Tertium Organum

choice
or consciousness of 
purpose. 
They arise with the appearance of an emotional quality in a sensation, i.e. from the 
moment when the feeling of pleasure or pain becomes connected with the sensation. 
And indeed, before the appearance of human intellect, 'actions' in all the animal 
kingdom are governed by the tendency to obtain or keep pleasure, or to avoid pain. 
We may say with the utmost certainty that instinct is 
pleasure-pain 
which, like the 
positive and negative poles of an electro-magnet, repels and attracts an animal in one or 
another direction, thus forcing it to perform a whole series of complicated actions, at 
times so expedient as to appear conscious; and not only conscious, but based on a 
foresight of the future almost bordering on clairvoyance, such as the migration of birds, 
the building of nests for the young still unborn, the finding of the way south in the 
autumn and north in the spring, and so on. 
But in actual fact all these actions are explained solely by instinct, i.e. by 
subordination to 
pleasure-pain. 
In the course of periods in which thousands of years may be counted as days, there 
was evolved in all animals, through selection, a type which lives according to this 
subordination. This subordination is expedient, i.e. its results lead to the 
required
aim. 
It is quite clear why this is so. If the feeling of pleasure proceeded from something 
harmful, a given species could not live and would soon die out. Instinct is the guiding 
factor of its life; but only so long as instinct is expedient. As soon as it ceases to be 
expedient, it becomes the guiding factor of death, and the species very soon dies out. 
Normally, 'pleasure-pain' is pleasant and unpleasant not 
for 
the usefulness or the harm 
it brings, but 
as a consequence
of it. Influences which had proved 
useful
to a given 
species during its vegetable life begin to be experienced as 
pleasant
with the transition 
to animal life; harmful influences are experienced as unpleasant. One and the same 
influence - say a certain temperature - may be useful and pleasant for one species and 
harmful and unpleasant for another. It is clear, therefore, that subordination to 
'pleasure-pain' should be expedient. The 

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pleasant is 
pleasant 
because it is 
useful;
the unpleasant is 
unpleasant 
because 
it is 
harmful. 
The next stage after instinctive actions consists of rational and automatic 
actions. 
By rational action is meant an action known to the acting subject 
before it 
is performed — 
an action which the acting subject can name, define, explain 
and whose cause and purpose he can point out -
before it has taken place. 
By automatic actions are meant actions which have been rational for a 
given subject but have since become customary and unconscious through 
frequent repetition. The automatic actions learned by trained animals were 
previously rational not in the animal but in the trainer. Such actions often 
seem quite rational, but this is pure illusion. The animal remembers the order 
of actions and so its actions appear to be thought out and expedient. And it is 
true they were thought out, 
but not by it.
Automatic actions are often 
confused with instinctive actions; and indeed they do resemble the 
instinctive, but at the same time there is an enormous difference between 
them. Automatic actions are created by the subject in the course of his own 
life. And, before becoming automatic, they must for a long time remain 
rational for him or for another person. Instinctive actions are created during
the lifetime of a