need of _guiding sensations_ of some kind for the successful carrying
out of a concatenated series of movements. It is, in fact, easy to see
that, just as where the chain of movements is automatic (see above,
Vol. I. p. 116), each later movement of the chain has to be discharged
by the impression which the next earlier one makes in being executed,
so also, where the chain is voluntary, we need to know at each movement
just _where we are in it,_ if we are to will intelligently what the
next link shall be. A man with no feeling of his movements might lead
off never so well, and yet be sure to get lost soon and go astray.[436]
But patients like those described, who get no kinæsthetic impressions,
can still be guided by the sense of sight. Thus Strümpell says of his
boy:
"One could always observe how his eye was directed first to the
object held before him, then to his own arm; and how it never ceased
to follow the latter during its entire movement. All his voluntary
movements took place under the unremitting lead of the eye, which as
an indispensable guide, was never untrue to its functions."
So in the Landry case:
"With his eyes open, he easily opposes the thumb to each of the other
fingers; with his eyes closed, the movement of opposition occurs,
but the thumb only by chance meets the finger which it seeks. With
his eyes open he is able, without hesitation, to bring his two hands
together; but when his eyes are closed his hands seek one another in
space, and only meet by chance."
In Charles Bell's well-known old case of anæsthesia the woman could
only hold her baby safely in her arms so long as she looked at it. I
have myself reproduced a similar condition in two hypnotic subjects
whose arm and hand were made anæsthetic without being paralyzed. They
could write their names when looking, but not when their eyes were
closed. The modern mode of teaching deaf mutes to articulate consists
in making them attentive to certain laryngeal, labial, thoracic, and
other sensations, the reproduction of which becomes a guide to their
vocalization. Normally it is the remoter sensations which we receive by
the ear which keep us from going astray in our speech. The phenomena of
aphasia show this to be the usual case.[437]
This is perhaps all that need be said about the existence of passive
sensations of movement and their indispensableness for our voluntary
activity. We may consequently set it down as certain that, _whether or
no there be anything else in the mind at the moment when we consciously
will a certain act, a mental conception made up of memory-images of
these sensations, defining which special act it is, must be there._
* * * * *
Now _is there anything else in the mind when we will to do an act?_ We
must proceed in this chapter from the simpler to the more complicated
cases. My first thesis accordingly is, that _there need be nothing
else_, and that _in perfectly simple_ _voluntary acts there is nothing
else, in the mind but the kinæsthetic idea, thus defined, of what the
act is to be._
A powerful tradition in Psychology will have it that something
additional to these images of passive sensation is essential to the
mental determination of a voluntary act. There must, of course, be a
special current of energy going out from the brain into the appropriate
muscles during the act; and this outgoing current (it is supposed) must
have in each particular case a feeling _sui generis_ attached to it, or
else (it is said) the mind could never tell which particular current,
the current to this muscle or the current to that one, was the right
one to use. This feeling of the current of outgoing energy has received
from Wundt the name of the _feeling of innervation. I disbelieve in its
existence,_ and must proceed to criticise the notion of it, at what I
fear may to some prove tedious length.
At first sight there is something extremely plausible in the feeling
of innervation. The passive feelings of movement with which we have
hitherto been dealing all come after the movement's performance. But
wherever a movement is difficult and precise, we become, as a matter
of fact, acutely aware _in advance_ of the amount and direction
of energy which it is to involve. One has only to play tenpins or
billiards, or throw a ball, to catch his will in the act, as it were,
of balancing tentatively its possible efforts, and ideally rehearsing
various muscular contractions nearly correct, until it gets just the
right one before it, when it says 'Now go!' This premonitory weighing
feels so much like a succession of tentative sallyings forth of power
into the outer world, followed by correction just in time to avoid the
irrevocable deed, that the notion that _outgoing_ nerve-currents rather
than mere vestiges of former passive sensibility accompany it, is a
most natural one to entertain.
We find accordingly that most authors have taken the existence of
feelings of innervation as a matter of course. Bain, Wundt, Helmholtz,
and Mach defend them most explicitly. But in spite of the authority
which such writers deservedly wield, I cannot help thinking that they
are in this instance wrong,--that the discharge into the motor nerves
is insentient, and that _all our ideas of movement_, including those
of the effort which it requires, as well as those of its direction,
its extent, its strength, and its velocity, _are images of peripheral
sensations, either 'remote,' or resident in the moving parts, or in
other parts which sympathetically act with them in consequence of the
'diffusive wave.'_
_A priori_, as I shall show, there is no reason why there should be a
consciousness of the motor discharge, and there is a reason why there
should not be such a consciousness. The _presumption_ is thus against
the existence of the feeling of innervation; and the burden of proving
it falls upon those who believe in it. If the positive empirical
evidence which they offer prove also insufficient, then their case
falls to the ground, and the feeling in question must be ruled out of
court.
* * * * *
In the first place, then, let me show that _the assumption of the
feeling of innervation is unnecessary._
I cannot help suspecting that the scholastic prejudice that 'the
effect must be already in some way _contained in_ the cause' has had
something to do with making psychologists so ready to admit the feeling
of innervation. The outgoing current being the effect, what psychic
antecedent could contain or prefigure it better than a feeling of it?
But if we take a wide view, and consider the psychic antecedents of
our activities at large, we see that the scholastic maxim breaks down
everywhere, and that its verification in this instance would rather
violate than illustrate the general rule. In the diffusive wave,
in reflex action, and in emotional expression, the movements which
are the effects are in no manner contained by anticipation in the
stimuli which are their cause. The latter are subjective sensations or
objective perceptions, which do not in the slightest degree resemble
or prefigure the movements. But we get them, and, presto! there the
movements are! They are knocked out of us, they surprise us. It is just
cause for wonder, as our chapter on Instinct has shown us, that such
bodily consequences should follow such mental antecedents. We explain
the mystery _tant bien que mal_ by our evolutionary theories, saying
that lucky variations and heredity have gradually brought it about
that this particular pair of terms should have grown into a uniform
sequence. Meanwhile why any state of consciousness _at all_ should
precede a movement, we know not--the two things seem so essentially
discontinuous. But if a state of consciousness there must be, why then
it may, for aught we can see, as easily be one sort of a state as
another. It is swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat for a man
(all of whose muscles will on certain occasions contract at a sudden
touch or sound) to suppose that on another occasion the idea of the
feelings about to be produced by their contraction is an insufficient
mental signal for the latter, and to insist that an additional
antecedent is needed in the shape of 'a feeling of the outgoing
discharge.'
