adder that leads
to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the
primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our
discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human
behaviour.

* * * * *

Movement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought.
Perception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here
comes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals,
in so far as they act by "instinct," as we say, perception, knowing, is
usually followed immediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as
is calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the
higher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more
complex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is
an interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is
pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious _representation_. Now
it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between
perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life,
our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and
our art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were
instantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived
instincts, we should hardly have _dromena_, and we should certainly
never pass from _dromena_ to _drama_. Art and religion, though perhaps
not wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied
desire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found
immediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish
the dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be
cardinal.

We have next to watch how out of _representation repeated_ there grows
up a kind of _abstraction_ which helps the transition from ritual to
art. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or
any event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will
often re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive
audience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is
no doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the
battle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful.
Together with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human
endeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancem