because they are primarily visceral, or for other reasons. They have never succeeded in influencing our language habits, and have consequently never become an explicit part of our thought life. This no doubt accounts for many of these elements, but hardly for all, since some of them do get turned into language, as in delirium, slips of the tongue,

etc.

Were these nonconscious elements of a man's life to be abstracted from the totality which constitutes his life, the flow of conscious experiences would no doubt be rendered meager, thin, and unendurable. Consciousness is continually being fed and invigorated from the outside. The nonconscious experiences we have discussed enter into and structuralize a man's very self of selves. In determining its nature they are many times more important than what he wittingly does and says. Together with the steady pressures of the social environment, they keep him from changing with every breeze and tempest which ruffles the surface of his life, and give him whatever stability and momentum his existence may have.

REFERENCES

1 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 1 (3 ed., Phila., Davis, 1913), iv-v.

2 Edwin Muir, in Freda Kirchwey (ed.), Our Changing Morality (N. Y., Boni and Liveright, 1924), 79–80.

See Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, (N. Y., Boni and Liveright, 1920), for a general presentation of the Freudian point of view. See also Ernest Jones, Some problems of adolescence, Brit. Journ. of Psych., Vol. 13 (1922-1923), 31-47.

4 On this matter I have been helped by Isabel Davenport, Salvaging of American Girlhood, A substitution of normal psychology for superstition and mysticism in the education of girls (N. Y., Dutton, 1924), a book written mainly with the problems confronting adolescent girls in mind, but applicable to boys as well (see esp. Chapter 12). See also M. J. Exner, The sex factor in character training, Amer. Phys. Educ. Rev., Vol. 30, (1925), 71–76.

191?).

208.

Morton Prince, The Unconscious (2 ed., N. Y. Macmillan, 1921), 85–86. Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (N. Y., Macmillan,

J. B. Watson, Behaviorism (N. Y., People's Institute Publ. Co., 1925), 130–131,

Chapter VII

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE

Organic features of the thought process

Human beings are always more or less stirred by what they do and by what happens to them. The stimulation of reflex arcs often leads with remarkable directness to an ap

propriate response. Thus the iris of the eye contracts when one passes from a darkened room into the bright sunlight, in much the same fashion as the aperture of a camera lens might be adjusted under similar conditions. Even here, however, the pain feeling which frequently accompanies the adjustment is evidence that the impulses released do not travel down a single deeply canalized path, but rather flood a considerable number of loosely associated reflex arcs. Many stimuli are capable of throwing the entire organism into a state of extreme disequilibrium, and of initiating organic reverberations that continue for long periods of time, while there are few if any stimuli so weak or so concentrated in their effects as not to lead to some degree of reflex overflow. A certain diffuseness of response serves to distinguish organisms from machines. This is not to say that organic activity is in any respect loose or haphazard, but only that organisms are extremely sensitive instruments when compared to the stimuli that ordinarily play upon them. Like delicate and well-built violins, the slightest touch starts complex vibrations throughout the whole

structure.

Analysis has distinguished two chief types of organic reverberation, called respectively feeling and thinking. The chief center though by no means the only source of the reverberations called feelings is the viscera, since feelings are largely the result of stimulation of the autonomic nervous system; while the chief center though by no means the only source of the reverberations called thoughts is the brain,

since thoughts are largely the result of stimulation of the central portions of the central nervous system. In an earlier part of this book it has already been pointed out, and in connection with the description of thinking that follows it will be clear, that thought, feeling, and action never occur in isolation, but so many false notions respecting thought are abroad that it has seemed best to devote a chapter to an analysis of our intellectual life.