No! for aught we can see, and in the light of general analogy, the
kinæsthetic ideas, as we have defined them, or images of incoming
feelings of attitude and motion, are as _likely_ as any feelings of
innervation are, to be the last psychic antecedents and determiners
of the various currents downwards into the muscles from the brain.
The question "What _are_ the antecedents and determinants?" is a
question of fact, to be decided by whatever empirical evidence may be
found.[438]
But before considering the empirical evidence, let me go on to show
that there is _a certain a priori reason why the kinæsthetic images_
OUGHT _to be the last psychic antecedents of the outgoing currents, and
why we should expect these currents to be insentient; why, in short,
the soi-disant feelings of innervation should_ NOT _exist_.
It is a general principle in Psychology that consciousness deserts
all processes where it can no longer be of use. The tendency of
consciousness to a minimum of complication is in fact a dominating
law. The law of parsimony in logic is only its best known case. We
grow unconscious of every feeling which is useless as a sign to lead
us to our ends, and where one sign will suffice others drop out, and
that one remains, to work alone. We observe this in the whole history
of sense-perception, and in the acquisition of every art. We ignore
which eye we see with, because a fixed mechanical association has been
formed between our motions and each retinal image. Our motions are
the ends of our seeing, our retinal images the signals to these ends.
If each retinal image, whichever it be, can suggest automatically a
motion in the right direction, what need for us to know whether it be
in the right eye or the left? That knowledge would be superfluous
complication. So in acquiring any art or voluntary function. The
marksman ends by thinking only of the exact position of the goal, the
singer only of the perfect sound, the balancer only of the point of the
pole whose oscillations he must counteract. The associated mechanism
has become so perfect in all these persons that each variation in the
thought of the end is functionally correlated with the one movement
fitted to bring the latter about. Whilst they were tyros, they thought
of their means as well as their end: the marksman of the position of
his gun or bow, or the weight of his stone; the pianist of the visible
position of the note on the keyboard; the singer of his throat or
breathing; the balancer of his feet on the rope, or his hand or chin
under the pole. But little by little they succeeded in dropping all
this supernumerary consciousness, and they became secure in their
movements exactly in proportion as they did so.
Now if we analyze the nervous mechanism of voluntary action, we shall
see that by virtue of this principle of parsimony in consciousness
the motor discharge _ought_ to be devoid of sentience. If we call the
immediate psychic antecedent of a movement the latter's _mental cue_,
all that is needed for invariability of sequence on the movement's
part is a _fixed connection_ between each several mental cue, and
one particular movement. For a movement to be produced with perfect
precision, it suffices that it obey instantly its own mental cue and
nothing else, and that this mental cue be incapable of awakening any
other movement. Now the _simplest_ possible arrangement for producing
voluntary movements would be that the memory-images of the movement's
distinctive peripheral effects, whether resident or remote,[439]
themselves should severally constitute the mental cues, and that no
other psychic facts should intervene or be mixed up with them. For a
million different voluntary movements, we should then need a million
distinct processes in the brain-cortex (each corresponding to the
idea or memory-image of one movement), and a million distinct paths
of discharge. Everything would then be unambiguously determined, and
if the idea were right, the movement-would be right too. Everything
_after_ the idea might then be quite insentient, and the motor
discharge itself could be unconsciously performed.
The partisans of the feeling of innervation, however, say that the
motor discharge itself must be felt, and that it, and not the idea
of the movement's distinctive effects, must be the proper mental
cue. Thus the principle of parsimony is sacrificed, and all economy
and simplicity are lost. For what can be gained by the interposition
of this relay of feeling between the idea of the movement and the
movement? Nothing on the score of economy of nerve-tracts; for it takes
just as many of them to associate a million ideas of movement with a
million motor centres, each with a specific feeling of innervation
attached to its discharge, as to associate the same million ideas
with a million insentient motor centres. And nothing on the score
of precision; for the only conceivable way in which the feelings of
innervation might further precision would be by giving to a mind whose
idea of a movement was vague, a sort of halting stage with sharper
imagery on which to collect its wits before uttering its _fiat_. But
not only are the conscious discriminations between our kinæsthetic
ideas much sharper than any one pretends the shades of difference
between feelings of innervation to be, but even were this not the case,
it is impossible to see how a mind with its idea vaguely conceived
could tell out of a lot of _Innervationsgefühle_, were they never so
sharply differentiated, which one fitted that idea exactly, and which
did not. A sharply conceived idea will, on the other hand, _directly_
awaken a distinct movement as easily as it will awaken a distinct
feeling of innervation. If feelings can go astray through vagueness,
surely the fewer steps of feeling there are interposed the more
securely we shall act. We ought then, on _a priori_ grounds alone, to
regard the _Innervationsgefühl_ as a pure encumbrance, and to presume
that the peripheral ideas of movement are sufficient mental cues.
The presumption being thus against the feelings of innervation, those
who defend their existence are bound to prove it by positive evidence.
The evidence might be direct or indirect. If we could introspectively
feel them as something plainly distinct from the peripheral feelings
and ideas of movement which nobody denies to be there, that would be
evidence both direct and conclusive. Unfortunately it does not exist.
_There is no introspective evidence of the feeling of innervation._
Wherever we look for it and think we have grasped it, we find that we
have really got a peripheral feeling or image instead--an image of the
way in which we feel when the innervation is over, and the movement
is in process of doing or is done. Our idea of raising our arm, for
example, or of crooking our finger, is a sense, more or less vivid,
of how the raised arm or the crooked finger feels. There is no other
mental material out of which such an idea might be made. We cannot
possibly have any idea of our ears' motion until our ears have moved;
and this is true of every other organ as well.
Since the time of Hume it has been a commonplace in psychology that
we are only conversant with the outward results of our volition, and
not with the hidden inner machinery of nerves and muscles which are
what it primarily sets at work.[440] The believers in the feeling
of innervation readily admit this, but seem hardly alive to its
consequences. It seems to me that one immediate consequence ought to
be to make us doubt the existence of the feeling in dispute. Whoever
says that in raising his arm he is ignorant of how many muscles
he contracts, in what order of sequence, and in what degrees of
intensity, expressively avows a colossal amount of unconsciousness of
the processes of motor discharge. Each separate muscle at any rate
cannot have its distinct feeling of innervation. Wundt,[441] who makes
such enormous use of these hypothetical feelings in his psychologic
construction of space, is himself led to admit that they have no
differences of quality, but feel alike in all muscles, and vary only
in their degrees of intensity. They are used by the mind as guides,
not of _which_ movement, but of _how strong_ a movement, it is making,
or shall make. But does not this virtually surrender their existence
altogether?[442]
For if anything be obvious to introspection it is that the degree of
strength of our muscular contractions is completely revealed to us
by afferent feelings coming from the muscles themselves and their
insertions, from the vicinity of the joints, and from the general
fixation of the larynx, chest, face, and body, in the phenomenon of
effort, objectively considered. When a certain degree of energy of
contraction rather than another is thought of by us, this complex
aggregate of afferent feelings, forming the material of our thought,
renders absolutely precise and distinctive our mental image of the
exact strength of movement to be made, and the exact amount of
resistance to be overcome.
Let the reader try to direct his will towards a particular movement,
and then notice what _constituted_ the direction of the will. Was
it anything over and above the notion of the different feelings to
which the movement when effected would give rise? If we abstract from
these feelings, will any sign, principle, or means of orientation
be left by which the will may innervate the right muscles with the
right intensity, and not go astray into the wrong ones? Strip off
these images of result, and so far from leaving us with a complete
assortment of directions into which our will may launch itself, you
leave our consciousness in an absolute and total vacuum. If I will to
write "Peter" rather than "Paul," it is the thought of certain digital
sensations, of certain alphabetic sounds, of certain appearances on the
paper, and of no others, which immediately precedes the motion of my
pen.
If I will to utter the word _Paul_ rather than _Peter_, it is the
thought of my voice falling on my ear, and of certain muscular feelings
in my tongue, lips, and larynx, which guide the utterance. All these
are incoming feelings, and between the thought of them, by which the
act is mentally specified with all possible completeness, and the act
itself, there is no room for any third order of mental phenomenon.
There is indeed the _fiat_, the element of consent, or resolve that the
act shall ensue. This, doubtless, to the reader's mind, as to my own,
constitutes the essence of the voluntariness of the act. This _fiat_
will be treated of in detail farther on. It may be entirely neglected
here, for it is a constant coefficient, affecting all voluntary
actions alike, and incapable of serving to distinguish them. No one
will pretend that its quality varies according as the right arm, for
example, or the left is used.
_An anticipatory image, then, of the sensorial consequences of a
movement, plus (on certain occasions) the fiat that these consequences
shall become actual, is the only psychic state which introspection
lets us discern as the forerunner of our voluntary acts._ There is
no introspective evidence whatever of any still later or concomitant
feeling attached to the efferent discharge. The various degrees of
difficulty with which the fiat is given form a complication of the
utmost importance, to be discussed farther on.
Now the reader may still shake his head and say: "But can you
seriously mean that all the wonderfully exact adjustment of my
action's strength to its ends is not a matter of outgoing innervation?
Here is a cannon-ball, and here a pasteboard box: instantly and
accurately I lift each from the table, the ball not refusing to rise
because my innervation was too weak, the box not flying abruptly
into the air because it was too strong. Could representations of the
movement's different sensory effects in the two cases be so delicately
foreshadowed in the mind? or being there, is it credible that they
should, all unaided, so delicately graduate the stimulation of the
unconscious motor centres to their work?" Even so! I reply to both
queries. We have a most extremely delicate foreshadowing of the sensory
effects. Why else the start of surprise that runs through us if some
one has filled the light-seeming box with sand before we try to lift
it, or has substituted for the cannon-ball which we know a painted
wooden imitation? _Surprise_ can only come from getting a sensation
which differs from the one we expect. But the truth is that when we
know the objects well, the very slightest difference from the expected
weight will surprise us, or at least attract our notice. With unknown
objects we begin by expecting the weight made probable by their
appearance. The expectation of this sensation innervates our lift,
and we 'set' it rather small at first. An instant verifies whether it
is too small. Our expectation rises, i.e., we think in a twinkling of
a setting of the chest and teeth, a bracing of the back, and a more
violent feeling in the arms. Quicker than thought we have them, and
with them the burden ascends into the air.[443] Bernhardt[444] has
shown in a rough experimental way that our estimation of the amount of
a resistance is as delicately graduated when our wills are passive,
and our limbs made to contract by direct local faradization, as when
we ourselves innervate them. Ferrier[445] has repeated and verified
the observations. They admit of no great precision, and too much stress
should not be laid upon them either way; but at the very least they
tend to show that no added delicacy would accrue to our perception from
the consciousness of the efferent process, even if it existed.
Since there is no direct introspective evidence for the feelings of
innervation, is there any indirect or circumstantial evidence? Much is
offered; but on critical examination it breaks down. Let us see what it
is. Wundt says that were our motor feelings of an afferent nature,
"it ought to be expected that they would increase and diminish with
the amount of outer or inner work actually effected in contraction.
This, however, is not the case, but the strength of the motor
sensation is purely proportional to the strength of the _impulse_ to
movement, which starts from the central organ innervating the motor
nerves. This may be proved by observations made by physicians in
cases of morbid alteration in the muscular effect. A patient whose
arm or leg is half paralyzed, so that he can only move the limb with
great effort, has a distinct feeling of this effort: the limb seems
to him heavier than before, appearing as if weighted with lead; he
has, therefore, a sense of more work effected than formerly, and yet
the effected work is either the same or even less. Only he must, to
get even this effect, exert a stronger innervation, a stronger motor
impulse, than formerly."[446]
In complete paralysis, also, patients will be conscious of putting
forth the greatest exertion to move a limb which remains absolutely
still upon the bed, and from which of course no afferent muscular or
other feelings can come.[447]
But Dr. Ferrier in his Functions of the Brain (Am. Ed. pp. 222-4)
disposes very easily of this line of argument. He says:
"It is necessary, however, to exclude movements _altogether_ before
such an explanation [as Wundt's] can be adopted. Now, though the
hemiplegic patient cannot move his paralyzed limb, though he is
conscious of trying hard, yet he will be found to be making powerful
muscular exertion of some kind. Vulpian has called attention to the
fact, and I have repeatedly verified it, that when a hemiplegic
patient is desired to close his paralyzed fist, in his endeavors to do
so he unconsciously performs this action with the sound one. It is,
in fact, almost impossible to exclude such a source of complication,
and unless this is taken into account very erroneous conclusions as
to the cause of the sense of effort may be drawn. In the fact of
muscular contraction and the concomitant centripetal impressions, even
though the action is not such as is desired, the conditions of the
consciousness of effort exist without our being obliged to regard it
as depending on central innervation or outgoing currents.
