[319]The substance of this chapter, and a good many pages of the text, originally appeared in an article entitled 'Brute and Human Intellect,' in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for July 1878 (vol. xii. p. 236).
[319]The substance of this chapter, and a good many pages of the text, originally appeared in an article entitled 'Brute and Human Intellect,' in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for July 1878 (vol. xii. p. 236).
[320]I see no need of assuming more than two terms in this sort of reasoning—first, the sign, and second, the thing inferred from it. Either may be complex, but essentially it is but A calling up B, and no middle term is involved. M. Binet, in his most intelligent little book, La Psychologie du Raisonnement, maintains that there are three terms. The present sensation or sign must, according to him, first evoke from the past an image which resembles it and fuses with it, and the things suggested or inferred are always the contiguous associates of this intermediate image, and not of the immediate sensation. The reader ofChapter XIXwill see why I do not believe in the 'image' in question as a distinct psychic fact.
[320]I see no need of assuming more than two terms in this sort of reasoning—first, the sign, and second, the thing inferred from it. Either may be complex, but essentially it is but A calling up B, and no middle term is involved. M. Binet, in his most intelligent little book, La Psychologie du Raisonnement, maintains that there are three terms. The present sensation or sign must, according to him, first evoke from the past an image which resembles it and fuses with it, and the things suggested or inferred are always the contiguous associates of this intermediate image, and not of the immediate sensation. The reader ofChapter XIXwill see why I do not believe in the 'image' in question as a distinct psychic fact.
[321]Mental Evolution in Man (1889), chapters iii and iv. See especially pp. 68-80, and later 353, 396.
[321]Mental Evolution in Man (1889), chapters iii and iv. See especially pp. 68-80, and later 353, 396.
[322]Loc. cit.p. 50.
[322]Loc. cit.p. 50.
[323]P. 52.
[323]P. 52.
[324]Loc. cit.p. 74.
[324]Loc. cit.p. 74.
[325]J. Locke, Essay conc. Hum. Understanding, bk. iv. chap. ii. § 3.
[325]J. Locke, Essay conc. Hum. Understanding, bk. iv. chap. ii. § 3.
[326]To be sagacious is to be a good observer. J. S. Mill has a passage which is so much in the spirit of the text that I cannot forbear to quote it. "The observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eyes, but he who sees what parts that thing is composed of. To do this well is a rare talent. One person, from inattention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees; another sets down much more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers; another takes note of thekindof all the circumstances, but being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quantity of each vague and uncertain; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such an awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass which require to be separated, and separating others which might more conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same, sometimes even worse, than if no analysis had been attempted at all. It would be possible to point out what qualities of mind, and modes of mental culture, fit a person for being a good observer: that, however, is a question not of Logic, but of the Theory of Education, in the most enlarged sense of the term. There is not properly an Art of Observing. There may be rules for observing. But these, like rules for inventing, are properly instructions for the preparation of one's own mind; for putting it into the state in which it will be most fitted to observe, or most likely to invent. They are, therefore, essentially rules of self-education, which is a different thing from Logic. They do not teach how to do the thing, but how to make ourselves capable of doing it. They are an art of strengthening the limbs, not an art of using them. The extent and minuteness of observation which may be requisite, and the degree of decomposition to which it may be necessary to carry the mental analysis, depend on the particular purpose in view. To ascertain the state of the whole universe at any particular moment is impossible, but would also be useless. In making chemical experiments, we do not think it necessary to note the position of the planets; because experience has shown, as a very superficial experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not material to the result: and accordingly, in the ages when man believed in the occult influences of the heavenly bodies, it might have been unphilosophical to omit ascertaining the precise condition of those bodies at the moment of the experiment." (Logic, bk. iii. chap. vii. § 1. Cf. also bk. iv. chap. ii.)
[326]To be sagacious is to be a good observer. J. S. Mill has a passage which is so much in the spirit of the text that I cannot forbear to quote it. "The observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eyes, but he who sees what parts that thing is composed of. To do this well is a rare talent. One person, from inattention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees; another sets down much more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers; another takes note of thekindof all the circumstances, but being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quantity of each vague and uncertain; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such an awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass which require to be separated, and separating others which might more conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same, sometimes even worse, than if no analysis had been attempted at all. It would be possible to point out what qualities of mind, and modes of mental culture, fit a person for being a good observer: that, however, is a question not of Logic, but of the Theory of Education, in the most enlarged sense of the term. There is not properly an Art of Observing. There may be rules for observing. But these, like rules for inventing, are properly instructions for the preparation of one's own mind; for putting it into the state in which it will be most fitted to observe, or most likely to invent. They are, therefore, essentially rules of self-education, which is a different thing from Logic. They do not teach how to do the thing, but how to make ourselves capable of doing it. They are an art of strengthening the limbs, not an art of using them. The extent and minuteness of observation which may be requisite, and the degree of decomposition to which it may be necessary to carry the mental analysis, depend on the particular purpose in view. To ascertain the state of the whole universe at any particular moment is impossible, but would also be useless. In making chemical experiments, we do not think it necessary to note the position of the planets; because experience has shown, as a very superficial experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not material to the result: and accordingly, in the ages when man believed in the occult influences of the heavenly bodies, it might have been unphilosophical to omit ascertaining the precise condition of those bodies at the moment of the experiment." (Logic, bk. iii. chap. vii. § 1. Cf. also bk. iv. chap. ii.)
[327]Readers brought up on Popular Science may think that the molecular structure of things is their real essence in an absolute sense, and that water is H-O-H more deeply and truly than it is a solvent of sugar or a slaker of thirst. Not a whit! It isallof these things with equal reality, and the only reason whyfor the chemistit is H-O-H primarily, and only secondarily the other things, is thatfor his purpose of deduction and compendious definition, the H-O-H aspect of it is the more useful one to bear in mind.
