new mode of procedure is adopted.
Instead of being a purely mechanical reaction, the response that results
from the situation is tentative or experimental in character, and "by a
process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect
the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved."

We may add at once that the reorganization which is required to
constitute conscious behavior varies a great deal in extent. In an act
that is more or less habitual, a comparatively slight modification of
the corresponding organized system of neural discharge will suffice to
harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other occasions a more
extensive modification is required. But in any case it appears that
there is a certain impropriety in describing conscious behavior in terms
of a temporary reflex, since the study of this behavior is concerned
with the organization of the discordant elements, not as a result, but
primarily as a process. In a reflex act we may suppose that the stimulus
which evokes the first stage in the response is like the first in a row
of upstanding bricks, which in falling knocks down another. That is, the
reflex arc is built up by agencies that are quite independent of the
subsequent act. The arc is all set up and ready for use by the time the
reflex act appears upon the scene. In the case of conscious activity, on
the other hand, we find a very different state of affairs. The arc is
not first constructed and then used, but is constructed as the act
proceeds; and this progressive organization is, in the end, what is
meant by conscious behavior. If the course of a reflex act may be
compared with traveling in a railroad train, the progress of a conscious
act is more like that of a band of explorers, who hew their path and
build their bridges as they go along. The direction of the act is not
determined from without but from within; the end is internal to the
process.

This process of organization and purposive direction is exemplified in
every act of attention. Is that noise, for example, a horse in the
street, or is it the rain on the roof? What we find in such a situation
is not a paralysis of activity, but a redirection. The incompatibility
of responses is purely relative. There is indeed a mutual inhibition of
the responses for hoof-beats and rain respectively, in the sense that
neither has undisputed possession of the field; but this very inhibition
sets free the process of attent