outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or
control is a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an
assistance in doing fully what some organ is already tending to
do.

This general statement needs, however, to be qualified in two
respects. In the first place, except in the case of a small
number of instincts, the stimuli to which an immature human being
is subject are not sufficiently definite to call out, in the
beginning, specific responses. There is always a great deal of
superfluous energy aroused. This energy may be wasted, going
aside from the point; it may also go against the successful
performance of an act. It does harm by getting in the way.
Compare the behavior of a beginner in riding a bicycle with that
of the expert. There is little axis of direction in the energies
put forth; they are largely dispersive and centrifugal.
Direction involves a focusing and fixating of action in order
that it may be truly a response, and this requires an elimination
of unnecessary and confusing movements. In the second place,
although no activity can be produced in which the person does not
cooperate to some extent, yet a response may be of a kind which
does not fit into the sequence and continuity of action. A
person boxing may dodge a particular blow successfully, but in
such a way as to expose himself the next instant to a still
harder blow. Adequate control means that the successive acts are
brought into a continuous order; each act not only meets its
immediate stimulus but helps the acts which follow.

In short, direction is both simultaneous and successive. At a
given time, it requires that, from all the tendencies that are