[327]Readers brought up on Popular Science may think that the molecular structure of things is their real essence in an absolute sense, and that water is H-O-H more deeply and truly than it is a solvent of sugar or a slaker of thirst. Not a whit! It isallof these things with equal reality, and the only reason whyfor the chemistit is H-O-H primarily, and only secondarily the other things, is thatfor his purpose of deduction and compendious definition, the H-O-H aspect of it is the more useful one to bear in mind.
[328]"We find that we take for granted irresistibly that each kind [of thing] has some character which distinguishes it from other classes.... What is the foundation of this postulate? What is the ground of this assumption that there must exist a definition which we have never seen, and which perhaps no one has seen in a satisfactory form?... I reply that our conviction that there must needs be characteristic marks by which things can be defined in words is founded upon the assumption ofthe necessary possibility of reasoning." (W. Whewell: Hist. of Scientific Ideas, bk. viii. chap. i, § 9.)
[328]"We find that we take for granted irresistibly that each kind [of thing] has some character which distinguishes it from other classes.... What is the foundation of this postulate? What is the ground of this assumption that there must exist a definition which we have never seen, and which perhaps no one has seen in a satisfactory form?... I reply that our conviction that there must needs be characteristic marks by which things can be defined in words is founded upon the assumption ofthe necessary possibility of reasoning." (W. Whewell: Hist. of Scientific Ideas, bk. viii. chap. i, § 9.)
[329]I may quote a passage from an article entitled 'The Sentiment of Rationality,' published in vol. iv of Mind, 1879: "What is aconception? It is ateleological instrument. It is a partial aspect of a thing whichfor our purposewe regard as its essential aspect, as the representative of the entire thing. In comparison with this aspect, whatever other properties and qualities the thing may have are unimportant accidents which we may without blame ignore. But the essence, the ground of conception, varies with the end we have in view. A substance like oil has as many different essences as it has uses to different individuals. One man conceives it as a combustible, another as a lubricator, another as a food; the chemist thinks of it as a hydrocarbon; the furniture-maker as a darkener of wood; the speculator as a commodity whose market-price to-day is this and to-morrow that. The soap-boiler, the physicist, the clothes-scourer severally ascribe to it other essences in relation to their needs. Ueberweg's doctrine that the essential quality of a thing is the quality of mostworthis strictly true; but Ueberweg has failed to note that the worth is wholly relative to the temporary interests of the conceiver. And, even, when his interest is distinctly defined in his own mind, the discrimination of the quality in the object which has the closest connection with it is a thing which no rules can teach. The onlya prioriadvice that can be given to a man embarking on life with a certain purpose is the somewhat barren counsel: Be sure that in the circumstances that meet you, you attend to therightones for your purpose. To pick out the right ones is the measure of the man. 'Millions,' says Hartmann, 'stare at the phenomenon before agenialer Kopfpounces on the concept.' The genius is simply he to whom, when he opens his eyes upon the world, the 'right' characters are the prominent ones. The fool is he who, with the same purposes as the genius, infallibly gets his attention tangled amid the accidents."
[329]I may quote a passage from an article entitled 'The Sentiment of Rationality,' published in vol. iv of Mind, 1879: "What is aconception? It is ateleological instrument. It is a partial aspect of a thing whichfor our purposewe regard as its essential aspect, as the representative of the entire thing. In comparison with this aspect, whatever other properties and qualities the thing may have are unimportant accidents which we may without blame ignore. But the essence, the ground of conception, varies with the end we have in view. A substance like oil has as many different essences as it has uses to different individuals. One man conceives it as a combustible, another as a lubricator, another as a food; the chemist thinks of it as a hydrocarbon; the furniture-maker as a darkener of wood; the speculator as a commodity whose market-price to-day is this and to-morrow that. The soap-boiler, the physicist, the clothes-scourer severally ascribe to it other essences in relation to their needs. Ueberweg's doctrine that the essential quality of a thing is the quality of mostworthis strictly true; but Ueberweg has failed to note that the worth is wholly relative to the temporary interests of the conceiver. And, even, when his interest is distinctly defined in his own mind, the discrimination of the quality in the object which has the closest connection with it is a thing which no rules can teach. The onlya prioriadvice that can be given to a man embarking on life with a certain purpose is the somewhat barren counsel: Be sure that in the circumstances that meet you, you attend to therightones for your purpose. To pick out the right ones is the measure of the man. 'Millions,' says Hartmann, 'stare at the phenomenon before agenialer Kopfpounces on the concept.' The genius is simply he to whom, when he opens his eyes upon the world, the 'right' characters are the prominent ones. The fool is he who, with the same purposes as the genius, infallibly gets his attention tangled amid the accidents."
[330]Only if one of our purposes were itself truer than another, could one of our conceptions become the truer conception. To be a truer purpose, however, our purpose must conform more to some absolute standard of purpose in things to which our purposes ought to conform. This shows that the whole doctrine of essential characters is intimately bound up with a teleological view of the world. Materialism becomes self-contradictory when it denies teleology, and yet in the same breath calls atoms, etc., theessentialfacts. The world contains consciousness as well as atoms—and the one must be written down as just as essential as the other, in the absence of any declared purpose regarding them on the creator's part, or in the absence of any creator. As far as we ourselves go, the atoms are worth more for purposes of deduction, the consciousness for purposes of inspiration. We may fairly write the Universe in either way, thus:Atoms-producing-consciousness; orConsciousness-produced-by-atoms. Atoms alone, or consciousness alone, are precisely equal mutilations of the truth. If, without believing in a God, I still continue to talk of what the world 'essentially is,' I am just as much entitled to define it as a place in which my nose itches, or as a place where at a certain corner I can get a mess of oysters for twenty cents, as to call it an evolving nebula differentiating and integrating itself. It is hard to say which of the three abstractions is the more rotten or miserable substitute for the world's concrete fulness. To conceive it merely as 'God's work' would be a similar mutilation of it, so long as we said not what God, or what kind of work. The only real truth about the world, apart from particular purposes, is thetotaltruth.