"It is, however, easy to make an experiment of a simple nature which
will satisfactorily account for the sense of effort, even when these
unconscious contractions of the other side, such as hemiplegics make,
are entirely excluded.
"If the reader will extend his right arm and hold his forefinger in
the position required for pulling the trigger of a pistol, he may
without actually moving his finger, but by simply making believe,
experience a consciousness of energy put forth. Here, then, is a
clear case of consciousness of energy without actual contraction
of the muscles either of the one hand or the other, and without
any perceptible bodily strain. If the reader will again perform
the experiment, and pay careful attention to the condition of his
respiration, he will observe that his consciousness of effort
coincides with a fixation of the muscles of his chest, and that in
proportion to the amount of energy he feels he is putting forth, he is
keeping his glottis closed and actively contracting his respiratory
muscles. Let him place his finger as before, and _continue breathing_
all the time, and he will find that however much he may direct his
attention to his finger, he will experience not the slightest trace
of consciousness of effort until he has actually moved the finger
itself, and then it is referred locally to the muscles in action. It
is only when this essential and ever-present respiratory factor is,
as it has been, overlooked, that the consciousness of effort can with
any degree of plausibility be ascribed to the outgoing current. In
the contraction of the respiratory muscles there are the necessary
conditions of centripetal impressions, and these are capable of
originating the general sense of effort. When these active efforts
are withheld, no consciousness of effort ever arises, except in so
far as it is conditioned by the local contraction of the group of
muscles towards which the attention is directed, or by other muscular
contractions called unconsciously into play in the attempt.
"I am unable to find a single case of consciousness of effort which is
not explicable in one or other of the ways specified. In all instances
the consciousness of effort is conditioned by the actual fact of
muscular contraction. That it is dependent on centripetal impressions
generated by the act of contraction, I have already endeavored to
show. When the paths of the centripetal impressions or the cerebral
centres of the same are destroyed, there is no vestige of a muscular
sense. That the central organs for the apprehension of the impressions
originating from muscular contraction are different from those which
send out the motor impulse, has already been established. But when
Wundt argues that this cannot be so, because then the sensation would
always keep pace with the energy of muscular contraction, he overlooks
the important factor of the fixation of the respiratory muscles,
which is the basis of the general sense of effort in all its varying
degrees."
To these remarks of Ferrier's I have nothing to add.[448] Any one
may verify them, and they prove conclusively that the consciousness
of muscular exertion, being impossible without movement _effected
somewhere_, must be an afferent and not an efferent sensation; a
consequence, and not an antecedent, of the movement itself. An idea of
the amount of muscular exertion requisite to perform a certain movement
can consequently be nothing other than an anticipatory image of the
movement's sensible effects.
Driven thus from the body at large, where next shall the circumstantial
evidence for the feeling of innervation lodge itself? Where but in
the muscles of the eye, from which small retreat it judges itself
inexpugnable. Nevertheless, that fastness too must fall, and by the
lightest of bombardments. But, before trying the bombardment, let
us recall our general principles about optical vertigo, or illusory
appearance of movement in objects.
We judge that an object moves under two distinct sets of circumstances:
1. When its image moves on the retina, and we know that the eye is
still.
2. When its image is stationary on the retina, and we know that the eye
is moving. In this case we feel that we _follow_ the object.
In either of these cases a mistaken judgment about the state of the eye
will produce optical vertigo.
If in case 1 we think our eye is still when it is really moving, we
get a movement of the retinal image which we judge to be due to a
real outward motion of the object. This is what happens after looking
at rushing water, or through the windows of a moving railroad car,
or after turning on one's heel to giddiness. The eyes, without our
intending to move them, go through a series of involuntary rotations,
continuing those they were previously obliged to make to keep objects
in view. If the objects had been whirling by to our right, our eyes
when turned to stationary objects will still move slowly towards the
right. The retinal image upon them will then move like that of an
object passing to the left. We then try to catch it by voluntarily and
rapidly rotating the eyes to the left, when the involuntary impulse
again rotates the eyes to the right, continuing the apparent motion;
and so the game goes on. (See above, pp. 89-91.)
If in case 2 we think our eyes moving when they are in reality still,
we shall judge that we are following a moving object when we are but
fixating a steadfast one. Illusions of this kind occur after sudden
and complete paralysis of special eye muscles, and the partisans of
feelings of efferent innervation regard them as _experimenta crucis_.
Helmholtz writes:[449]
"When the external rectus muscle of the right eye, or its nerve, is
paralyzed, the eye can no longer be rotated to the right side. So
long as the patient turns it only to the nasal side it makes regular
movements, and he perceives correctly the position of objects in the
visual field. So soon, however, as he tries to rotate it outwardly,
i.e., towards the right, it ceases to obey his will, stands motionless
in the middle of its course, and the objects appear flying to the
right, although position of eye and retinal image are unaltered.[450]
"In such a case the exertion of the will is followed neither by actual
movement of the eye, nor by contraction of the muscle in question,
nor even by increased tension in it. The act of will _produced
absolutely no effect_ beyond the nervous system, and yet we judge of
the direction of the line of vision as if the will had exercised its
normal effects. We believe it to have moved to the right, and since
the retinal image is unchanged, we attribute to the object the same
movement we have erroneously ascribed to the eye.... These phenomena
leave no room for doubt that we only judge the direction of the line
of sight by the effort of will with which we strive to change the
position of our eyes. There are also certain weak feelings in our
eyelids,... and furthermore in excessive lateral rotations we feel a
fatiguing strain in the muscles. But all these feelings are too faint
and vague to be of use in the perception of direction. We feel then
what impulse of the will, and how strong a one, we apply to turn our
eye into a given position."
