direction of
the light, whereas before it merely spun when lashed.

Suppose, now, that it possess a _third_ reflex arc--a "heat spot" so
connected with the same or other fins that when stimulated by a certain
intensity of heat it initiates a nervous impulse which stops the forward
propulsion. The animal is still "lashed," but nevertheless no light can
force it to swim "blindly to its death" by scalding. It has the
rudiments of "intelligence." But so it had before. For as soon as two
reflex arcs capacitate it mechanically to swim _toward light_, it was no
longer exactly like a pinwheel; it could respond specifically toward at
least one thing in its environment.

It is this objective reference of a process of release that is
significant. The mere reflex does not refer to anything beyond itself;
if it drives an organism in a certain direction, it is only as a rocket
ignited at random shoots off in some direction, depending on how it
happened to lie. But specific response is not merely in some random
direction, it is _toward an object_, and if this object is moved, the
responding organism changes its direction and still moves after it. And
the objective reference is that the organism is _moving with reference
to some object or fact of the environment_. For the organism, while a
very interesting mechanism in itself, is one whose movements turn on
objects outside of itself, much as the orbit of the earth turns upon the
sun; and these external, and sometimes very distant, objects are as much
_constituents_ of the behavior process as is the organism which does
the turning. It is this _pivotal outer object_, the object of specific
response, which seems to me to have been overneglected.

It is not surprising, then, that in animals as highly organized reflexly
as are many of the invertebrates, even though they should possess no
other principle of action than that of specific response, the various
life-activities should present an appearance of considerable
intelligence. And I believe that in fact this intelligence is solely the
product of accumulated specific responses. Our present point is that the
specific response and the "wish" as Freud uses the term, are one and the
same thing.

2. The Freudian Wish[167]

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a nursery saw which, in
the light of recent developments in psychology, has come to have a much
more universal application than it was formerly supposed to have. If the