[330]Only if one of our purposes were itself truer than another, could one of our conceptions become the truer conception. To be a truer purpose, however, our purpose must conform more to some absolute standard of purpose in things to which our purposes ought to conform. This shows that the whole doctrine of essential characters is intimately bound up with a teleological view of the world. Materialism becomes self-contradictory when it denies teleology, and yet in the same breath calls atoms, etc., theessentialfacts. The world contains consciousness as well as atoms—and the one must be written down as just as essential as the other, in the absence of any declared purpose regarding them on the creator's part, or in the absence of any creator. As far as we ourselves go, the atoms are worth more for purposes of deduction, the consciousness for purposes of inspiration. We may fairly write the Universe in either way, thus:Atoms-producing-consciousness; orConsciousness-produced-by-atoms. Atoms alone, or consciousness alone, are precisely equal mutilations of the truth. If, without believing in a God, I still continue to talk of what the world 'essentially is,' I am just as much entitled to define it as a place in which my nose itches, or as a place where at a certain corner I can get a mess of oysters for twenty cents, as to call it an evolving nebula differentiating and integrating itself. It is hard to say which of the three abstractions is the more rotten or miserable substitute for the world's concrete fulness. To conceive it merely as 'God's work' would be a similar mutilation of it, so long as we said not what God, or what kind of work. The only real truth about the world, apart from particular purposes, is thetotaltruth.
[331]Compare Lotze, Metaphysik, §§ 58, 67, for some instructive remarks on ways in which the world's constitution might differ from what it actually is. Compare alsoChapter XXVIII.
[331]Compare Lotze, Metaphysik, §§ 58, 67, for some instructive remarks on ways in which the world's constitution might differ from what it actually is. Compare alsoChapter XXVIII.
[332]Sometimes, it must be confessed, the conceiver's purpose falls short of reasoning and the only conclusion he cares to reach is the bare naming of the datum. "What is that?" is our first question relative to any unknown thing. And the ease with which our curiosity is quenched as soon as we are supplied with any sort of a name to call the object by, is ridiculous enough. To quote from an unpublished essay by a former student of mine, Mr. R. W. Black: "The simplest end which a thing's predicate can serve is the satisfaction of the desire for unity itself, the mere desire that the thing shall be the same withsomethingelse. Why, the other day, when I mistook a portrait of Shakespeare for one of Hawthorne, was I not, on psychological principles, as right as if I had correctly named it?—the two pictures had a common essence, bald forehead, mustache, flowing hair. Simply because the only end that could possibly be served by naming it Hawthorne was my desire to have it so. With reference to any other end that classification of it would not serve. And every unity, every identity, every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily believing in it."
[332]Sometimes, it must be confessed, the conceiver's purpose falls short of reasoning and the only conclusion he cares to reach is the bare naming of the datum. "What is that?" is our first question relative to any unknown thing. And the ease with which our curiosity is quenched as soon as we are supplied with any sort of a name to call the object by, is ridiculous enough. To quote from an unpublished essay by a former student of mine, Mr. R. W. Black: "The simplest end which a thing's predicate can serve is the satisfaction of the desire for unity itself, the mere desire that the thing shall be the same withsomethingelse. Why, the other day, when I mistook a portrait of Shakespeare for one of Hawthorne, was I not, on psychological principles, as right as if I had correctly named it?—the two pictures had a common essence, bald forehead, mustache, flowing hair. Simply because the only end that could possibly be served by naming it Hawthorne was my desire to have it so. With reference to any other end that classification of it would not serve. And every unity, every identity, every classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end than the mere satisfaction, emotion, or inspiration caught by momentarily believing in it."
[333]See above,p. 8.
[333]See above,p. 8.
[334]See his Study of Character, chap. xv; also Senses and Intellect, 'Intellect,' chap. ii, the latter half.
[334]See his Study of Character, chap. xv; also Senses and Intellect, 'Intellect,' chap. ii, the latter half.
