developed out of the need for fuel. This is the view,
now strongly supported,1 that the central nervous system is an out-
growth of the autonomic system. In any case from what we now
know about emotion, and what we have always known, 'but have
not yet succeeded in -understanding, about feeling, it is evident that
a powerful influence is exerted on the organism's behavior by the
whole internal economy, including the glands of internal secretion
as well as the major nutritive, respiratory and circulatory processes.
Waiving this last consideration for the present, let us return
to that view of the organism which is defined by the functions of the
central nervous system. The organism is on the plane of moving
bodies and physical forces, where it is elbowed and trodden by all
elements, but where it gives as good as it gets. Where does the
"mind" fit into such a picture, and where the will and the reason?
Somewhere, evidently, between the stimulus and the act. If you
ask a man a question and get an answer, his mind has been at work
between the question and the answer, between the sound waves
which impinged on his auditory nerve and those which emanated
from his vocal organs. From your standpoint as an untrained ob-
server there is a hiatus. You put in your question and you wait
1 Cf. e.g., Kempf, The Autonomic System and the Personality.
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEWS OF PURPOSE 87

for your answer. If you are an introspective psychologist you ask

another question, and get another answer. If you are a behavior-
ist you follow the stimulus towards its destination and the act
towards its source until they meet and the gap is closed. If you
are an introspectionist you regard the mind as something that
supervenes, or hovers about the hiatus. If you are a behaviorist
you regard the mind as something that intervenes as an arc or
circuit of the general causal nexus. When so regarded the mind
appears as a physical complex which receives, transmits, converts
and gives out physical influences, and which is constantly changing
its external and internal adjustments in consequence of its
activities.
The elementary unit of conduct or behavior on the part of
organisms having such a structure will be a movement induced by
a stimulus. The specific character of the act will lie in its having
effected just that movement in consequence of just that stimulus;
and the characteristic property or state of such a mind will lie in
the arrangement of parts conditioning such an act. An act of
mind will be a response; and a state of mind will be a disposition
to respond.
Now many will object that this is to leave out "consciousness."
But what is this "consciousness" we are under obligation to include
-is it a datum or a theory? It was once said that psychology omitted
the soul. And so it did, in so far as the term "soul" was the
name for a theory formulated in theology or "rational" psychology.
But psychology never deliberately neglected any of the facts or
problems lying within the field of the mental life of man; and as
a result of omitting the older theory of the soul it reached a very
much better understanding of the actual mode of existence in ques-
tion. No one would now think of conceiving the soul as a simple,
indivisible and incorruptible static entity, or as a naked aet of pure
reason. In every philosophy the soul is now a process; or a flow-
ing, and more or less complexly organized, experience. When,
therefore, we say the soul is lost, what we really mean is that a
theory is more or less obsolete, as a result of its having been suc-
cessfully ignored. The soul as an existent fact having a nature and
an explanation, is not lost, but found.
Now something of this same outcome may with reasonable safety
be predicted in the case of "consciousness." If a behaviorist be
enlightened he will have no intention of omitting any facts, but
only of abandoning a theory which he believes has proved unsatis-
factory. Hle does not abandon consciousness, but the introspective
theory of consciousness. This consists in taking the data of intro-
spective analysis as the ultimate constituents of the mental life, the
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

units which in their own peculiar aggregations and sequences conm-

pose mind. Psychophysical parallelism and atomic sensationalism
are developments of this theory, and are evidences of its wealmess.
It has in fact never worked. The most illuminating things that
psychology has said have been said when it has allowed itself liberties
with this theory, and introduced as much of the outlying physical
and organic field as proved convenient. The behaviorist has em-
phasized the failure of the introspective theory to yield results com-
parable to those obtained in kindred sciences, and proposes to try
another. He does not deny or intend to neglect any of the data of
introspection. iHe merely believes that this is not the best place to
begin, because the introspecting mind is a peculiarly complex form
of the mental life. He regards an animal reflex or habit as a more
elementary mental phenomenon than an introspectively discrimi-
nated sensory intensity.2 He believes that introspection does not
present mindi as such, or characteristic mental phenomena or
events; but that it may present pretty much any subject-matter,
such as parts of physical nature within or without the organism.
Beginning with any experience, introspection suspends further ex-
ploration and becomes more attentively observant of what was first
in this way circucmscribed. Features are now discriminated which
were not at first noticed; and construed as a test of capacity, this
doubtless indicates how many items of the physical world the human
mind can discriminate. But the mental part of it should then be
looked for not in what is discriminated, (but rather in the act of
discrimination. And since this is a relatively complex case of
mental action it would appear to be the part of prudence to begin
with some simpler act, such as the reflex. The behaviorist concedes
that introspection and all its works must find a place in any com-
prehensive and adequate view of mind. When they do find their
place they will perhaps have lost their present outlines, because of
having been broken up and redistributed. But in so far as the new
theory is more successful than the old, consciouisness as a group of
facts, as something that exists and happens, will have been found
and not lost.3
2 For an admirable discussion of this question and a behavioristic interpre-
tation of sensation, cf. G. A. De Laguna: "Sensation and Perception," this
JOURNAL, 1916, Vol. XIII., pp. 533, 617.
a The behaviorists would hope, incidentally, to rescue consciousnessfrom the
hands of its parallelistie friends who in proportionas they insist upon its mental
purity find themselves compelled to admit its causal impotence. Thus Professor
H. C. Warren is driven by the very rigor of his scientifie method to conclude
that "To say that we are 'conscious of the performance' of the act does not add
to the explanation of the physical changes which occur, nor does 'lapse of con-
sciousness' add to the bxplanation of inappropriate reactions" ("The Meehan-
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 89
The failure of the introspectivetheory of conseiousnesshas been
most pronouncedin the region of the will and the affections,in other
words, in that departmentof human nature where there is now the
greatest demand for light. That the introspective method,should
tend to a reduction of the mental life to sense-datais perhaps evi-
dence if its being at bottom only an analysis of objects of cognition.
In any case the failure of introspection to give any satisfactory
account of feeling, desire, will, and conation does not admit of
doubt. The dubious feelings of "pleasantness" and "unpleasant-
ness," which if they are a unique species of introspectivedata ought
to be indubitable,are held by some to be simple sensations,by others
to be fusions of organic sensations, and by others to be acts or
"attitudes" of liking and disliking. The notion of a feeling ele-
ment serves for the present only to prevent opinion from swinging
either towards a consistent sensationalism, or towards a consistent
activism. The former would obliterate the distinction between cog-
nition and motor-affection;the latter would involve the abandon-
ment of the introspective method.
Meanwhile, wherever accounts of the motor-affectivelife pre-
serve anything distinctive and peculiar, they incorporatesomething
of the movement and action of the physical organism. The basic
antithesis of favor anddisfavor, which is said to distinguish active
feelings, is an echo of the antithesis between positive and negative
reactions.4 Desire viewed introspectively can never be anything
but a combinationof ideas and feelings. A. Meinong and other
exponents of the introspective method have seen the difficulty of
accounting in these terms for actual dynamic differences,such as
that 'betweendesiring a thing and liking to think of it, or that
between real desire and the sham-desirecharacteristicof play and
esthetic detachment. But being an introspectionist, Meinong can
not follow up the method of commonsense and refine the evident
differencesof behaviorand functional adjustment,but must simply
invent ad hoc such entities as the Annahme, Phantasiegefiihl and
Wissensgefiiht.5 C. V. Ehrenfels makes a truly heroic effort to
ics of Intelligence," Philos. Bev., 1917, Vol. 26, p. 617). The better course
would be so to interpret "consciousness" of the performance as to enable it to
take its place among the determining conditions of the performance; that i' to
construe consciousness dynamically from the outset.
4 This appears to me to be the case, for example, with Sehwarz's conception
of Gefalae as distinguished from Gefihl. Cf. his Gtiick und Sittlichkeit, Halle,
1902. I do not deny the commonopinion that the animistic view of nature is a
projection into external objects of the experience of conation, but I do affirm
that what is so projected is now understood to be mainly if not wholly an ex-
perienee of bodily action.
5 Cf. Ueber Annahmen, 1902, pasim.
90 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

