Mind is
capacity to refer present conditions to future results, and
future consequences to present conditions. And these traits are
just what is meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is
stupid or blind or unintelligent -- lacking in mind -- just in
the degree in which in any activity he does not know what he is
about, namely, the probable consequences of his acts. A man is
imperfectly intelligent when he contents himself with looser
guesses about the outcome than is needful, just taking a chance
with his luck, or when he forms plans apart from study of the
actual conditions, including his own capacities. Such relative
absence of mind means to make our feelings the measure of what is
to happen. To be intelligent we must "stop, look, listen" in
making the plan of an activity.
To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough
to show its value -- its function in experience. We are only too
given to making an entity out of the abstract noun
"consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective
"conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about;
conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of
activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes
idly on the scene around one or which has impressions made upon
it by physical things; it is a name for the purposeful quality of
an activity, for the fact that it is directed by an aim.
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