[335]Whether the dog has the notion of your being angry or of your property being valuable in any such abstract way aswehave these notions is more than doubtful. The conduct is more likely an impulsive result of a conspiracy of outward stimuli; the beastfeels likeacting so when these stimuli are present, though conscious of no definite reason why. The distinction of recept and concept is useful here. Some breeds of dogs, e.g. collies, seem instinctively to defend their master's property. The case is similar to that of a dog's barking at people after dark, at whom he would not bark in daylight. I have heard this quoted as evidence of the dog's reasoning power. It is only, as Chapter III has shown us, the impulsive result of a summation of stimuli, and has no connection with reasoning.In certain stages of the hypnotic trance the subject seems to lapse into the non-analytic state. If a sheet of ruled foolscap paper, or a paper with a fine monotonous ornamental pattern printed on it, be shown to the subject, andoneof the ruled lines or elements of the pattern be pointed to for an instant, and the paper immediately removed, he will then almost always, when after a short interval the paper is presented to him again, pick out the indicated line or element with infallible correctness. The operator, meanwhile, has either to keep his eye fixed upon it, or to make sure of its position by counting, in order not to lose its place. Just so we may remember a friend's house in a street by the single character of its number rather than by its general look. The trance-subject would seem, in these instances, to surrender himself to the general look. He disperses his attention impartially over the sheet. The place of the particular line touched is part of a 'total effect' which he gets in its entirety, and which would be distorted if another line were touched instead. This total effect is lost upon the normal looker-on, bent as he is on concentration, analysis, and emphasis. What wonder, then, that, under these experimental conditions, the trance-subject excels him in touching the right line again? If he has time given him to count the line, he will excel the trance-subject; but if the time be too short to count, he will best succeed by following the trance-method, abstaining from analysis, and being guided by the 'general look' of the line's place on the sheet. One is surprised at one's success in this the moment one gives up one's habitually analytic state of mind.Is it too much to say that we have in this dispersion of the attention and subjection to the 'general effect' something like a relapse into the state of mind of brutes? The trance-subject never gives any other reason for his optical discriminations, save that 'it looks so.' So a man, on a road once traversed inattentively before, takes a certain turn for no reason except thathe feelsas if it must be right. He is guided by a sum of impressions, not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one of which is essential, not one of which isconceived, but all of which together drive him to a conclusion to which nothing butthatsum-total leads. Are not some of the wonderful discriminations of animals explicable in the same way? The cow finds her own stanchions in the long stable, the horse stops at the house he has once stopped at in the monotonous street, because no other stanchions, no other house, yield impartiallyallthe impressions of the previous experience. The man, however, by seeking to make some one impression characteristic and essential, prevents the rest from having their effect. So that, if the (for him) essential feature be forgotten or changed, he is too apt to be thrown off altogether, and then the brute or the trance-subject may seem to outstrip him in sagacity.Dr. Romanes's already quoted distinction between 'receptual' and 'conceptual' thought (published since the body of my text and my note were written) connotes conveniently the difference which I seek to point out. See also his Mental Evolution in Man, p. 197 ff., for proofs of the fact that in a receptual way brutes cognize the mental states of other brutes and men.
[335]Whether the dog has the notion of your being angry or of your property being valuable in any such abstract way aswehave these notions is more than doubtful. The conduct is more likely an impulsive result of a conspiracy of outward stimuli; the beastfeels likeacting so when these stimuli are present, though conscious of no definite reason why. The distinction of recept and concept is useful here. Some breeds of dogs, e.g. collies, seem instinctively to defend their master's property. The case is similar to that of a dog's barking at people after dark, at whom he would not bark in daylight. I have heard this quoted as evidence of the dog's reasoning power. It is only, as Chapter III has shown us, the impulsive result of a summation of stimuli, and has no connection with reasoning.
In certain stages of the hypnotic trance the subject seems to lapse into the non-analytic state. If a sheet of ruled foolscap paper, or a paper with a fine monotonous ornamental pattern printed on it, be shown to the subject, andoneof the ruled lines or elements of the pattern be pointed to for an instant, and the paper immediately removed, he will then almost always, when after a short interval the paper is presented to him again, pick out the indicated line or element with infallible correctness. The operator, meanwhile, has either to keep his eye fixed upon it, or to make sure of its position by counting, in order not to lose its place. Just so we may remember a friend's house in a street by the single character of its number rather than by its general look. The trance-subject would seem, in these instances, to surrender himself to the general look. He disperses his attention impartially over the sheet. The place of the particular line touched is part of a 'total effect' which he gets in its entirety, and which would be distorted if another line were touched instead. This total effect is lost upon the normal looker-on, bent as he is on concentration, analysis, and emphasis. What wonder, then, that, under these experimental conditions, the trance-subject excels him in touching the right line again? If he has time given him to count the line, he will excel the trance-subject; but if the time be too short to count, he will best succeed by following the trance-method, abstaining from analysis, and being guided by the 'general look' of the line's place on the sheet. One is surprised at one's success in this the moment one gives up one's habitually analytic state of mind.
Is it too much to say that we have in this dispersion of the attention and subjection to the 'general effect' something like a relapse into the state of mind of brutes? The trance-subject never gives any other reason for his optical discriminations, save that 'it looks so.' So a man, on a road once traversed inattentively before, takes a certain turn for no reason except thathe feelsas if it must be right. He is guided by a sum of impressions, not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one of which is essential, not one of which isconceived, but all of which together drive him to a conclusion to which nothing butthatsum-total leads. Are not some of the wonderful discriminations of animals explicable in the same way? The cow finds her own stanchions in the long stable, the horse stops at the house he has once stopped at in the monotonous street, because no other stanchions, no other house, yield impartiallyallthe impressions of the previous experience. The man, however, by seeking to make some one impression characteristic and essential, prevents the rest from having their effect. So that, if the (for him) essential feature be forgotten or changed, he is too apt to be thrown off altogether, and then the brute or the trance-subject may seem to outstrip him in sagacity.
Dr. Romanes's already quoted distinction between 'receptual' and 'conceptual' thought (published since the body of my text and my note were written) connotes conveniently the difference which I seek to point out. See also his Mental Evolution in Man, p. 197 ff., for proofs of the fact that in a receptual way brutes cognize the mental states of other brutes and men.
[336]This matter of confusion is important and interesting. Since confusion is mistaking the wrong part of the phenomenon for the whole, whilst reasoning is, according to our definition, based on the substitution of the right part for the whole, it might be said that confusion and reasoning are generically the same process. I believe that they are so, and that the only difference between a muddle-head and a genius is that between extracting wrong characters and right ones. In other words, a muddle-headed person is a genius spoiled in the making. I think it will be admitted that alleminentlymuddle-headed persons have the temperament of genius. They are constantly breaking away from the usual consecutions of concretes. A common associator by contiguity is too closely tied to routine to get muddle-headed.
[336]This matter of confusion is important and interesting. Since confusion is mistaking the wrong part of the phenomenon for the whole, whilst reasoning is, according to our definition, based on the substitution of the right part for the whole, it might be said that confusion and reasoning are generically the same process. I believe that they are so, and that the only difference between a muddle-head and a genius is that between extracting wrong characters and right ones. In other words, a muddle-headed person is a genius spoiled in the making. I think it will be admitted that alleminentlymuddle-headed persons have the temperament of genius. They are constantly breaking away from the usual consecutions of concretes. A common associator by contiguity is too closely tied to routine to get muddle-headed.