define desire introspectively, and after observing that there is here

no unique psychical element, proposes a peculiarly complicated com-
bination of ideas and feelings. "'Was wir Begehren nennen, ist
niehts anderes als die-eine relative Glicksfirderung begrilndende
-Vorstellung von der Ein-oder Autsschaltung irgend eines Objectes
in das oder aus dem Causalgewebe um das Centrum der gegen-
wdrtigen concreten Ichvorstellung."6 Waiving all doubts as to the
introspective correctness of this description, it is to be, noted that in
so far as it remains rigorously introspective it fails to provide for
the dynamic aspect of desire. The impelling force of desire is sup-
posed to lie in feeling, in Gliccksf6rderung. Since it is not clear
whether Ehrenfels finds the distinctive feature of desire to lie in
the possession of the mind by the idea, or in the tendency of the
idea to be realized in fact, let us consider both cases. An idea of
the creation or annihilation of an object enters the mind and keeps
its place there whenever the subject in question would otherwise
feel worse. But this less agreeable alternative never becomes an
introspective datum, and Ehrenfels thus virtually explains desire in
terms of the way the subject in question is disposed to feel. Or, let
us suppose desire to be the tendency of the idea to be realized in
fact. As Ehrenfels describes it, this means that an idea not only
enters the mind and holds its place therein by virtue of its relatively
agreeable character, but is superseded by a succession of ideas each
of which in turn more nearly approximates the actuality of an ob-
ject at first only remotely represented in idea. Thus the kinesthe-
tic images of the bodily movements which immediately cause the ob-
ject's actuality take the place of the first bare supposition of its
actuality, and the process will culminate in the perception of the
actuality as an acomplished fact. But how does Gliiksforderung
account for this succession? Again we can only say that if each step
in this progressive realization had not been taken when it was taken
the subject would have been less pleased than he was. The line
from the idea to its realization is the line of most possible pleasure
under the circumstances. But this only establishes a hypothetical
concurrence of pleasure, with realization. The pleasures themselves
evidently do not account for the realization. They must themselves,
along with the realization, be explained in terms of some tendency
or disposition for which introspection has no eye. Desire is a state
of mind with reference to an object such that the mind "won't be
happy till it gets" the object. But to explain such a state of mind,
or even to describe it in the sense of assembling the faets that out-
6 System der Werttheorie, 1897, I., pp. 248-249.
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 91

line and block it off, it is necessary to deal with the organism and
the environment in their round physical dimensions.7
As to will, MUnsterberg's reduction of this to such terms as der
Wahrnehmung des erreichten Effektes die Vorstellung desselben
vorangeht,8 perfectly illustrates the extent to which introspection
forces its subject-matter into the cognitive form, or endeavors to
make up the whole of will by piecing together its cognitive shreds
and patches. MiUnsterberg deserves credit for the vigorous con-
sistency with which he adhered to introspection when he did em-
ploy it, as well as for his recognition of the fact that the will when
so regarded is not the real will at all.9
As to eonation or effort, introspective records seem to be confined
mainly to sensations or feelings of conation or effort, these being
first conceived in some physiological sense. Thus for Ehrenfels
striving (streben) differs fromn willing through the presence of
Bewegungsempfindungen or Anstrengungsempfindungen.10 Stout
speaks of a "mental striving," which "tends to realize itself," and
of which the physiological correlate is "the tendency of a neural
system to recover a relatively stable condition." What, one. may
fairly ask, is the common meaning of "tendency" on the mental
and the physiological sides? Or is the latter the real tendency and
the former the feeling of it?'1 McDougall argues from the prin-
ciple of parallelism that we are justified
in assuming that the persistent striving towards its end which characterizes
mental process and distinguishes instinctive behavior most clearly from mere
reflex action, implies some such mode of experience as we call conative, the kind
of experience which in its more developed forms is properly called desire or
aversion, but which, in the blind form in which we sometimes have it and which
is its usual form among the animals, is a mere impulse, or craving, or uneasy
sense of want.12

