The process which we have called the acquirement of meaning is the minimum in the way of reproduction required to explain intelligent learning by experience. All more specific modes of reproduction presuppose it, and owe their guiding efficacy to it. All revival of specific items of sensation and the like, in so far as it makes possible intelligent adaptation to the result of previous experience, must make more definite and explicit the peculiar consciousness which arises from the reexcitement of the total disposition left behind by previous process The case we have analysed is sometimes explained in a different way. It is said that when the chick sees again the caterpillar, which it has previously ejected in disgust, the previous sensation of disgust is reproduced by the sight of the peculiar markings of the caterpillar. The primary experience of disgust prompted the ejection of the caterpillar; hence, it is argued, the revived sensation will lead the chicken to refuse the unsavoury morsel. Now, it is probable enough that something which may be called a revival of the disgusting sensation, actually takes place; but this is not sufficient, and possibly not necessary, to account for the result. According to the proposed explanation, the chick has (1) a primary sense experience, the sight of the caterpillar, and (2) a faintly revived sensation of disgust. What must follow? Each of the two sensations, the one primary, and the other secondary, independently prompt to a certain kind of action, and the result can only be a sort of mechanical interference, not intelligent guidance. The visual experience prompts to picking and seizing. The revived distaste prompts to the act of ejecting or dropping from the beak. The tendency to ejection ought to interfere with the act of pecking only in so far as the two movements are mechanically incompatible. One would expect a nondescript blend of the two movements, or an alternation between them. Intelligent behaviour cannot be a product of such conditions. Two motor impulses of a quasireflex character are brought together in a mechanical way, and nothing can ensue except a sort of mechanical resultant. It is true that if it be granted that the sight of the cinnabar caterpillar has, from the first, a specific meaning, this meaning may be rendered more explicit by reinstatement of the sensation of disgust. But the mere reinstatement of the sensation of disgust taken by itself does not account for the result, whereas the acquirement of meaning might account for the result apart from the revival of the specific sensation. In the case we are discussing, there probably is a certain revival of sensation, though it takes place in a peculiar way, and not by direct association.*

* Cf. end of § 9: Primary Laws Of Mental Process. Association and Reproduction

Acquirement of meaning is that mode of reproduction which approaches most nearly in its nature to primary retentiveness. It might indeed be deduced a priori from the existence of primary retentiveness. If the successive phases of a process concur to form a total disposition as their cumulative effect, the renewal of a part of the process must tend to reexcite this disposition. Just as in primary retentiveness it is not the specific items of previous experience which persist in succeeding experience, but only a modification of consciousness due to the cumulative disposition, so the reexcitement of the cumulative disposition does not necessarily involve revival of the specific items of previous experience, and it must involve something different from this. It must involve what primary retentiveness involves,—that peculiar modification of consciousness which we can only call apprehension of meaning or significance—of the peculiar character which the part derives from its relation to the whole.

We have now to consider modes of reproduction more specific in their nature than the general reexcitement of a total disposition. These more specific modes of reproduction assume manifold forms and gradations, which are to be regarded as stages in the evolution of meaning towards definiteness and explicitness. Meaning unfolds into them as the seed unfolds into the plant.