[337]The horse is a densely stupid animal, as far as everything goes except contiguous association. We reckon him intelligent, partly because he looks so handsome, partly because he has such a wonderful faculty of contiguous association and can be so quickly moulded into a mass of set habits. Had he anything of reasoning intelligence, he would be a less faithful slave than he is.
[337]The horse is a densely stupid animal, as far as everything goes except contiguous association. We reckon him intelligent, partly because he looks so handsome, partly because he has such a wonderful faculty of contiguous association and can be so quickly moulded into a mass of set habits. Had he anything of reasoning intelligence, he would be a less faithful slave than he is.
[338]Th. Schumann: Journal Daheim, No. 19, 1878. Quoted by Strümpell: Die Geisteskräfte der Menschen verglicken mit denen der Thiere (Leipzig, 1878), p. 39. Cats are notorious for the skill with which they will open latches, locks, etc. Their feats are usually ascribed to their reasoning powers. But Dr. Romanes well remarks (Mental Evolution, etc., p. 351, note) that we ought first to be sure that the actions are not due to mere association. A cat is constantly playing with things with her paws; a trick accidentally hit upon may be retained. Romanes notes the fact that the animals most skilled in this way need not be the most generally intelligent, but those which have the best corporeal members for handling things, cat's paws, horse's lips, elephant's trunk, cow's horns. The monkey has both the corporeal and the intellectual superiority. And my deprecatory remarks on animal reasoning in the text apply far less to the quadrumana than to quadrupeds.—On the possible fallacies in interpreting animals' minds, compare C. L. Morgan in Mind, xi. 174 (1886).
[338]Th. Schumann: Journal Daheim, No. 19, 1878. Quoted by Strümpell: Die Geisteskräfte der Menschen verglicken mit denen der Thiere (Leipzig, 1878), p. 39. Cats are notorious for the skill with which they will open latches, locks, etc. Their feats are usually ascribed to their reasoning powers. But Dr. Romanes well remarks (Mental Evolution, etc., p. 351, note) that we ought first to be sure that the actions are not due to mere association. A cat is constantly playing with things with her paws; a trick accidentally hit upon may be retained. Romanes notes the fact that the animals most skilled in this way need not be the most generally intelligent, but those which have the best corporeal members for handling things, cat's paws, horse's lips, elephant's trunk, cow's horns. The monkey has both the corporeal and the intellectual superiority. And my deprecatory remarks on animal reasoning in the text apply far less to the quadrumana than to quadrupeds.—On the possible fallacies in interpreting animals' minds, compare C. L. Morgan in Mind, xi. 174 (1886).
[339]There are two other conditions of language in the human being, additional to association by similarity, that assist its action, or rather pave the way for it. These are: first, the great natural loquacity; and, second, the great imitativeness of man. The first produces the original reflex interjectional sign; the second (as Bleek has well shown) fixes it, stamps it, and ends by multiplying the number of determinate specific signs which are a requisite preliminary to the general conscious purpose of sign-making, which I have called the characteristic human element in language. The way in which imitativeness fixes the meaning of signs is this: When a primeval man has a given emotion, he utters his natural interjection; or when (to avoid supposing that the reflex sounds are exceedingly determinate by nature) a group of such men experience a common emotion, and one takes the lead in the cry, the others cry like him from sympathy or imitativeness. Now, let one of the group hear another, who is in presence of the experience, utter the cry; he, even without the experience, will repeat the cry from pure imitativeness. But, as he repeats the sign, he will be reminded by it of his own former experience. Thus, first, he has the sign with the emotion; then, without it; then, with it again. It is "dissociated by change of concomitants"; he feels it as a separate entity and yet as having a connection with the emotion. Immediately it becomes possible for him to couple it deliberately with the emotion, in cases where the latter would either have provoked no interjectional cry or not the same one. In a word, his mental procedure tends tofixthis cry onthatemotion; and when this occurs, in many instances, he is provided with a stock of signs, like the yelp, beg, rat of the dog, each of which suggests a determinate image. On this stock, then, similarity works in the way above explained.
[339]There are two other conditions of language in the human being, additional to association by similarity, that assist its action, or rather pave the way for it. These are: first, the great natural loquacity; and, second, the great imitativeness of man. The first produces the original reflex interjectional sign; the second (as Bleek has well shown) fixes it, stamps it, and ends by multiplying the number of determinate specific signs which are a requisite preliminary to the general conscious purpose of sign-making, which I have called the characteristic human element in language. The way in which imitativeness fixes the meaning of signs is this: When a primeval man has a given emotion, he utters his natural interjection; or when (to avoid supposing that the reflex sounds are exceedingly determinate by nature) a group of such men experience a common emotion, and one takes the lead in the cry, the others cry like him from sympathy or imitativeness. Now, let one of the group hear another, who is in presence of the experience, utter the cry; he, even without the experience, will repeat the cry from pure imitativeness. But, as he repeats the sign, he will be reminded by it of his own former experience. Thus, first, he has the sign with the emotion; then, without it; then, with it again. It is "dissociated by change of concomitants"; he feels it as a separate entity and yet as having a connection with the emotion. Immediately it becomes possible for him to couple it deliberately with the emotion, in cases where the latter would either have provoked no interjectional cry or not the same one. In a word, his mental procedure tends tofixthis cry onthatemotion; and when this occurs, in many instances, he is provided with a stock of signs, like the yelp, beg, rat of the dog, each of which suggests a determinate image. On this stock, then, similarity works in the way above explained.
