ion, in which the various responses
participate and cooeperate. There is no static balancing of forces, but
rather a process in which the conflict is simply a condition for an
activity of a different kind. If I am near a window facing the street,
my eye turns thither for a clue; if the appeal to vision be eliminated,
the eye becomes unseeing and cooeperates with the ear by excluding all
that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. In this process the nervous
system functions as a unit, with reference to the task of determining
the source and character of the sound. This task or problem dominates
the situation. A voice in an adjoining room may break in, but only as
something to be ignored and shut out; whereas a voice in the street may
become all-absorbing as possibly indicating the driver of the
hypothetical horse. That is, the reason why the conflict of responses
does not end in a deadlock, but in a redirection, is that a certain
selectiveness of response comes into play. Out of the mass of more or
less inchoate activities a certain response is selected as a
rallying-point for the rest, and this selection is of a purposive
character. The selection is determined by reference to the task in hand,
which is to restore a certain harmony of response. Accordingly, that
response is selected which gives promise of forwarding the business of
the moment. By virtue of this selective character, one of the
constituents of the total activity becomes exalted among its fellows and
is entrusted with the function of determining further behavior.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, is to put forward this
selective or teleological character as the fundamental and
differentiating trait of conscious behavior; and our task, accordingly,
is to give an account of the nature and _modus operandi_ of this
purposive control. This control, it is evident, consists in giving
direction to behavior with reference to results that are still in the
future. The basis for this anticipation of the future is furnished by
the nascent responses which foreshadow further activity, even while they
are still under the thraldom of the inhibitions which hold them back.
These suppressed activities furnish a sort of diagram or sketch of
further possible behavior, and the problem of consciousness is the
problem of making the result or outcome of these incipient responses
effective in the control of behavior. Future results or consequences
must be converted int