_Partial_ paralysis of the same muscle, _paresis_, as it has been
called, seems to point even more conclusively to the same inference,
that the will to innervate is felt independently of all its afferent
results. I will quote the account given by a recent authority,[451] of
the effects of this accident:
"When the nerve going to an eye muscle, e.g., the external rectus of
one side, falls into a state of paresis, the first result is that
the same volitional stimulus, which under normal circumstances would
have perhaps rotated the eye to its extreme position outwards, now is
competent to effect only a moderate outward rotation, say of 20º. If
now, shutting the sound eye, the patient looks at an object situated
just so far outwards from the paretic eye that this latter must turn
20º in order to see it distinctly, the patient will feel as if he had
moved it not only 20º towards the side, but into its extreme lateral
position, for the impulse of innervation requisite for bringing it
into view is a perfectly conscious act, whilst the diminished state
of contraction of the paretic muscle lies for the present out of the
ken of consciousness. The test proposed by von Graefe, of localization
by the sense of touch, serves to render evident the error which the
patient now makes. If we direct him to touch rapidly the object looked
at, with the forefinger of the hand of the same side, the line through
which the finger moves will not be the line of sight directed 20º
outward, but will approach more nearly to the extreme possible outward
line of vision."
A stone-cutter with the external rectus of the left eye paralyzed, will
strike his hand instead of his chisel with his hammer, until experience
has taught him wisdom.
It appears as if here the judgment of direction _could_ only arise from
the excessive innervation of the rectus when the object is looked at.
All the afferent feelings must be identical with those experienced when
the eye is sound and the judgment is correct. The eyeball is rotated
just 20º in the one case as in the other, the image falls on the same
part of the retina, the pressures on the eyeball and the tensions of
the skin and conjunctiva are identical. There is only one feeling which
_can_ vary, and lead us to our mistake. That feeling must be the effort
which the will makes, moderate in the one case, excessive in the other,
but in both cases an efferent feeling, pure and simple.
Beautiful and clear as this reasoning seems to be, it is based on
an incomplete inventory of the afferent data. The writers have all
omitted to consider what is going on in the _other eye_. This is kept
covered during the experiments, to prevent double images, and other
complications. But if its condition under these circumstances be
examined, it will be found to present changes which must result in
strong afferent feelings. And the taking account of these feelings
demolishes in an instant all the conclusions which the authors from
whom I have quoted base upon their supposed absence. This I will now
proceed to show.[452]
Take first the case of complete paralysis and assume the right eye
affected. Suppose the patient desires to rotate his gaze to an object
situated in the extreme right of the field of vision. As Hering has so
beautifully shown, both eyes move by a common act of innervation, and
in this instance both move towards the right. But the paralyzed right
eye stops short in the middle of its course, the object still appearing
far to the sight of its fixation point. The left sound eye, meanwhile,
although covered, continues its rotation until the extreme rightward
limit thereof has been reached. To an observer looking at both eyes the
left will seem to squint. Of course this continued and extreme rotation
produces afferent feelings of rightward motion in the eyeball, which
momentarily overpower the faint feelings of central position in the
diseased and uncovered eye. The patient feels by his left eyeball as
if he were following an object which by his right retina he perceives
he does not overtake. All the conditions of optical vertigo are
here present: the image stationary on the retina, and the erroneous
conviction that the eyes are moving.
The objection that a feeling in the left eyeball ought not to produce
a conviction that the right eye moves, will be considered in a moment.
Let us meanwhile turn to the case of simple paresis with apparent
translocation of the field.
Here the right eye succeeds in fixating the object, but observation of
the left eye will reveal to an observer the fact that it squints just
as violently inwards as in the former case. The direction which the
finger of the patient takes in pointing to the object, is the direction
of this squinting and covered left eye. As Graefe says (although he
fails to seize the true import of his own observation), "It appears
to have been by no means sufficiently noticed how significantly the
direction of the line of sight of the secondarily deviating eye [i.e.,
of the left,] and the line of direction of the pointed finger agree."
The translocation would, in a word, be perfectly explained could we
suppose that the sensation of a certain degree of rotation in the
left eyeball were able to suggest to the patient the position of an
object whose image falls on the right retina alone.[453] Can, then, a
feeling in one eye be confounded with a feeling in the other? It most
assuredly can, for not only Donders and Adamük, by their vivisections,
but Hering by his exquisite optical experiments, have proved that
the apparatus of innervation for both eyes is single, and that they
function as one organ--a double eye, according to Hering, or what
Helmholtz calls a _Cyclopenauge_. The retinal feelings of this double
organ, singly innervated, are naturally undistinguished as respects
our knowing whether they belong to the left retina or to the right.
We use them only to tell us where their objects lie. It takes long
practice directed specially _ad hoc_ to teach us on which retina the
sensations severally fall. Similarly the different sensations which
arise from the positions of the eyeballs are used exclusively as signs
of the position of objects; an object directly fixated being localized
habitually at the intersection of the two optical axes, but without any
separate consciousness on our part that the position of one axis is
different from another. All we are aware of is a consolidated feeling
of a certain 'strain' in the eyeballs, accompanied by the perception
that just so far in front and so far to the right or to the left there
is an object which we see. So that a 'muscular' process in one eye is
as likely to combine with a retinal process in the other eye to effect
a perceptive judgment, as two processes in one eye are likely so to
combine.
* * * * *
Another piece of circumstantial evidence for the feelings of
innervation is that adduced by Professor Mach, as follows:
"If we stand on a bridge, and look at the water flowing beneath, we
usually feel ourselves at rest, whilst the water seems in motion.
Prolonged looking at the water, however, commonly has for its result
to make the bridge with the observer and surroundings suddenly seem to
move in the direction opposed to that of the water, whilst the water
itself assumes the appearance of standing still. The _relative_ motion
of the objects is in both cases the same, and there must therefore be
some adequate _physiological_ ground why sometimes one, sometimes
the other part of them is felt to move. In order to investigate the
matter conveniently, I had the simple apparatus constructed which
is represented in Fig. 86. An oil-cloth with a simple pattern is
horizontally stretched over two cylinders (each 2 metres long and
3 feet apart) and kept in uniform motion by the help of a crank.
