A noise may make me jump without
my mind being implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get
water and put out a blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound
meant fire, and fire meant need of being extinguished. I bump
into a stone, and kick it to one side purely physically. I put
it to one side for fear some one will stumble upon it,
intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing has. I am
startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or not -- more
likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I say, either out loud
or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as a
meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When things have a
meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they
do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are
directed or controlled. But in the merely blind response,
direction is also blind. There may be training, but there is no
education. Repeated responses to recurrent stimuli may fix a
habit of acting in a certain way. All of us have many habits of
whose import we are quite unaware, since they were formed without
our knowing what we were about. Consequently they possess us,
rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless we
become aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the
worth of the result, we do not control them. A child might be
made to bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his
neck muscles, and bowing would finally become automatic.
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