This inherent uncertainty means that conscious behavior, as contrasted with the mechanical character of the reflexes, is essentially experimental. The uncertainty exists precisely because an effort is under way to clear up the uncertainty. The resort to eye or ear or to reflective thinking is suggested by the corresponding nascent responses and is an endeavor to secure something which is still to seek, but which, when found, will meet the requirements of the situation. Translating this process into terms of stimulus and response, we may say that the conscious stimulus of the moment induces the investigation or scrutiny which presently results in the arrival of a stimulus that is adequate to the situation. The stimulus, in other words, provides for its own successor; or we may say that the process as a whole is a self-directing, self-determining activity. Stimulus and response are not successive stages or moments, but rather simultaneous functions or phases of the total process. Within this process the given situation is the stimulus because it is that aspect or function which guides the subsequent course of the activity, while the bodily movements are the response because they already embody the activity that is to follow. The significant circumstance here is that stimulus and response resist the temporal separation that we find in a purely reflex act; stimulus and response are bound together as correlated functions in a unitary, self-directing process, so that these twain are one flesh.