Reading this author's account as a whole one can not but be

convinced that he derives the structure of instinct altogether from
its organic aspect, as when he says that "the innate psycho-physical
disposition, which is an instinct, may be regarded as consisting of
three corresponding parts, an afferent, a central, and a motor or
efferent part, whose activities are the cognitive, the affective, and
7 Ehrenfels himself frequently appeals to Gefilhlsdispositionen; e.g., op. cit.,
I., p. 41. For criticisms of Ehrenfels similar to that offered above, but having
a very different moral, cf. Meinong: Uber Annahmen, 1902, pp. 293-296; W. M.
Urban, Valtuation, pp. 35-37. Cf. also Ehrenfels: op. cit., I., p. 251, note.
8 Minsterberg 's Willenshandlung, p. 88.

9 Cf. Psychology and Life, 1899, p. 208.

10 Op. cit., I., p. 221.
11 Analytical Psychology, II., pp. 82, 83.
12 W. McDougall: Social Psychology, p. 28.
92 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

the conative features respectively of the total instinctive process."s

Similarly he says that every instance of instinctive behavior in-
volves "a striving towards or away from" an object; and that in
all instinctive behavior there is "a persistent striving towards the
natural end of the process," which is intensified by obstacles." It
is clear that neither the three-fold arrangement of instinct, in-
volving the assigment of conation to the motor part, nor the direc-
tion of conation as "towards" or "away from" an object, nor the
persistence of the striving appear at all in the field of introspection.
In other words, all the characteristics of conation are borrowed from
the behavior of the organism, except what is comprised under "feel-
ing of" or "consciousness." What is really described is what one
is conscious of when one is conscious of striving. It would seem
reasonable, then, first to describe and explain striving as a general
organic process, and then to discuss the further and necessarily
ulterior question of the feeling or consciousness to which it gives
rise.'5
The defects of parallelistie introspectionism are especially
flagrant in the motor-affective field of the mental life. Almost
every recent advance in this field has resulted from the more or
less complete abandonment of the introspective method of descrip-
tion and the parallelistic method of explanation. The most notable
advance, an advance that has been acepted by the social sciences as
well as by popular opinion, is the rejection of the once-classic cal-
culating hedonism, the view that conduct is ruled by selfish pleasure-
pain reasons.16 The chief cause for the obsolescence of this view
has been the resort to biological in place of introspective methods
of explaining human conduct. Pleasure and pain are peculiarly
introspective entities; and an introspective account of action tends,
as we have seen, to place the whole burden of explanation on feel-
ing. As to the selfish and calculating part of it, that evidently
arose from the introspective method of asking an agent to explain
his own conduct. Such a question is ambiguous, and is commonly
construed by the subject interrogated as a demand for reasons by
which to justify his conduct. In the ordinary run of conduct the
best a man can sav in defense of his eanhe$iiot.ie that. iv -Tvlna
nn+
18ibid., p. 32. The italics are mine.
14 Ibid.,pp. 26, 27. The italies are mine.
15 It has sometimes been argued that desire, will, etc., must be complete in
introspection because a subject may know infallibly that he is desiring, or will-
ing without knowing anything about his bodily states. The argument has abso-
lutely no force. Such knowledgeis not infallible, nor is it entirely without bod-
ily data. Furthermorethere may be "'infallible signs" which do not constitute
either direct or complete experience of Ithe event in question. Cf. B. Russell:
"On the Nature of Acquaintance," Monist, 1914, XXII.X , 184.
16 Cf. G. Wallas, Hunun Nature and Politics, Oh. I.
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 93

that is conducive to his own satisfaction (which he is perfectly will-

ing to call pleasure).
This "key" to human conduct has now been exchanged for a
new one, or for a whole set of keys of a new type. The first of these
to be adopted was the unit-instinct, and the most recent is the " com-
plex."'7 The unit-instinet made prominent by James, and at pres-
ent exemplified in McDougall 's widely read and widely quoted
Social Psychology, is being questioned by psychologists at the same
time that it is being very widely and uncritically adopted in sociol-
ogy and economics.'8 Meanwhile the influence of Freud has rapidly
increased, and at the same time his fundamental ecnception of the
"libido" has been generalized to free it from an exclusively sexual
meaning.'9 The "complex" has this advantage over the instinct,
that it is not necessarily a genetic conception. It is true that ortho-
dox Freudians trace all complexes to inherited and infantile eroti-
cism. But in its generalized form the complex is essentially a pres-
ent dynamic agency; in Hart's words, "a system of connected ideas,
with a strong emotional tone, and a tendency to produce actions of
a certain definite character."20 A complex in this sense may be ap-
pealed to for explanatory purposes without identifying that most
doubtful and elusive line that divides what is original from what is
acquired.
But what have these two conceptions in common? Why may
the instinct and the complex be said to be keys of the same type?
In the first place, because both are essentially dispositions. They
exist whether they are exercised or not. And when they are exer-
cised they are activities, like circulation and respiration, describable
in terms of characteristic organic and environmental changes, and
not describable except in a most incomplete and misleading way,
17 One hesitates to group "complex and "sentiment" with "instincts,"
"purpose" and "determining tendency" because the two former conceptions ap-
pear to regard an object as the source of unity, whereas the latter emphasizes a
dominant activity. It does appear to be possible to divide a man into his "A-
system" of responses,his "B-system," etc., or into ambitions, enterprises, prob-
lems, etc., which will involve many objects. I believe, however, that the more
these things are analyzed the more indistinguishable they become. In so far
as my A-responses have unity, as for example my love of my friend, some one
instinct or emotion has become dominant in my dealings with him, and pre-
scribes what my other reactions shall be. In other words I have something like
a purpose with reference to my friend. A purpose on the other hand has a
unique reference to certain objects, perhaps to one object, which is the object of
its culminating and ",satisfying" activity.
18 Cf. e.g., Th. Veblen: The Instinct of Workmanship,1914; 0. Tead: In-
sticts in Industry, 1918; C. H. Parker: "Motives in Economic Life," Proc. of
the Amer. Economics Assoc., 1917, pp. 212-231.
19Cf. e.g., Hart: Psychology of Insanity, 1912.
20 Op. cit., p. 61.
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