[340]See the 'Evolution of Self-consciousness' in 'Philosophical Discussions,' by Chauncey Wright (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1877). Dr. Romanes, in the book from which I have already quoted, seeks to show that the 'consciousness of truth as truth' and the deliberate intention to predicate (which are the characteristics of higher human reasoning) presuppose a consciousness of ideas as such, as things distinct from their objects; and that this consciousness depends on our having made signs for them by language. My text seems to me to include Dr. Romanes's facts, and formulates them in what to me is a more elementary way, though the reader who wishes to understand the matter better should go to his clear and patient exposition also.
[340]See the 'Evolution of Self-consciousness' in 'Philosophical Discussions,' by Chauncey Wright (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1877). Dr. Romanes, in the book from which I have already quoted, seeks to show that the 'consciousness of truth as truth' and the deliberate intention to predicate (which are the characteristics of higher human reasoning) presuppose a consciousness of ideas as such, as things distinct from their objects; and that this consciousness depends on our having made signs for them by language. My text seems to me to include Dr. Romanes's facts, and formulates them in what to me is a more elementary way, though the reader who wishes to understand the matter better should go to his clear and patient exposition also.
[341]Study of Character, p. 317.
[341]Study of Character, p. 317.
[342]Translated by my colleague, Professor G. H. Palmer.
[342]Translated by my colleague, Professor G. H. Palmer.
[343]Quoted by Renouvier, Critique Philosophique, October 19, 1879.
[343]Quoted by Renouvier, Critique Philosophique, October 19, 1879.
[344]Social and domestic circumstances, that is, not material ones. Perceptions of social relations seem very keen in persons whose dealings with the material world are confined to knowing a few useful objects, principally animals, plants, and weapons. Savages and boors are often as tactful and astute socially as trained diplomatists. In general, it is probable that the consciousness of how one stands with other people occupies a relatively larger and larger part of the mind, the lower one goes in the scale of culture. Woman's intuitions, so fine in the sphere of personal relations, are seldom first-rate in the way of mechanics. All boys teach themselves how a clock goes: few girls. Hence Dr. Whately's jest, "Woman is the unreasoning animal, and pokes the fire from on top."
[344]Social and domestic circumstances, that is, not material ones. Perceptions of social relations seem very keen in persons whose dealings with the material world are confined to knowing a few useful objects, principally animals, plants, and weapons. Savages and boors are often as tactful and astute socially as trained diplomatists. In general, it is probable that the consciousness of how one stands with other people occupies a relatively larger and larger part of the mind, the lower one goes in the scale of culture. Woman's intuitions, so fine in the sphere of personal relations, are seldom first-rate in the way of mechanics. All boys teach themselves how a clock goes: few girls. Hence Dr. Whately's jest, "Woman is the unreasoning animal, and pokes the fire from on top."
The reader will not have forgotten, in the jungle of purely inward processes and products through which the last chapters have borne him, that the final result of them all must be some form of bodily activity due to the escape of the central excitement through outgoing nerves. The whole neural organism, it will be remembered, is, physiologically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli into reactions; and the intellectual part of our life is knit up with but the middle or 'central' portion of the machine's operations. Let us now turn to consider the final or emergent operations, the bodily activities, and the forms of consciousness connected therewithal.
Every impression which impinges on the incoming nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones, whether we be aware of it or not. Using sweeping terms and ignoring exceptions,we might say that every possible feeling produces a movement, and that the movement is a movement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts.What happens patently when an explosion or a flash of lightning startles us, or when we are tickled, happens latently with every sensation which we receive. The only reason why we do not feel the startle or tickle in the case of insignificant sensations is partly its very small amount, partly our obtuseness. Professor Bain many years ago gave the name of the Law of Diffusion to this phenomenon of general discharge, and expressed it thus: "According as an impression is accompanied with Feeling, the aroused currents diffuse themselves over the brain, leading to a general agitation of the moving organs, as well as affecting the viscera."
In cases where the feeling is strong the law is too familiar to require proof. As Prof. Bain says:
"Each of us knows in our own experience that a sudden shock of feeling is accompanied with movements of the body generally, and with other effects. When no emotion is present, we are quiescent; a slight feeling is accompanied with slight manifestations; a more intense shock has a more intense outburst. Every pleasure and every pain, and every mode of emotion, has a definite wave of effects, which our observation makes known to us; and we apply the knowledge to infer other men's feelings from their outward display.... The organs first and prominently affected, in the diffused wave of nervous influence, are the moving members, and of these, by preference, the features of the face (with the ears in animals), whose movements constitute theexpressionof the countenance. But the influence extends to all the parts of the moving system, voluntary and involuntary; while an important series of effects are produced on the glands and viscera—the stomach, lungs, heart, kidneys, skin, together with the sexual and mammary organs.... The circumstance is seemingly universal, the proof of it does not require a citation of instances in detail; on the objectors is thrown the burden of adducing unequivocal exceptions to the law."[345]
"Each of us knows in our own experience that a sudden shock of feeling is accompanied with movements of the body generally, and with other effects. When no emotion is present, we are quiescent; a slight feeling is accompanied with slight manifestations; a more intense shock has a more intense outburst. Every pleasure and every pain, and every mode of emotion, has a definite wave of effects, which our observation makes known to us; and we apply the knowledge to infer other men's feelings from their outward display.... The organs first and prominently affected, in the diffused wave of nervous influence, are the moving members, and of these, by preference, the features of the face (with the ears in animals), whose movements constitute theexpressionof the countenance. But the influence extends to all the parts of the moving system, voluntary and involuntary; while an important series of effects are produced on the glands and viscera—the stomach, lungs, heart, kidneys, skin, together with the sexual and mammary organs.... The circumstance is seemingly universal, the proof of it does not require a citation of instances in detail; on the objectors is thrown the burden of adducing unequivocal exceptions to the law."[345]
There are probably no exceptions to the diffusion of every impression through thenerve-centres. Theeffectof the wave through the centres may, however, often be to interfere with processes, and to diminish tensions already existing there; and the outward consequences of such inhibitions may be the arrest of discharges from the inhibited regions and the checking of bodily activities already in process of occurrence. When this happens it probably is like the draining or siphoning of certain channels by currents flowing through others. When, in walking, we suddenly stand still because a sound, sight, smell, or thought catches our attention, something like this occurs. But there are cases of arrest of peripheral activity which depend, not on central inhibition, but on stimulation of centres which discharge outgoing currents of an inhibitory sort. Whenever we are startled, for example, our heart momentarily stops or slows its beating, and then palpitates with accelerated speed. The brief arrest is due to an outgoing current down the pneumogastric nerve. This nerve, when stimulated, stops or slows the heart-beats, and thisparticular effect of startling fails to occur if the nerve be cut.