Three prominent features of human experience seem sufficient for the description of what goes on when men think:

(1) The stream of experiences. Something is always happening to an organism. It is itself continuously active and it is as continuously being acted upon by its environment. An organism might well be defined as a moving pattern of relations between a protoplasmic complex and its environment; it is strictly of the essence of an organism to act and be acted upon.1 An organism is never inactive; the flow of adjustment and counteradjustment continues during sleep, when we are unconscious, and even for some little time after death, since all parts of the body do not cease functioning at the same moment. Only a few items in the stream of experiences ever enter in their own right into consciousness, and become explicitly known to us, though many others are summed up, as it were, in the prevailing feeling tone of the organism at any given moment. These two things—the stream of experiences and the data of consciousness-need to be distinguished, though the two realms are intimately connected. The former includes the latter and much more. At the present moment, for example, I am acutely aware of a certain idea that I wish to express, and various suggestions pop into mind. Some of these suggestions seem relevant, while others are immediately disposed of as being beside the point. This happens quickly and easily, because I am not working merely in terms of what is clearly before me in consciousness, but can also depend on a considerable fund of accumulated experience that need never distinctly enter the field of awareness. This experience can only exist within the organism in the form of continuously activated

reflex arcs. The mind contains no filing cabinet into which inert data are dropped until such time as they are needed. And, as we shall see, the suggestions that pop into mind—and it is such suggestions that we call thoughts-do not spring up irresponsibly into awareness, but are really pushed into consciousness, as it were, by the pressure of affective states.

(2) The pressure of affective states. There is something peremptory and insistent about a feeling; it elicits interest and concern. Few if any items in the stream of experiences provoke absolutely no reverberations of feeling, and appear before us in such total neutrality as to awaken no shade of preference towards or against. Items in the stream whose feeling tone is high are always moving towards the center of attention,* where they displace other items whose affective content is lower. To a certain point the vigor with which adjustments are made depends on the strength of the feelings involved, but the emotional excitement may at times become so strong as to throw the organism into confusion and destroy the possibility of adjustment.

2

(3) Recession of the stimulus." This is Holt's phrase for the fact that, as development proceeds, more and more time usually intervenes between the first indication that action is necessary and the moment when action must commence if it is to be effective. In the beginning responses either follow hard upon their stimuli or, in cases where some time does elapse between the initiation of an activity and the moment when action becomes irrevocable, we are not acquainted with the fact, and can therefore do nothing. Many life processes, however, are more or less recurrent, and in various ways we are apprised that action will shortly be necessary some time before we actually need to act. Except possibly in a very few exceptional instances, we do not consciously delay our responses in order to think; the delay in the necessity of overtly reacting to the stimulus is made possible by the recession of the stimulus.

Suppose I am playing tennis, and have just returned the ball to my opponent in such a way that I am at his mercy.

* Or attention is always shifting to these items-for it little matters which way the relation is expressed.

He can pass me either on my right or my left. Which will he try? If I have not made myself familiar with his play, I can only wait until he has made his stroke, and then lunge wildly for the ball. But perhaps he has certain habits, of glance, of footwork, of racket-swing, or whatnot, which would betray his plan, did I but know them, and which would enable me to shift my position before his stroke has actually been made. I should then be responding to his intention before he had really carried it out, thanks to the recession of the stimulus for that particular stroke.

In a creature with an active and insistent flow of mental processes the recession of the stimulus means everything in making thought possible. Among the reasons for this increase in the time interval between the first indication of the stimulus and the necessity for a final response may be named the following:

(a) The effects of past experiences throw light on the present situation. Thus we may remember how we handled a similar situation, and with what result; or habit may save time by speeding up our responses; or we may have learned that events occur in a certain order, and from the occurrence of the first be warned of the imminence of the second; etc.

(b) The existence of distance receptors. We soon learn to recognize objects while they are still some distance away, and before it is necessary to respond directly to them. It is a good thing that not all of our senses require immediate contact with the objects perceived, as does touch, for we are thereby given time to prepare our response. (c) The formation of purposes which cannot at once be realized, but which nevertheless are brought to bear on action. Purposes involve the formation of plans-of imagined responses to imagined situations, which are held in readiness for use when the situations actually put in their appearance.

(d) The existence of a body of tools, techniques, and knowledges, and the fact of communication. Through these means we receive advance information as to what may happen, and suggestions for dealing with problems before they arise.