It is interesting to speculate upon what would have occurred had Prof. Warren chanced first to associate the electric light button with kinesthetic experiences originating in his feet instead of in his hands. What if he had been standing on his head amusing the children on that momentous day? Or, since he probably made his first acquaintance with electric light early in life, what if when playing circus as a boy he had accidentally _kicked_ the button from “Off” to “On”? Obviously he would have obtained the fateful foresight that kicks will produce light. And he would have been destined all his life to play the acrobat before ever the kinesthetic experiences of his muscles could instigate in him the desire to read after dusk. Nor is it possible that he could have been rescued from his fate save by another chance experience yet more kinesthetically violent. “The synapse,” says Professor Pillsbury, sensibly enough, “is the point where action leaves its impress upon the nervous system.” But he does not grow lyrical about it. For lyricism we must go to Miss Clara Stevens, a real behaviorist. She thus deposes and sings in _The Open Court_:[11] “Here [in the synapse] lies the basis of character and destiny. No need of a recording angel to set down our shortcomings against us. The mystic synapse is recorder; and avenger as well. Its use renders it all-powerful ... its neglect bars further way for either temptation on the one hand or profitable deeds on the other. We can only act and think in the future as we have habituated the synapse in the past.” Surely the lady has allowed her enthusiasm to carry her too far. How can we have anything to do with the habituating of a synapse which is governed by chance? She tries to find a way out by maintaining that the original neural impulse may be determined “by such a material fact ... as nutrition supplied or withheld by the cell-body.” Does the cell-body, then, have a will of its own, so that it can either issue or withhold supplies? That were power indeed. And she speaks throughout her article of “mystery,” “inclination,” “motives,” “ambitions,” “tolerance,” “bigotry,” “principle,” “idealistic acts,” “clearness of judgment,” and “firmness of purpose.” I have wronged her. Here we have no behaviorist, but a good woman trying to be a behaviorist but unable to leave all her commonsense behind her--a woman born, happily, without a trace of logic, and spared by chance from acquiring any. Not that Miss Stevens is one whit more illogical than is Dr. Watson. She is merely less obscure. On pages 319 to 321 of “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist” we are given a list of six “determiners of acts,” and told that “of course the most important determiner is the life-history of the individual.” And the other five are mere portions of life-history. Dr. Watson is fond of the word Genetics, yet he carefully avoids the subject of true beginnings.