Across the cloth, and some 30 cm. above it, is stretched a string,
with a knot _x_, which serves as a fixation-point for the eye of
the observer. If the observer _follow_ with his eyes the pattern
of the cloth as it moves, he sees it in movement, himself and the
surroundings at rest. But if he looks at the _knot_, he soon feels as
if the entire room were moving contrary to the direction of the cloth,
whilst the latter seems to stand still. This change in the mode of
looking comes about in more or less time according to one's momentary
disposition, but usually it takes but a few seconds. If one once
understands the point, one can make the two appearances alternate at
will. Every following of the oil-cloth makes the observer stationary;
every fixation of the knot or _inattention to the oil-cloth, so that
its pattern becomes blurred,_, sets him in apparent motion."[454]
[Illustration: FIG. 86.]
Professor Mach proceeds to explain the phenomenon as follows:
"Moving objects exert, as is well known, a peculiar motor stimulation
upon the eye, they draw our attention and our look after them. If
the look really follows them ... we assume that they move. But if the
eye, instead of following the moving objects, remains steadfastly
at rest, it must be that the constant stimulus to motion which it
receives is neutralized by an equally constant current of innervation
flowing into its motor apparatus. But this is just what would happen
if the steadfastly fixated point were itself moving uniformly in the
other direction, and we were following it with our eyes. When this
comes about, whatever motionless things are looked at must appear in
motion."[455]
The knot _x_, the string, we ourselves, and all our stationary
surroundings thus appear in movement, according to Mach, because we are
constantly innervating our eyeballs to resist the _drag_ exerted upon
them by the pattern or the flowing waves. I have myself repeated the
observation many times above flowing streams, but have never succeeded
in getting the full illusion as described by Mach. I gain a sense of
the movement of the bridge and of my own body, but the river never
seems absolutely to stop: it still moves in one direction, whilst I
float away in the other. But, be the illusion partial or complete,
a different explanation of it from Professor Mach's seems to me the
more natural one to adopt. The illusion is said to cease when, our
attention being fully fixed on the moving oil-cloth, we perceive the
latter for what it is; and to recommence, on the contrary, when we
perceive the oil-cloth as a vaguely moving background behind an object
which we directly fixate and whose position with regard to our own
body is unchanged. This, however, is the sort of consciousness which
we have whenever we are ourselves borne in a vehicle, on horseback, or
in a boat. As we and our belongings go one way, the _whole background_
goes the other. I should rather, therefore, explain Professor Mach's
illusion as similar to the illusion at railroad-stations described
above on page 90. The other train moves, but it makes ours seem to
move, because, filling the window as it does, it stands for the time
being as the total background. So here, the water or oil-cloth stands
for us as background _überhaupt_ whenever we seem to ourselves to be
moving over it. The relative motion felt by the retina is assigned to
that one of its components which we look at more in itself and less
as a mere _repoussoir_. This may be the knot above the oil-cloth or
the bridge beneath our feet, or it may be, on the other hand, the
oil-cloth's pattern or the surface of the swirling stream. Similar
changes may be produced in the apparent motion of the moon and the
clouds through which it shines, by similarly altering the attention.
Such alterations, however, in our conception of which part of the
visual field is substantive object and which part background, seem to
have no connection with feelings of innervation. I cannot, therefore,
regard the observation of Prof. Mach as any proof that the latter
feelings exist.[456]
* * * * *
The circumstantial evidence for the feeling of innervation thus seems
to break down like the introspective evidence. But not only can we
rebut experiments intended to prove it, we can also adduce experiments
which disprove it. A person who moves a limb voluntarily must innervate
it in any case, and if he feels the innervation he ought to be able to
use the feeling to define what his limb is about, even though the limb
itself were anæsthetic. If, however, the limb be totally anæsthetic,
it turns out that he does not know at all how much work it performs in
its contraction--in other words, he has no perception of the amount of
innervation which he exerts. A patient examined by Messrs. Gley and
Marillier beautifully showed this. His entire arms, and his trunk down
to the navel, were insensible both superficially and deeply, but his
arms were not paralyzed:
"We take three stone bottles--two of them are empty and weigh each 350
grams; the third is full of mercury and weighs 1850 grams. We ask L...
to estimate their weight and tell us which is heaviest. He declares
that he finds them all three alike. With many days of interval we
made two series of six experiments each. The result was always the
same. The experiment, it need hardly be said, was arranged in such
wise that he could be informed neither by sight nor by hearing. He
even declared, holding in his hand the bottleful of mercury, that he
found it to have no weight.... We place successively in his hand (his
eyes being still bandaged) a piece of modelling wax, a stick of hard
wood, a thick India-rubber tube, a newspaper folded up lengthwise and
rumpled, and we make him squeeze these several objects. He feels no
difference of resistance and does not even perceive that anything is
in his hand."[457]
M. Gley in another place[458] quotes experiments by Dr. Bloch which
prove that the sense which we have of our limbs' position owes
absolutely nothing to the feeling of innervation put forth. Dr. Bloch
stood opposite the angle of a screen whose sides made an angle of
about 90º, and tried to place his hands symmetrically, or so that both
should fall on corresponding spots of the two screen-sides, which were
marked with squares for the purpose. The average error being noted,
one hand was then passively carried by an assistant to a spot on its
screen-side, and the other actively sought the corresponding spot on
the opposite side. The accuracy of the correspondence proved to be
as great as when both arms were innervated voluntarily, showing that
the consciousness of innervation in the first of the two experiments
added nothing to the sense of the limbs' position. Dr. Bloch then
tried, pressing a certain number of pages of a book between the thumb
and forefinger of one hand, to press an equal number between the same
fingers of the other hand. He did this just as well when the fingers
in question were drawn apart by India-rubber bands as when they were
uninterfered with, showing that the physiologically much greater
innervation-current required in the former case had no effect upon the
consciousness of the movement made, so far as its spatial character at
any rate was concerned.[459]
On the whole, then, it seems as probable as anything can well be, that
these feelings of innervation do not exist. If the motor cells are
distinct structures, they are as insentient as the motor nerve-trunks
are after the posterior roots are cut. If they are not distinct
structures, but are only the last sensory cells, those at the 'mouth
of the funnel,'[460] then their consciousness is that of kinæsthetic
ideas and sensations merely, and this consciousness accompanies the
rise of activity in them rather than its discharge. The entire content
and material of our consciousness--consciousness of movement, as of
all things else--is thus of peripheral origin, and came to us in the
first instance through the peripheral nerves. If it be asked what we
gain by this sensationalistic conclusion, I reply that we gain at any
rate simplicity and uniformity. In the chapters on Space, on Belief,
on the Emotions, we found sensation to be a much richer thing than is
commonly supposed; and this chapter seems at this point to fall into
line with those. Then, as for sensationalism being a degrading belief,
which abolishes all inward originality and spontaneity, there is this
to be said, that the advocates of inward spontaneity may be turning
their backs on its real citadel, when they make a fight, on its behalf,
for the consciousness of energy put forth in the outgoing discharge.
