consists in furnishing the organism with a new type of
stimulus. The razor as perceived does not actually cut just now, but it
bodies forth the quality 'will cut,' i.e., the perceived attribute
derives its character from what the object will, or may, do at a future
time. That is, a perceived object is a stimulus which controls or
directs the organism by results which have not yet occurred, but which
will, or may, occur in the future. The uniqueness of such a stimulus
lies in the fact that a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a
present fact; the future is transferred into the present so as to become
effective in the guidance of behavior.

This control by a future that is made present is what constitutes
consciousness. A living body may respond to an actual cut by a knife on
purely mechanical or reflex principles; but to respond to a cut by
anticipation, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible or
future injury, is manifestly an exhibition of intelligence. Not that
there need be any conscious reference to the future as future in the
act. Merely to see the object as "sharp" is sufficient to give
direction to conduct. But "sharp" is equivalent to "will cut"; the
quality of sharpness is a translation of future possibility into terms
of present fact, and as thus translated the future possibility becomes a
factor in the control of behavior. Perception, therefore, is a point
where present and future coincide. What the object _will_ do is, in
itself, just a contingency, an abstract possibility, but in perception
this possibility clothes itself in the garments of present, concrete
fact and thus provides the organism with a different environment. The
environment provides a new stimulus by undergoing a certain kind of
change, i.e., by exercising a peculiar function of control. This control
is seeing, and the whole mystery of consciousness is just this rendering
of future stimulations or results into terms of present existence.
Consciousness, accordingly, is a name for a certain change that takes
place in the stimulus; or, more specifically, it is a name for the
control of conduct by future results or consequences.

To acquire such a stimulus and to become conscious are one and the same
thing. As was indicated previously, the conscious stimulus is correlated
with the various inherited and acquired motor tendencies which have been
set off and which are struggling for expression, and the uniqueness of
the stimu