in terms of introspective data. There are three possible ways of

assigning a status to dispositions. Assuming that the mental is non-
physical, and that dispositions are mental, they may be construed
as belonging to an "unconscious" mental life. What this mental
life is which is neither physical nor introspective no one has yet
succeeded in making clear. And since every indication points to a
physiological interpretation of dispositions, this conception of the
"unconscious" is as gratuitous as it is unintelligible. Seeing the
force of this, one may conclude that since dispositions are physio-
logical they are therefore not mental. Or, thirdly, accepting the be-
havioristic version of mind, one may regard dispositions as both
physical and mental: physical because consisting in certain physio-
logical structures, mental because of the peculiar type of function
or activity in which these structures are engaged. Instincts as a
rule have been so interpreted largely because the conception was
derived from the observation of animals, where mind has always in
practise meant behavior. That complexes have not as a rule been
so interpreted seems to be due to the fact that the Freudians have
been primarily interested in the activities of the complex rather
than in its structure and place in nature.21 Of one thing they have
been sure, namely that this fundamental mode of mind is not a
datum of introspection. Their interpretation in physiological terms
would not contradict any observed properties which they possess;
while it would have the great advantage of removing them from an
obscure and doubtful region where they may be the victims of loose
speculation and popular superstition, to a well-defined and open
region where they may be further illuminated by the observations
of the associated sciences.
The instinct and the complex are, then, first of all organic dis-
positions, or systematic arrangements in the physical organism
which condition specific modes of performance. There are further
common characteristics. In each case there are stored energies and
channels arranged in groups and patterns. These channels, like
river beds, have the property of transmitting and guiding energy
and also of drawing energy by their lower resistance. In each case
there must be stimuli, that is, conditions external to the system in
question which release its stored energies and set it going. The
system must possess a peculiar susceptibility to such influences, like
the explosive's susceptibility to impacts or high temperatures. In
each case the system tends to find expression in coordinated mus-
cular changes usually causing a movement of the skeletal muscles
and some chanve in external objects or in the relation of the orzan-
21 For a physiological interpretation of complexes, cf. E. G. Holt, The
Freudian Wish, 1915, pp. 3-99.
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 95

ism to themi. Finally, in each case the system comes temporarily

into possession of the organism as a whole, competing with other
systems for the control of the common parts in which they overlap.
Emphasizing their points of similarity we obtain the broad out-
lines of a more fundamental conception, which they both exemplify
and of which we may hope to find further exemplifications as well
as improved and amplified statements. This more fundamental
conception may perhaps best be termed set or determining tendency,
a condition of the organism which qualifies and predisposes it to
execute what Holt calls a specific "course of action," when a
specific exciting condition occurs. Within the general framework of
this conception let us now look for an interpretation of those char-
acteristic modes of behavior that are supposed to distinguish the
normal adult of the human species, such as acting interestedly, pur-
posely, or rationally. This inquiry should lead us to the center
of the motor-affective life, and of the intellectual life in its bearing
on conduct. Our results will at best be rude schematic approxima-
tions. Science has not really penetrated into the wilderness of
human nature. We are still camping on its frontiers or cruising
off its coasts. But at such a time it is justifiable to make a hasty
reconnaissance even though we may expect (and hope) that the maps
we draw will soon be obsolete.
Let us start with that state of a man in which he is said to be
prepared for future action, or to have his plans made so far as con-
cerns what he is himself to do. A good example is afforded by the
chess player who has a series of moves ready in advance, or the
foresighted housewife who has made up her mind what to cook for
each successive meal for the coming week. Future responses are at
least partially organized, and are held in reserve in the order of
their appropriate stimuli. As each in turn is called into play the
next in order moves into its place, just as in baseball the "batter-up"
moves towards the batter's box, selects his bat and makes a few pre-
liminary swings. While the serial order of prepared responses is
not always as clear as this, something of the kind is a constant
feature of human conduct. Immediately behind what I am doing
now there is what I am going to do next, and behind that, successive
lines of reserves which advance toward the front as my action un-
folds. A similar situation must be supposed to exist when a re-
sponse is only partially executed. A football player about to catch
and run back a punt has the whole action outlined in advance. At
the same time that he is watching the ball in its course through the
air he is ready with neuro-muscular coordinations of the arms and
legs to grasp the ball, ward off tacklers and run down the field.
At any given instant in the course of this action some part of it is
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

being carried out, while other parts are carried as far forward as is
possible without interference with that part which is being carried
out. So far are these preparations carried that the organism is at
the time incapable of doing anything else, and will if "over-
anxious" carry the preparation too far, as when the running-re-
sponse crowds the catching-response and causes the player to fumble
the ball.22.
We may say, then, that most human action instead of being
born de novo at the moment of performance merely passes over
from an implicit or partial state to an explicit or complete state.
The organism is loaded and aimed, in short, before it is fired.
Or the organism is ordinarily in a state of being committed in
advance of performance. These reserve responses must be sup-
posed to possess an unqualified physiological existence, even though
they are not in action and even though they should never be called
into action. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the various forms
which these may assume. They mnaybe so related that the action
of each provides the stimulus for the action of the next, in which
case they are in some sense parts of one plan; or they may 'be corre-
lated with successive stimuli externally and independently supplied,
as when one is prepared for a sequence of probable contingencies.
Now let us suppose such a reserve or partial response to be in the
advanced stages of preparation and then to be checked through
the non-appearance of the complementary stimulus or through some
impediment. Either one of two things will happen. If there are
other prepared responses for which the appropriate stimuli are
present, the organism may go over to another course of action. If,
however, the first course of action possesses a temporary monopoly
of the energies of the organism, responses will occur which have the
character of being auxiliary. These may assume the form of
"random" activities, habits or inherited reflexes, for which suitable
stimuli are presented. This will continue until some one of the
random activities provides the complementary stimulus or removes
the impediment and so permits the original response to complete
itself. But in proportion as an organism is "experienced" in the
matter such auxiliary activities are not random. Certain of the
present stimuli have acquired "meaning." The immediate response
which they excite is again, as in the case of the original response,
the first of a series of acts. Successive ulterior acts are made ready
22 Or the anticipatory set may have so mueh momentumthat it is impossible
to readjust quickly to a ehange in the situation. A good example is afforded by
Ithecase of the subject who being prepared to lift a heavy weight is given a
light one instead, with the result that it is flung high above the head with a
wholly disproportionateexpenditure of energy. (Quoted from Miller by James,
Principles, 1890, II., p. 502, note.)
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 97

to take their turn. But in some cases these tentative reserves

will coincide and in some cases they will conflict with the suspended
response. Where the former is the case the tentative act will be
performed and where the latter occurs the act will be abandoned
after having been "considered."
We have now obtained a first approximation to a view of inter-
ested or purposive action. An act is performed because its pre-
pared sequel or implicit phase coincides with the incomplete part
of some course of action that is at the time dominating the organism.
Under the tension created by a suspended response an organism
performs one or more acts which promise the act or acts in which
the response is carried out. Let us call the suspended response
which for the time commands the energies of the organism, the deter-
mining tendency; and let us use the expression auxiliary responses
for the acts which occur under the influence of such a tendency
when its completion is delayed.
Suppose, for example, that my determining tendency is to ob-
tain a book from my study. I approach the door and turn the knob,
having in readiness and in serial order the neuro-muscular coordi-
nations involved in pushing open the door, walking across the room
and grasping the book. The door, however, resists, my push. This
act being checked, the ulterior acts are also checked and crowd it
from the rear. I do not desist, responding irrelevantly to some
other stimulus that happens to engage my attention, as a baffled
kitten may turn to playing with its tail, but I "try," or engage m
auxiliary responses. Being a person of experience, however, instead
of kicking, pounding, shouting or running back and forth, I look
around, that is I increase the number and range of stimuli that
affect me. Finally I see a key hanging on a nail. This key means
something to me. It has its immediate meaning as something to be
grasped, and an ulterior meaning in terms of a series of antici-
patory sets arranged in depth. In other words, when I grasp keys
I also get ready to perform certain further acts in orderly suc-
cession. Near the head of this tentative line of action is that same
anticipatory set (for pushing open the door) which now stands at
the head of the original line, pressing for release. 'The implicit
phase of the auxiliary course of action coincideswith the suspended
portion of the dominating tendency, and the auxiliary course of
action is adopted.23
The central feature of this conception of human behavior is that
23 In this case the suspended course of action is resumed at the same point
at which it was interrupted. I might have adopted a course of action whose
reserve phases coincided with those of the dominating tendency later on. In
other words I might have gone around and climbed in a window, or borrowed
my neighbor's book.
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

general state of the organism which has been termed a determining

tendency. The organism as a whole is for a time preoccupied with
a certain task which absorbs its energy and appropriates its mechan-
isms. It must be assumed that synaptic resistances are lowered or
heightened not merely as a result of the past history of the nervous
system, but as the result of some present systematic readgjustment.24
The passing of impulses through certain channels must be conceived
not as the result of past erosion, but as the result of a correlated
raising and lowering of gates. Another analogy is afforded by the
insertion in a mechanical musical instrument of a record or per-
forated roll which calls the parts of the instrument into play in
simultaneous and successive patterns.
There can be little doubt that the organism is subject to such
"seizures." Hitherto attention has been directed chiefly to their
origin, or to their behavior under peculiar conditions, as when they
are repressed. It is here contended that whether such determining
tendencies are congenital or acquired, whether they are the agents
or the victims of repression, they do in any case exist and give to
human (and much of animal) behavior its characteristic form. In
discussions of the instincts it has been customary to dwell upon
their congenital origin, and upon the specific pattern of the re-
sponse; while little has been said about the power which an aroused
instinct has to take possession of the entire organism. We have
heard much of the stimuli to anger, much of the feeling of anger,
and much of the more or less specific and more or less doubtful in-
nate forms of response in which it expresses itself. But we have
heard comparativelv little of the state of beina anarv_26 (Cannon'(
24 As evidence of the willingness of psychologists to accept other determiners