Let there be no such consciousness; let all our thoughts of movements
be of sensational constitution; still in the emphasizing, choosing,
and espousing of one of them rather than another, in the saying to
it, 'be thou the reality for me,' there is ample scope for our inward
initiative to be shown. Here, it seems to me, the true line between the
passive materials and the activity of the spirit should be drawn. It is
certainly false strategy to draw it between such ideas as are connected
with the outgoing and such as are connected with the incoming neural
wave.[461]
* * * * *
If the ideas by which we discriminate between one movement and
another, at the instant of deciding in our mind which one we shall
perform, are always of sensorial origin, then the question arises, "Of
which sensorial order need they be?" It will be remembered that we
distinguished two orders of kinæsthetic impression, the _remote_ ones,
made by the movement on the eye or ear or distant skin, etc., and the
_resident_ ones, made on the moving parts themselves, muscles, joints,
etc. Now do resident images, exclusively, form what I have called the
mental cue, or will remote ones equally suffice?
_There can be no doubt whatever that the mental cue may be either an
image of the resident or of the remote kind._ Although, at the outset
of our learning a movement, it would seem that the resident feelings
must come strongly before consciousness (cf. p. 487), later this need
not be the case. The rule, in fact, would seem to be that they tend to
lapse more and more from consciousness, and that the more practised
we become in a movement, the more 'remote' do the ideas become which
form its mental cue. What we are _interested_ in is what sticks in our
consciousness; everything else we get rid of as quickly as we can. Our
resident feelings of movement have no substantive interest for us at
all, as a rule. What interest us are the ends which the movement is
to attain. Such an end is generally an outer impression on the eye or
ear, or sometimes on the skin, nose, or palate. Now let the idea of
the end associate itself definitely with the right motor innervation,
and the thought of the innervation's _resident_ effects will become as
great an encumbrance as we formerly concluded that the feeling of the
innervation itself would be. The mind does not need it; the end alone
is enough.
The idea of the end, then, tends more and more to make itself
all-sufficient. Or, at any rate, if the kinæsthetic ideas are called
up at all, they are so swamped in the vivid kinæsthetic feelings by
which they are immediately overtaken that we have no time to be aware
of their separate existence. As I write, I have no anticipation, as a
thing distinct from my sensation, of either the look or the digital
feel of the letters which flow from my pen. The words chime on my
mental _ear_, as it were, before I write them, but not on my mental
eye or hand. This comes from the rapidity with which often-repeated
movements follow on their mental cue. An end consented to as soon as
conceived innervates directly the centre of the first movement of the
chain which leads to its accomplishment, and then the whole chain
rattles off _quasi_-reflexly, as was described on pp. 115-6 of Vol. I.
The reader will certainly recognize this to be true in all fluent and
unhesitating voluntary acts. The only special fiat there is at the
outset of the performance. A man says to himself, "I must change my
shirt," and involuntarily he has taken off his coat, and his fingers
are at work in their accustomed manner on his waistcoat-buttons, etc.;
or we say, "I must go downstairs," and ere we know it we have risen,
walked, and turned the handle of the door;--all through the idea of an
end coupled with a series of guiding sensations which successively
arise. It would seem indeed that we fail of accuracy and certainty in
our attainment of the end whenever we are preoccupied with much ideal
consciousness of the means. We walk a beam the better the less we think
of the position of our feet upon it. We pitch or catch, we shoot or
chop the better the less tactile and muscular (the less resident),
and the more exclusively optical, (the more remote) our consciousness
is. Keep your _eye_ on the place aimed at, and your hand will fetch
it; think of your hand, and you will very likely miss your aim. Dr.
Southard found that he could touch a spot with a pencil-point more
accurately with a visual than with a tactile mental cue. In the former
case he looked at a small object and closed his eyes before trying
to touch it. In the latter case he _placed_ it with closed eyes, and
then after removing his hand tried to touch it again. The average
error with touch (when the results were most favorable) was 17.13 mm.
With sight it was only 12.37 mm.[462]--All these are plain results of
introspection and observation. By what neural machinery they are made
possible we need not, at this present stage, inquire.
In Chapter XVIII we saw how enormously individuals differ in respect
to their mental imagery. In the type of imagination called _tactile_ by
the French authors, it is probable that the kinæsthetic ideas are more
prominent than in my account. We must not expect too great a uniformity
in individual accounts, nor wrangle overmuch as to which one 'truly'
represents the process.[463]
I trust that I have now made clear what that 'idea of a movement' is
which must precede it in order that it be voluntary. It is not the
thought of the innervation which the movement requires. It is the
anticipation of the movement's sensible effects, resident or remote,
and sometimes very remote indeed. Such anticipations, to say the least,
determine _what_ our movements shall be. I have spoken all along as
if they also might determine _that_ they shall be. This, no doubt,
has disconcerted many readers, for it certainly seems as if a special
fiat, or consent to the movement were required in addition to the mere
conception of it, in many cases of volition; and this fiat I have
altogether left out of my account. This leads us to the next point in
the psychology of the Will. It can be the more easily treated now that
we have got rid of so much tedious preliminary matter.
IDEO-MOTOR ACTION.
The question is this: _Is the bare idea of a movement's sensible
effects its sufficient mental cue_ (p. 497), _or must there be
an additional mental antecedent, in the shape of a fiat, decision,
consent, volitional mandate, or other synonymous phenomenon of
consciousness, before the movement can follow?_
I answer: Sometimes the bare idea is sufficient, but sometimes an
additional conscious element, in the shape of a fiat, mandate, or
express consent, has to intervene and precede the movement. The cases
without a fiat constitute the more fundamental, because the more
simple, variety. The others involve a special complication, which must
be fully discussed at the proper time. For the present let us turn to
_ideo-motor action_, as it has been termed, or the sequence of movement
upon the mere thought of it, as the type of the process of volition.