In general, however, the stimulating effects of a sense-impression preponderate over the inhibiting effects, so that we may roughly say, as we began by saying, that the wave of discharge produces an activity in all parts of the body. The task of tracing outallthe effects of any one incoming sensation has not yet been performed by physiologists. Recent years have, however, begun to enlarge our information; and although I must refer to special treatises for the full details, I can briefly string together here a number of separate observations which prove the truth of the law of diffusion.
Fig.81.
Fig.81.
First takeeffects upon the circulation. Those upon the heart we have just seen. Haller long ago recorded that the blood from an open vein flowed out faster at the beat of a drum.[346]In Chapter III. (Vol. I. p. 98) we learned how instantaneously, according to Mosso, the circulation in the brain is altered by changes of sensation and of the course of thought. The effect of objects of fear, shame, and anger upon the blood-supply of the skin, especially the skin of the face, are too well known to need remark. Sensations of the higher senses produce, according to Couty and Charpentier, the most varied effects upon the pulse-rate and blood-pressure in dogs. Fig. 81, a pulse-tracing from these authors, shows the tumultuous effect on a dog's heart of hearing the screams of another dog. The changes of blood-pressure still occurred when the pneumogastric nerves were cut, showing the vaso-motor effect to be direct and not dependent on the heart. When Mosso invented that simple instrument, theplethysmograph, for recording the fluctuations in volume of the members of the body, what most astonished him, he says, "in the first experiments which he made in Italy, was the extreme unrest of the blood-vessels of the hand, which at every smallest emotion, whether during waking or during sleep, changed their volume in surprising fashion."[347]Figure 82 (from Féré[348])shows the way in which the pulse of one subject was modified by the exhibition of a red light lasting from the moment markedato that markedb.
Fig.82.
Fig.82.
Fig.83.—Respiratory curve of B:a, with eyes open;b, with eyes closed.
Fig.83.—Respiratory curve of B:a, with eyes open;b, with eyes closed.
The effects upon respirationof sudden sensory stimuli are also too well known to need elaborate comment. We 'catch our breath' at every sudden sound. We 'hold our breath' whenever our attention and expectation are strongly engaged, and we sigh when the tension of the situation is relieved. When a fearful object is before us we pant and cannot deeply inspire; when the object makes us angry it is, on the contrary, the act of expiration which is hard. I subjoin a couple of figures from Féré which explain themselves.They show the effects of light upon the breathing of two of his hysteric patients.[349]
Fig.84. Respiratory curve of L:a, with yellow light;bwith green light;c, with red light. The red has the strongest effect.
Fig.84. Respiratory curve of L:a, with yellow light;bwith green light;c, with red light. The red has the strongest effect.
On the sweat-glands,similar consequences of sensorial stimuli are observed. Tarchanoff, testing the condition of the sweat-glands by the power of the skin to start agalvanic current through electrodes applied to its surface, found that "nearly every kind of nervous activity, from the simplest sensations and impressions, to voluntary motions and the highest forms of mental exertion, is accompanied by an increased activity in the glands of the skin."[350]On the pupilobservations are recorded by Sanders which show that a transitory dilatation follows every sensorial stimulus appliedduring sleep, even if the stimulus be not strong enough to wake the subject up. At the moment of awaking there is a dilatation, even if strong light falls on the eye.[351]The pupil of children can easily be observed to dilate enormously under the influence offear. It is said to dilate in pain and fatigue; and to contract, on the contrary, in rage.
As regardseffects on the abdominal viscera, they unquestionably exist, but very few accurate observations have been made.[352]
The bladder, bowels, and uterus respond to sensations, even indifferent ones. Mosso and Pellicani, in their plethysmographic investigations on the bladder of dogs, found all sorts of sensorial stimuli to produce reflex contractions of this organ, independent of those of the abdominal walls. They call the bladder 'as good an æsthesiometer as the iris,' and refer to the not uncommon reflex effects of psychic stimuli in the human female upon this organ.[353]M. Féré has registered the contractions of the sphincter ani which even indifferent sensations will produce. In some pregnant women the fœtus is felt to move after almost every sensorial excitement received by the mother. The only natural explanation is that it is stimulated at such moments by reflex contractions of the womb.[354]That the glands are affected in emotion is patent enough in the case of the tears of grief, the dry mouth, moist skin, or diarrhœaof fear, the biliary disturbances which sometimes follow upon rage, etc. The watering of the mouth at the sight of succulent food is well known. It is difficult to follow the smaller degrees of all these reflex changes, but it can hardly be doubted that they exist in some degree, even where they cease to be traceable, and that all our sensations have some visceral effects. The sneezing produced by sunshine, the roughening of the skin (goose-flesh) which certain strokings, contacts, and sounds, musical or non-musical, provoke, are facts of the same order as the shuddering and standing up of the hair in fear, only of less degree.
