These sentences indicate with sufficient clearness the distinction, more than once hinted at in the foregoing pages, between consciousness as an accompaniment, and consciousness as a guiding influence. We shall have more to say in this connection in subsequent chapters. The experiment with the frog shows, at any rate, that reflex actions, of a distinctly purposive nature, may be carried out when the centres, which are believed to exercise conscious control and guidance have been destroyed. It is said that in man, when, owing to injuries of the spine, the connection between the brain and the lower part of the spinal cord have been severed, tickling of the foot causes withdrawal of the limb without directly affecting the consciousness of the patient. But in all such cases we are dealing with a maimed creature. The living frog or man, healthy and intact, is, presumably in the one case, certainly in the other, conscious of these reflex actions, and can exercise some amount of guidance and control over them. In man this is unquestionably the case. But granting that the brain is the organ of conscious control, granting that it can receive impulses from and transmit impulses to the reflex centres, no more is here implied, and no more can be legitimately inferred, than that the kind of organic behaviour we call “reflex action” is in the higher animals in touch with the guiding centres. We have no ground for assuming that in reflex action there is any power of intelligent guidance independent of that which is exercised by the brain or analogous organ. In brief, reflex acts, in animals endowed with intelligence, may be regarded as specialized modes of organic behaviour; which are in themselves often characterized by much complexity; which subserve definite biological ends; which are effected by subordinate centres capable of transmitting impulses to, and receiving impulses from, the centres of intelligent guidance; and which, as responses confined to certain organs or parts of the body, form elements in the wider behaviour of the animal as a whole. VI.--THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC BEHAVIOUR The interpretation of organic behaviour in terms of evolution mainly depends on the answer we give to the question: Are acquired modes of behaviour inherited? A negative answer to this question is here provisionally accepted. But the premisses from which this conclusion is drawn are too technical for discussion in these pages. It must suffice to state as briefly as possible what this conclusion amounts to, and to indicate some of the consequences which follow from its acceptance.