of action than recency, frequency and other items of the local history of the
rmechanisms immediately involved, it may be noted that Watson includes among
such determiners "the general setting of the situation as a whole," and the
experiences, "emotional tensions," etc., of the organism as a whole in the period
immediately preceding the incidence of the stimulus. There should be added the
general posture of the organism as a whole at the moment of the incidence of the
stimulus. Cf. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919, p. 3.
25 Over and above the question of the formation of a determining
tendency
there is also the profoundly important question of its being called into play.
What is it that puts any given determining tendency in the ascendancy at any
given time and causes it to be successively superseded by others? Why am I
now angry, now running to catch a train and now thinking out a problem? We
may surmise what some of the causes are, such as routine, the onset of new
stimuli, the completion of a previous course of action, health, fatigue, or the
requirements of some long range "programme' of action. It is with no in-
tention of slighting this question that it is omitted here. Whatever be the facts
they will not invalidate anything that we may learn about the structure and
working of the determining tendency when once it is in control.
26 A notable exception is the passage in which James describes the situa-
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 99

experiments have shown, however, that in anger the whole organism

is virtually commandeered for war purposes:
Thus are the body 's reserves-the stored adrenin and the accumulated
sugar-called forth for instant service; thus is the blood shifted to nerves and
Muscles that may have to bear the brunt of struggle; thus is the heart set rapidly
beating to speed the circulation; and thus, also, are the activities of the diges-
tive organs for the time abolished. Just as in war between nations the arts and
industries which have brought wealth and contentment must suffer serious neg-
lect or be wholly set aside both by the attacker and the attacked, and all the
supplies and energies developed in the period of peace must be devoted to the
present conflict; so, likewise, the functions which in quiet times establish and
support the bodily reserves are, in times of stress, instantly checked or completely
stopped, and these reserves lavishly drawn upon to increase power in the attack
and in the defense or flight.23
What is true of the bodily functions regulated by the autonomic
nervous system is also true of the functions regulated by the central
nervous system. In an angry organism bodily movements and
postures, speech, imagery and ideation, attention, and even recep-
tivity to sensory stimulation, are all drawn into one comprehensive
response. Only stimuli whose meanings are congruent with this
general cast of mind are responded to. Other responses involving
different uses of the same parts and organs are temporarily in-
hibited. The organism literally lives and moves and has his being
in anger.
While the major emotions exemplify the extent to which a deter-
mining tendency may master the total organism, they are in several
respects peculiar. There is usually no specific end-response in which
the course of action culminates. It is rather a series of acts of a
similar type, such as abuse or blows in the case of anger. It is not
highly articulated and subordinated, but moves from point to point
upon the same level. Such action is usually too precipitate to be
nicely selective. And, finally, such action is unique in the extent
to which it interferes with the internal economy of the organism.
Too much emphasis on the major emotions tends, therefore, to ob-
scure the essential characteristics of the determining tendency.
For a determining tendency may culminate in specific and delicate
adjustment like the spelling of a word, or the picking of a lock.
It niay be highly organized, and convergent in long-delayed achieve-
ment. It is not necessary that the determining tendency should
call the entire organism into play. One may prepare a lecture with-
out disturbing one's digestive processes, or solve a problem without
appreciable effect upon one's respiration. It is even possible that
tion in which "any strong emotional state whatever is upon us," or "Ithe fever
fit is on us": Principles, 1890, II., p. 563.
27 W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Bage, 1915,
p. 269.
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

two or more determining tendencies should be active at the same

time and divide the organism between them. But the major emo-
tions iMlustrate in an exaggerated form the distinguishing feature
of the determining tendency, namely its selection of its own auxil-
iary and constituent activities.
If instincts be interpreted as determining tendencies, and if this
be the mark of teleology, how are we to account for the difference
between human behavior and the behavior of animals such as birds
and insects whose rich instinctive endowment is proverbial? This
question proves the importance of distinguishing between a concate-
nation and a subordination of responses. . In the typical animal
instinct a series or concatenation of responses is innately determined,
owing to the fact that the successful completion of each component
response in turn furnishes the stimulus for the next, the series cul-
mninatingin a result that is useful to the organism. This is some-
times spoken of as a chain-reflex; but the term is misleading because
it suggests that the component responses are pure reflexes, whereas
the reflexive character lies rather in their sequence. The component
responses themselves are tentative and intelligent. The segments
of the nest-building operation, for example, such as the movements
through space, and the selection, grasping and carrying of mate-
rials, are performed more or less exsperimentally and adapted to
local conditions. The purposiveness of the behavior lies not in the
appropriateness of the several phases to the end-result, but in the
persistence and resourcefulness exhibited in each phase regarded by
itself. The successive responses are not subordinated to the end-
result as their purpose. The completed nest, in other words, is not
anticipated. It is this which distinguishes the bird from a human
house builder. In the case of the latter the domestic complex is
guiding the action throughout. Everything which the human
agent does from the first consultation with his architect is in some
measure qualified by this meaning and selected on this account.
As a result there is not merely variability within each component,
but variability of components. The human builder has subordi-
nated his auxiliary acts to his determining tendency to a greater
depth; and in order that this should be possible, he must be capable
of a much more complicated far-flung play of meaning.

Let us now turn to certain salient characteristics of human be-

havior viewed as interested or teleological, for the purpose of verify-
ing and amplifying the conception already outlined.
The central contention in William James's epoch-making Prin-
ciples of Psychology is that selection, interest or purpose is the essen-
tial and distinguishing feature of mind. "Consciousness is at all
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 101