Effects on Voluntary Muscles.Every sensorial stimulus not only sends a special discharge into certain particular muscles dependent on the special nature of the stimulus in question—some of these special discharges we have studied in Chapter XI, others we shall examine under the heads of Instinct and Emotion—but it innervates the muscles generally. M. Féré has given very curious experimental proofs of this. The strength of contraction of the subject's hand was measured by a self-registering dynamometer. Ordinarily the maximum strength, under simple experimental conditions, remains the same from day to day. But if simultaneously with the contraction the subject received a sensorial impression, the contraction was sometimes weakened, but more often increased. This reinforcing effect has received the name ofdynamogeny. The dynamogenic value of simplemusical notesseems to be proportional to their loudness and height. Where the notes are compounded into sad strains, the muscular strength diminishes. If the strains are gay, it is increased.—The dynamogenic value ofcolored lightsvaries with the color. In a subject[355]whose normal strength was expressed by 23, it became 24 when a blue light wasthrown on the eyes, 28 for green, 30 for yellow, 35 for orange, and 42 for red. Red is thus the most exciting color. Amongtastes, sweet has the lowest value, next comes salt, then bitter, and finally sour, though, as M. Féré remarks, such a sour as acetic acid excites the nerves of pain and smell as well as of taste. The stimulating effects of tobacco-smoke, alcohol, beef-extract (which is innutritious), etc., etc., may be partly due to a dynamogenic action of this sort.—Ofodors, that of musk seems to have a peculiar dynamogenic power. Fig. 85 is a copy of one of M. Féré's dynamographic tracings, which explains itself. The smaller contractions are those without stimulus; the stronger ones are due to the influence of red rays of light.
Fig.85.
Fig.85.
Everyone is familiar with thepatellar reflex, or jerk upwards of the foot, which is produced by smartly tapping the tendon below the knee-pan when the leg hangs over the other knee. Drs. Weir Mitchell and Lombard have found that when other sensations come in simultaneously with the tap, the jerk is increased.[356]Heat, cold, pricking, itching, or faradic stimulation of the skin, sometimes strong optical impressions, music, all have this dynamogenic effect, which also results whenever voluntary movements are set up in other parts of the body, simultaneously with the tap.[357]
These 'dynamogenic' effects, in which one stimulationsimply reinforces another already under way, must not be confounded with reflex acts properly so called, in which new activities are originated by the stimulus. All instinctive performances and manifestations of emotion are reflex acts. But underneath those of which we are conscious there seem to go on continually others smaller in amount, which probably in most persons might be called fluctuations of musculartone, but which in certain neurotic subjects can be demonstrated ocularly. M. Féré figures some of them in the article to which I have already referred.[358]
Looking back over all these facts, it is hard to doubt the truth of the law of diffusion, even where verification is beyond reach.A process set up anywhere in the centres reverberates everywhere, and in some way or other affects the organism throughout, making its activities either greater or less.We are brought again to the assimilation which was expressed on a previous page of the nerve-central mass to a good conductor charged with electricity, of which the tension cannot be changed anywhere without changing it everywhere.
Herr Schneider has tried to show, by an ingenious and suggestive zoological review,[359]that all thespecialmovements which highly evolved animals make are differentiated from the two originally simple movements, of contraction and expansion, in which the entire body of simple organisms takes part. The tendency to contract is the source of all the self-protective impulses and reactions which are later developed, including that of flight. The tendency to expand splits up, on the contrary, into the impulses and instincts of an aggressive kind, feeding, fighting, sexual intercourse, etc. Schneider's articles are well worth reading, if only for the careful observations on animals which they embody. I cite them here as a sort of evolutionary reason to add to the mechanicala priorireason why thereoughtto be the diffusive wave which oura posterioriinstances have shown to exist.
I will now proceed to a detailed study of the moreimportant classes of movement consequent upon cerebro-mental change. They may be enumerated as—
1) Instinctive or Impulsive Performances;
2) Expressions of Emotion; and
3) Voluntary Deeds;
and each shall have a chapter to itself.
[345]Emotions and Will, pp. 4, 5.
[345]Emotions and Will, pp. 4, 5.
[346]Cf. Féré. Sensation et Mouvement (1887), p. 56.
[346]Cf. Féré. Sensation et Mouvement (1887), p. 56.
[347]La Paura (1884), p. 117. Compare Féré: Sensation et Mouvement, chap. xvii.
[347]La Paura (1884), p. 117. Compare Féré: Sensation et Mouvement, chap. xvii.
[348]Revue Philosophique, xxiv. 570.
[348]Revue Philosophique, xxiv. 570.
[349]Revue Phil., xxiv. pp. 566-7.—For further information about the relations between the brain and respiration, see Danilewsky's Essay in the Biologisches Centralblatt, ii. 690.
[349]Revue Phil., xxiv. pp. 566-7.—For further information about the relations between the brain and respiration, see Danilewsky's Essay in the Biologisches Centralblatt, ii. 690.
[350]Quoted from the report of Tarchanoff's paper (in Pflüger's Archiv, xlvi. 46) in the American Journal of Psych., ii. 652.
[350]Quoted from the report of Tarchanoff's paper (in Pflüger's Archiv, xlvi. 46) in the American Journal of Psych., ii. 652.
[351]Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vii. 652; ix. 129.
[351]Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vii. 652; ix. 129.
[352]Sensation et Mouvement, 57-8.
[352]Sensation et Mouvement, 57-8.
[353]R. Accad. dei Lincei (1881-2). I follow the report in Hofmann Schwalbe's Jahresbericht, x. ii. 93.
[353]R. Accad. dei Lincei (1881-2). I follow the report in Hofmann Schwalbe's Jahresbericht, x. ii. 93.
[354]Cf. Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, chap. xiv.
[354]Cf. Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, chap. xiv.