ols and nothing more. The significance of these symbols is
that they point to certain conditions by which the experiences in
question are determined. Thus the question whether a given experience
involves certain "sensations" is just a question whether certain bodily
or extra-bodily conditions are involved in the experience. If this
reference to conditions is ignored and experience is explained in terms
of sensory material that blends and fuses and otherwise disposes itself,
the explanation is no longer science but sleight-of-hand. Psychology has
no proper concern with such mythical constituents of consciousness; its
business is with things as related to conduct, which is to say that
psychology is a science of behavior.

II

According to the standpoint set forth in the preceding discussion, the
key to a consistent and fruitful interpretation of consciousness and
psychology lies in behavior. If we turn now to the psychology of
introspection, which has been dominant so many years, we find a
standpoint and mode of procedure which, on the surface at least, is of a
radically different kind. It behooves us, therefore, to consider this
standpoint in some detail in order to justify the attempt to reinterpret
and "evaluate" it in the light of our own doctrine.

The point of departure for introspective psychology is to be found, so
it seems, not in the facts of behavior, but in the distinction between
focal and marginal experience. It is on this distinction that the
introspective psychologist bases the attempt to give a psychological
analysis and description of the contents of experience. To analyze and
describe the facts of consciousness is to bring the marginal
constituents of experience into the white light of attention. Analysis
and description are possible just because experience is so largely a
welter of elements that disguise their identity and character. In some
way these unrecognized and unidentified elements are constituents of the
total experience. To borrow the language of a writer quoted by James,
"However deeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any
thought, any considerable alteration of the surrounding phenomena would
still be perceived; the most abstruse demonstration in this room would
not prevent a listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden
extinction of the lights."[40] Or, as James remarks: "It is just like
the overtones in music. Different instruments give the 'same note,'
namely, v