times primarily a selective agency."28 Our senses themselves are

organs of selection. Attention, perception, thought, taste, and the
moral will are all modes of choice by which a man's personality and
his world are finally individuated and stabilized. In one of his early
essays, an essay that has been too little read, James distinguishes be-
tween real teleology in which the agent asserts his own end, and
"hypothetical" teleology, or the case in which an external observer
finding the result of an action to be useful imputes them to the agent
as an end:
We can describe the latter only in teleological terms, hypothetically, or else
by the addition of a supposed contemplating mind which measures what it sees
going on by its private teleological standard, and judges it intelligent. But con-
sciousness itself is not merely intelligent in this sense. It is intelligent intelli-
gence. It seems to supply both the means and the standard by which they are
measured. It not only serves a final purpose, but brings a final purpose-posits,
declaresit.29
No one would now be disposed to dispute the essential soundness
of this position. The human individual does not merely do things
lthat are useful as judged by an external observer, but by its own
activity adopts and seeks that result in relation to which its deeds are
useful. And as James has so persuasively shown, the individual's
experience is not dictated to him by external events, so that his mind
merely echoes what goes on around him; but his experience is always
in some sense what he makes it, what he is himself disposed to look
for. But granting this, let us inquire whether we must therefore
follow James in his next step, when he says:
It seems hopelessly impossible to formulate anything of this sort in non-
mental terms, and this is why I must still contend that the phenomenonof sub-
jective "interest," as soon as the animal consciously realizes the latter, appears
upon the scene as an absolutely new factor, which we can only suppose to be
latent thitherto in the physical environment by crediting the physical atoms,
etc., each with a conseiousness of its own, approving or condemning its mo-
tions.30
In other words must we adopt a dualistic sundering of mind and
body in order to provide for the individual's assertion of his inter-
psts against the world about him? Does "physical" mean "pas-
sive," "secondary," "compliant"? Not unless one wishes it to. If
28 Vol. I., p. 139. The best statement (too long to quote) is to be found in
Vol. I., pp. 289-90. Cf. also I., pp. 8, 11, 402, 583-84, 594; II., pp. 558-59, 584.
In the account in I., pp. 583-84, of voluntary association James speaks of " some
general interest which for the time has seized upon the mind"'; and gives an ad-
mirable account of pressure exerted by an obstructed response.
29 From " Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence, " Jour. of
Spectu. Philos., 1878. This essay is now reprinted in a volume entitled Collected
Essays and Beviews,.1920, and the passage quoted appears on p. 64.
80 Ibid., pp. 64-65.
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

one wishes to divide the individual into two parts and say that the
part in which the environment is agent and the individual reagent
is body, and that the part in which the individual is agent and the
environment reagent is mind, one is entitled to do so, merely as a
matter of terminology. But to go further and to identify the phys-
ical organism wholly with the first, leaving the second to be provided
for by some, alien and incommensurable factor, is certainly not war-
ranted by what we know about the physical organism. In propor-
tion as the organism is unified and functions as a whole its behavior
is incapable of being translated into simple reactions correlated
severally with external events. The' observer with his eye on any
given set of external conditions finds that he can not predict the
organism's behavior. Its behavior is "spontaneous" or internally
conditioned. The most recent developments in physiology as well as
in psychology and psychiatry have emphasized the extent to which
the organism is integrated; the extent, in other words, to which any
particular deed is to be accounted for in terms of the state of the or-
ganism itself rather than in terms of the incidence of an external
stimulus. The better the organism is understood, the more does it
assume just those characters which James insists upon as the prerog-
atives of mind. Thus in proportion as an organism is an individual
its movements are governed by its own internal organization. Through
these movements the organism not only acts on the environment, but
introduces, terminates and varies those relations which enable the
environment to act on it, and so determines even its own experiences
and fortunes.
In further confirmation and amplification of our conception of
purpose let us test it by the application of two ideas Which will be
generally accepted as contained in or associated with the traditional
view of human conduct. These two ideas are: (1) the subordination
of means to ends; (2) determination by the future.
1. Subordination of means to ends. Purpose is supposed to have
two levels; or two factors of which one rules and the other serves.
Just this duality and subordination seems to be provided in the re-
lation of the determining tendency and the auxiliary response. This
duality and subordination is especially striking in the case of the
learning process, as this is studied expzerimentally.3' The organism
is first put into a condition of hunger, or fear, or desire. This state
then acts both as the exciting cause of the trial activities and as the
arbiter that determines which one among them shall be deemed suc-
cessful. An organization which is exerting itself under the influence
31 The writer has applied the present conception to, or, rather derived it
from, the learning process in an article entitled "Docility and Purpose,"
Psychol. Rev., 1918, p. 25.
 A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OP PURPOSE 103

of hunger will cease to exert itself only upon the performanceof an

act by which hunger is satisfied, that is, an act by which the food-
taking response is enabled to complete itself. But what is true of
the learning processis characteristicof developedbehaviorgenerally.
Man, at least, is normally in the condition of one learning. That is
to say, he is proceedingmore or less tentatively, instigated by a de-
termining tendency and finding a way that shall suit it. Through
this conception the relation of end to means obtains an interpreta-
tion which distinguishes it, without isolating it, from the cognate
relations of whole to part and of cause to effect.
2. Determinationby the future. That a reference to the future
as in some sense governing the act, is an essential feature of the tra-
ditional conceptionof purpose appearsfrom the commonestterms of
the teleologicalvocabulary,such as "for the sake of," "in order to,"
"twith a view to," "in fear of," "in hope of," "lest," etc. It is
evident that no account of human conduct which fails to set apart
some special feature as the connotation of these expressions will,
either in or out of scientific laboratories,seem to cover the facts.
It is not sufficient to conceive the organism as making random
efforts instigated by a determining tendency; nor is it sufficient
that these efforts should cease when one of these efforts, " suc-
ceeds." For there is as yet no act of which it can be said that it is
done with a view to or for the sake of a future act.32 "Random,"
"hit-or-mniss"action is essentially unguided action, which so far as
its own immediatedeterminationis concernedis as disposed to miss
as to hit. Philosonhical oninion in the nast has usually vaeillated
32In an article entitled "Instinct and Purpose, Psychol. Rev., 1920, Vol.
27, p. 227, Dr. E. C. Tolman says, speaking of a cat's efforts to get out of a
cage, "The mere fact that on each single trial it hits about until it gets out,
seems to me to be sufficient to characterize its activity as purposive. The cat
hits about in order to get out, for the sake of getting out . . .," etc. While the
article as a whole is an admirable statement of a view that I hold to be funda-
mentally sound both in method and in doctrine, I can not believe that the author
is correct in this claim. What the exponents of purposivenessare looking for is
an act of which it can be said that its occurrenceis due to its promise or fore-
cast. . No act even though it be aroused by a determining tendency can be of
the sort required unless it has meaning, that is, arouses anticipatory reactions to
its sequel; and unless it is preferred because of such anticipation. Such antici-
pations are ordinarily the result of experience. But when an act is called
"random" it is implied that it is of the nature of a pure reflex, that is un-
guided by experience. Dr. Tolman makes the important point that random ac-
tivities of the sort aroused in connection with a determining tendency "vary
within a class" which persists as a whole, and so are in type determined in
advanee. But even so we do not get the means selected because of its future or
implicit relation to the end until the factor of meaning becomes effective. I
believe that Dr. Tolman's account of thought is also unsatisfactory in so far as
he fails here to regard "thought-of aets" as projected or uncompleted acts.
104 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

