§ 53. =The Psychology of Action.=—There seems to be a great gulf fixed between plants and animals, and you were probably surprised to read, on p. 13, that there are not a few psychologists who take the question of a plant-mind with scientific seriousness. If you ask yourself, now, wherein this gulf consists, you will find that it reduces in the main to a single point of difference: _the higher plants are stationary organisms, the higher animals are motor_. The plant stands still and has to wait for things to come to it; and its organisation fits the case; it spreads its organs over the widest possible space, and is all, so to say, on the outside. The animal moves; it goes to things; and its organisation is correspondingly different; the vital organs are packed away inside, where they are out of harm’s reach, and are distributed in such a way as to be easily carried. It would be strange, then, if movement—the great differential character of the animals—did not somehow fall within the range of psychology; and we know that it does; for we are continually hoping, fearing, resolving, refusing, wishing to _do_ something, or feeling glad, sorry, satisfied, disappointed, resentful that the something has been _done_. Moreover, we have already made frequent reference to movement; we have spoken of the attitude of attention, of movement of the eyes, of instinctive and expressive movements; and we have also laid stress upon the manifold part played in the mental life by kinæsthesis, by sensations from the moving organs. So we are prepared to consider movement in its own psychological right, as correlated with special mental processes or patterns. There are, as usual, a few preliminary matters to be got out of the way. First of all, we shall do well to distinguish the terms ‘movement’ and ‘action.’ Movement is, without question, the wider term. Action, although it is very loosely used in ordinary speech, so that we speak of the action of a horse or a sewing-machine, is the word that we naturally employ in referring to human conduct. We may therefore take advantage of this difference in meaning, and may say that =action=, as a technical term in psychology, denotes _any organic movement that has mental correlates_; or more strictly, that it is an organic movement any phase of which, beginning, middle or end, has mental correlates. The need of the stricter definition will appear as we go on.