which guides the
subsequent course of the activity, while the bodily movements are the
response because they already embody the activity that is to follow. The
significant circumstance here is that stimulus and response resist the
temporal separation that we find in a purely reflex act; stimulus and
response are bound together as correlated functions in a unitary,
self-directing process, so that these twain are one flesh.

Situations of uncertainty and expectancy, as exemplified by the familiar
child-candle incident, are of interest, because they emphasize both the
anticipatory character of experience and the peculiar reconstruction of
the stimulus. These situations, however, differ merely in degree, not in
kind, from other experiences; their merit is that in them the
distinctive character of conscious life is writ large. To say that they
are conscious situations is to say that they are so constituted that the
possibilities of a subsequent moment are embodied in them as a positive
quality. In them the present moment embodies a future that is
contingent. And similarly the response has neither the predetermined
organization of the reflex nor the aimless character of a response that
issues in a set of random movements. It is, so to speak, of a
generalized character, like the paleontological specimens that
foreshadow in their structure the advent of both fish and reptile. This
form of organization, however, while exemplified most strikingly in
situations of uncertainty, pertains to all conscious behavior. In
uttering a sentence, for example, we know in advance what we are going
to say, yet the sentence shapes itself into definite form only as we
proceed; or perhaps we get "stuck," and by hemming and hawing bear
witness that a struggle for a certain kind of organization is going on.
The same word in different contexts is a different word in each
instance, by virtue of the coloring that it takes on from what is to
follow after. And this is equally true of our most casual experiences.
The auditory or visual object that we happen to notice and immediately
afterwards ignore is apprehended with reference to the possibility of
warranting further attention, or else it presents itself as an intruder
that is to be excluded in order that we may go on with the concern of
the moment. All experience is a kind of intelligence, a control of
present behavior with reference to future adjustment. To be in
experience at all is to have the fut