between two impossible positions. According to one opinion the

purposive act is governed by an ideal form, or "final cause." But
such a cause can not lie upon the plane of existence at all, and can
not belong to the future of any particular act. It ends by becoming
a static interpretation of the act, colored by illicit associations of
futurity. According to the other opinion the purposive act is gov-
erned' by the antecedently existing idea of a future result. But this
explanation goes to pieces on the rock of dualism. A writer like
Hdbhouse, whose predilections are empirical and naturalistic, circles
closely by the solution here proposed, but nevertheless ends with the
more or less inscrutable paradox that in the case of purpose, "the
doing is determined by what is done. "33
The solution would seem to lie in the action of present dispositions
which are correlated with future contigencies. A calendar of engage-
ments filled out for the next month exists and acts in the present.
Nevertheless it is correlated serially and progressively with the fu-
ture. Similarly the responses organized and serially adjusted so as
to be executed in sequence exist now among the determining condi-
tions of present events. Nevertheless they are functionally correlated
with a sequence of events in the historical future-in their own fu-
ture. A series of dated anticipatory responses is thus a projection
of the future upon the present spatial field, and provides a means 'by
which the contingent future may be translated into the physically
existent present.

Let us now sum up our conception of purposive or interested ac-

tion, as a basis for discussing the very intimate, confusing, and com-
promising relations which it sustains with reason or intellect.34 A
determininq tendency35 is a Ieneratresponse-system, tentcttveiu ad-
33 Development and Purpose, 1913, p. 320. Cf. the statement on p. 319:
"Generically then a purpose may be defined as a cause conditioned in its opera-
tion by its own tendency.... Not the result as an event which may happen to-
morrow, next year, perhaps never, but its own movement towards the result, the
conational movement that it initiates and sustains, is integral and essential to
its being. " But until the mechanism of tendency is indicated, such a statement
is little more than a restatement of the problem.
34 In an article to be entitled "The Independent Variability of Purpose
and Belief," which will appear in a later number of this JOURNAL.
35 Dr. Tolman (op. cit., 222) prefers to use the expression " determining
adjustment." I use the term tendency which suggests expenditure of energy,
rather than adjustment which suggests a sluicing or distributing of energies
otherwise provided, because I wish to regard the determining tendency as in-
cluding whatever may be necessary to initiate effort. This will doubtless involve
originating stimuli; but I should not like to use an expression that suggested
that the determining set plays a waiting game. Otherwise Dr. Tolman 's is the
best account I know of the agency which I have here in mind.
I find much to applaud in an article by L. L. Thurston, entitled "The
 BOOK REVIEWS 105

vancing towards completion, or tentatively renewing itself.36 hIter-

ested or purposive action is tentative action adopted because the
anticipatory responses which it partially arouses coincide with the un-
fulfilled or implicit phase of such! a determining tendency.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY.

REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

Le N&o-Rlealisme. RENE KREMER. Louvain: Institut de Philosophie.

Paris: Felix Alcan. 1920. Pp. x + 310.
American neo-realists have every reason to be gratified with this
European appreciation of their campaign and doctrine. Dr. Kremer
has read everything, or nearly everything, that is of any value for
throwing light upon his subject. His success in finding his material
has been remarkable and his industry in mastering it quite extraor-
dinary. The University of Louvain contained much that escaped
destruction, and Professor F. C. S. Schiller placed his own library
at Dr. Kremer's service.
Dr. Kremer notices that realism in one form or another has been
gaining recognition in Great Britain, France, Germany and Aus-
tria, but he regards American neo-realism as the most explicit and
most original. This chapter of American philosophy is, he says, al-
most unknown in Europe, and he has made it his task to describe it,
with a minimum of criticism, to readers of French. The account
seems substantially correct and very accurate. The movement had to
be studied largely in a confusion of articles, most of them polemical
in purpose if not in tone, and the author's patience and clear-sighted
appreciation deserve all praise.
This is not to say, however, that any one of the leading neo-real-
ists will be perfectly satisfied. No outsider is likely to render the
doctrines of such a crusade to the complete satisfaction of the cru-
Antielpatory Aspect of Consciousness" (this JOURNAL, 1919, Vol. XVI., pp.
561-569). I believe that this writer makes the mistake of defining behavior in
terms of consciousness instead of consciousness in terms of behavior. But he
makes skilful use of the serial arrangementof the response and the function of
the "unfinished act." His account of intelligence in terms of the degree of re-
moteness of "consciousness" (trial and error?) from the overt act, and his
application of this view to instinct (563) are admirable. Although I did not
read this article until I had formulated my own views, I am glad to find in it at
least a partial corroborationof them.
36 In other words a determining tendency may be progressive or recurrent.
In this appears to lie the differencebetween desire and enjoyment. But this most
important question must be omitted here.