ure operate in the present.

This reference to the future may be in the nature of an end or goal that
controls a series of activities or it may be of a momentary and casual
kind. In any case the character of the stimulus changes with the
progress of the act. The book on the table must become successively
book-to-be-reached-for, book-to-be-picked-up, and book-to-be-opened,
unless the process is to drop back to the type of reflex. This
development of the stimulus gives genuine continuity, since every moment
in the process comes as a fulfilment of its predecessor and as a
transition-point to its successor. In a purely mechanical act response
follows stimulus like the successive strokes of a clock. It is a
touch-and-go affair; the stimulus presses the button and then subsides,
while the neural organization does the rest. In conscious behavior, on
the other hand, stimulus and response keep step with each other. A mere
succession of stimuli would reduce conscious behavior to a series of
explosive jerks, on the principle of the gasoline engine. To be
conscious at all is to duplicate in principle the agility of the
tight-rope performer, who continuously establishes new co-ordinations
according to the exigencies of the moment and with constant reference to
the controlling consideration of keeping right side up. The sensory
stimulus provides continuously for its own rehabilitation or appropriate
transformation, and in a similar way the neural organization is never a
finished thing, but is in constant process of readjustment to meet the
demands of an adaptation that still lies in the future.

It is this relationship of present response to the response of the next
moment that constitutes the distinctive trait of conscious behavior. The
relatively unorganized responses of the present moment, in becoming
reflected in the experienced object, reveal their outcome or meaning
before they have become overt, and thus provide the conditions of
intelligent action. In other words, future consequences become
transformed into a stimulus for further behavior. We are confronted here
with a distinctive mode of operation, which must be properly recognized,
if we are to give a consistent and intelligent account of conscious
behavior. On the other hand, if we refuse to recognize the advent here
of a new category, intelligence becomes an anomaly and mystery deepens
into contradiction. Since intelligence or consciousness must be provided
for somehow,