which for the physicist is a field of acceleration, and for the biolo- gist and psychologist is a field of the environment to which the organism responds more suo. The business of science in each case is to formulate an answer to the question: Given such a field, having what may be called varying density, what hap- pens therein? One does not enquire: What makes that which happens so happen? At least one does not ask any such ques- tion in a trans-empirical sense. To do so is to " grub under- ground for what makes action act." But on such terms where does psychology come in? One has here to realize that there are two schools of behaviourists. According to one school the study of conduct is to supplant that of consciousness through so-called methods of introspection. According to the other school such study is to give new value and direction to psychol- ogy and thus involves not the abandoning but a redefining of the concept of consciousness. Here alliance is sought with those whom they regard as in spirit, if not in name, one with them in aim. Behaviourists of this latter school, while still rejecting consciousness as a trans-empirical agent, and thus avoiding all taint of animistic interpretation, all interaction of mind and body as disparate entities, all so-called parallelism and the like, none the less accept consciousness as an empirical function. What does this mean? It is connected with what is spoken of as the relational view of consciousness, and thus has points of contact with the relational view of space-time. Indeed F. J. E. Woodbridge (1905) says that we should use the expres- sion " in consciousness " in a manner like unto that in which we use the expression " in space " or " in time "; and just as we do not ask if space and time, as such, affect things causally, so too we should not raise the question of the causal efficiency of consciousness.
The wedge of entry of the psychic regard, implied by the use of the word " consciousness," is through the concept of aware- ness. Lotze spoke of one physical body "taking note of" others. Thus the earth takes note of the sun in a gravitative field; iron filings take note of a magnet in an electro-magnetic field. But awareness commonly implies some mental as well as physical taking note of something, however rudimentary, of the nature of being acquainted with. Now if we speak of a relational field of awareness as one in which this conscious " taking note of " obtains, the organism which is stimulated and responds is always central within that field. If then we call this central term the psycho-organism, it is the locus of con- sciousness in the sense of being aware. It is the experiencing term in relation to terms in the environment which are expe- rienced.. That is one way of regarding consciousness in the widest sense of the word. Consciousness is the class of all instances of experiencing on the part of psycho-organisms. Whitehead's percipient event, taking note of physically, is also a perceiving event, taking note of psychically. But of course the psycho-organism, as perceiving centre, is that very com- plexly integrated system of such psychical events which we commonly call a mind.
There is, however, another way of regarding consciousness. Instead of restricting the application of the word to processes of minding within the percipient centre, the concept is extended so as to comprise all that is in the field of awareness as minded. That which one is aware of, no matter how distant its locus of origin may be from the percipient centre, is " in mind," and therefore " in consciousness," as a relational field. One is, no doubt, conscious in seeing, or imaging, or remembering; but one is also conscious of what is seen, imaged, or remembered. And what one is conscious of has every right to be regarded as in consciousness. This distinction between the " in " and the " of " (as here used) goes back at least as far as Berkeley, who spoke of perceiving as in mind "by way of attribute"" and of that which is perceived as in mind " by way of idea." We sometimes speak of the former as " in consciousness " and of the latter as " for consciousness "; or of the former as " sub- jective " and of the latter as " objective." But the behaviourist is, as he might say, " out for " objective treatment. Part of his motive is to show the futility of subjecticism. Hence, for his
treatment, the emphasis falls on that of which one is conscious. Thus E. B. Holt would urge that there is nothing in the sub- sistent or existent world (for our developed knowledge or our more primitive acquaintance) of which we may not be con- scious. For him therefore consciousness is a section through the world of experience, of which section the organism that we speak of as perceiving or conceiving is, in any given particular case, the centre. And Woodbridge (1905) says: "Objects are con- nected in consciousness in such a way that they become known. It is important to note that, while this is so, the knowledge is wholly determined in its content by the relations of the objects in consciousness to one another, not by the relation of con- sciousness to the objects."
To be " in consciousness " is thus on this view to be in a field of awareness which may, like space-time, be coextensive with the universe. But this is not the only view so much turns on definition. Others, without invoking an independent psychic entity, and without denying that there is a widely extensive field of awareness, within which all objects for consciousness are set, would differentiate consciousness as an imperium in imperio and restrict it to the organism as the percipient centre within that field. B. H. Bode (1917) goes further and advocates a yet more restricted concept of consciousness according to which some reference to the future is an essential criterion. " Consciousness is behaviour that is controlled by the future." There is much to be said for the contention that human con- sciousness is the mental correlate of behaviour that is con- trolled by anticipations of the future. James urged that with every definite image " goes the sense of its relations, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead." But this is not quite what Bode says. He speaks of consciousness as " just a future adaption that has been set to work so as to bring about its own realization." This implies that the locus of consciousness, thus regarded, is the percipient centre. " As Dewey has pointed out, the psychical is correlated with intra-organic adjustments within the organism, that is adjustments of the organism considered not with reference to the environment, but with reference to one another." This seems to give to psychology, as commonly understood, a more definite place than is readily to be found in the treatment of Watson. And Yerkes (1917) criticizing the behaviourism of Watson " as simply and solely the physiology of organic activ- ity," claims that there is a science of " psychics " on a par with that of " physics," including in the latter objective physi- ology and biology. Enough has been said in this connexion to show that it is no easy task to bring to a focus the essentials of behaviourist creed or policy.
Apart from philosophical implications, and apart from its relation, if any, to consciousness, a cardinal feature of this policy is to start out from behaviour as that which lies open to objective observation instead of from introspection, which is supposed to yield some trans-empirical psychic force or energy. Behaviour is the biological " end " of all processes in the organ- ism; it is that which we seek to interpret under the canons of strictly scientific procedure; it is therefore that from which such interpretation should set forth. This, it is urged, has been realized by all the best workers on the problems of animal life; it has been realized in a measure by those who lay stress, in human life, on the importance of conduct. Here the realiza- tion needs to be widened and strengthened. Watson would add that it must be formulated in physiological and biological terms. In human life there is no doubt much emphasis on language and on thought. What is language, however, but a subtle mode of behaviour " laryngeal behaviour " if we include all the contributory bodily processes which centre round oral speech, and, as integrated therewith, the written word? How- large a proportion of human behaviour finds its expression in language and its attendant modes of symbolization! But in our adult life much of this has been rendered implicit and no longer gets overt or explicit expression. None the less it is present, as unvoiced " laryngeal behaviour," though " the moment the overt slips into the implicit, instrumentation [the