Wherever movement follows _unhesitatingly and immediately_ the
notion of it in the mind, we have ideo-motor action. We are then
aware of nothing between the conception and the execution. All sorts
of neuro-muscular processes come between, of course, but we know
absolutely nothing of them. We think the act, and it is done; and that
is all that introspection tells us of the matter. Dr. Carpenter, who
first used, I believe, the name of ideo-motor action, placed it, if I
mistake not, among the curiosities of our mental life. The truth is
that it is no curiosity, but simply the normal process stripped of
disguise. Whilst talking I become conscious of a pin on the floor,
or of some dust on my sleeve. Without interrupting the conversation
I brush away the dust or pick up the pin. I make no express resolve,
but the mere perception of the object and the fleeting notion of the
act seem of themselves to bring the latter about. Similarly, I sit at
table after dinner and find myself from time to time taking nuts or
raisins out of the dish and eating them. My dinner properly is over,
and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what I do,
but the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion that I may eat
it seem fatally to bring the act about. There is certainly no express
fiat here; any more than there is in all those habitual goings and
comings and rearrangements of ourselves which fill every hour of the
day, and which incoming sensations instigate so immediately that it is
often difficult to decide whether not to call them reflex rather than
voluntary acts. We have seen in Chapter IV that the intermediary terms
of an habitual series of acts leading to an end are apt to be of this
_quasi_-automatic sort. As Lotze says:
"We see in writing or piano-playing a great number of very complicated
movements following quickly one upon the other, the instigative
representations of which remained scarcely a second in consciousness,
certainly not long enough to awaken any other volition than the
general one of resigning one's self without reserve to the passing
over of representation into action. All the acts of our daily life
happen in this wise: Our standing up, walking, talking, all this never
demands a distinct impulse of the will, but is adequately brought
about by the pure flux of thought."[464]
In all this the determining condition of the unhesitating and
resistless sequence of the act seems to be _the absence of my
conflicting notion in the mind_. Either there is nothing else at all
in the mind, or what is there does not conflict. The hypnotic subject
realizes the former condition. Ask him what he is thinking about,
and ten to one he will reply 'nothing.' The consequence is that he
both believes everything he is told, and performs every act that is
suggested. The suggestion may be a vocal command, or it may be the
performance before him of the movement required. Hypnotic subjects in
certain conditions repeat whatever they hear you say, and imitate
whatever they see you do. Dr. Féré says that certain waking persons
of neurotic type, if one repeatedly close and open one's hand before
their eyes, soon begin to have corresponding feelings in their own
fingers, and presently begin irresistibly to execute the movements
which they see. Under these conditions of 'preparation' Dr. Féré found
that his subjects could squeeze the hand-dynamometer much more strongly
than when abruptly invited to do so. A few _passive_ repetitions of a
movement will enable many enfeebled patients to execute it actively
with greater strength. These observations beautifully show how the mere
quickening of kinæsthetic ideas is equivalent to a certain amount of
tension towards discharge in the centres.[465]
* * * * *
We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room
without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests
against the ordeal. Probably most persons have lain on certain mornings
for an hour at a time unable to brace themselves to the resolve. We
think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we
say, "I _must_ get up, this is ignominious," etc.; but still the warm
couch feels too delicious, the cold outside too cruel, and resolution
faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed
on the verge of bursting the resistance and passing over into the
decisive act. Now how do we _ever_ get up under such circumstances? If
I may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get
up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we
_have_ got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget
both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some revery connected with
the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us,
"Hollo! I must lie here no longer"--an idea which at that lucky instant
awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently
produces immediately its appropriate motor effects. It was our acute
consciousness of both the warmth and the cold during the period of
struggle, which paralyzed our activity then and kept our idea of
rising in the condition of _wish_ and not of _will_. The moment these
inhibitory ideas ceased, the original idea exerted its effects.
This case seems to me to contain in miniature form the data for an
entire psychology of volition. It was in fact through meditating on
the phenomenon in my own person that I first became convinced of the
truth of the doctrine which these pages present, and which I need here
illustrate by no farther examples.[466] The reason why that doctrine
is not a self-evident truth is that we have so many ideas which _do
not_ result in action. But it will be seen that in every such case,
without exception, that is because other ideas simultaneously present
rob them of their impulsive power. But even here, and when a movement
is inhibited from _completely_ taking place by contrary ideas, it will
_incipiently_ take place. To quote Lotze once more:
"The spectator accompanies the throwing of a billiard-ball, or the
thrust of the swordsman, with slight movements of his arm; the
untaught narrator tells his story with many gesticulations; the reader
while absorbed in the perusal of a battle-scene feels a slight tension
run through his muscular system, keeping time as it were with the
actions he is reading of. These results become the more marked the
more we are absorbed in thinking of the movements which suggest them;
they grow fainter exactly in proportion as a complex consciousness,
under the dominion of a crowd of other representations, withstands the
passing over of mental contemplation into outward action."
The 'willing-game,' the exhibitions of so-called 'mind-reading,' or
more properly muscle-reading, which have lately grown so fashionable,
are based on this incipient obedience of muscular contraction to
idea, even when the deliberate intention is that no contraction shall
occur.[467]
We may then lay it down for certain that _every representation of
a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement which is its
object; and awakens it in a maximum degree whenever it is not kept from
so doing by an antagonistic representation present simultaneously to
the mind._
* * * * *
The express fiat, or act of mental consent to the movement, comes in
when the neutralization of the antagonistic and inhibitory idea is
required. But that there is no express fiat needed when the conditions
are simple, the reader ought now to be convinced. Lest, however, he
should still share the common prejudice that voluntary action without
'exertion of will-power' is Hamlet with the prince's part left out,
I will make a few farther remarks. The first point to start from in
understanding voluntary action, and the possible occurrence of it with
no fiat or express resolve, is the fact that consciousness is _in its
very nature impulsive_.[468] We do not have a sensation or a thought
and then have to _add_ something dynamic to it to get a movement. Every
pulse of feeling which we have is the correlate of some neural activity
that is already on its way to instigate a movement. Our sensations
and thoughts are but cross-sections, as it were, of currents whose
essential consequence is motion, and which no sooner run in at one
nerve than they run out again at another. The popular notion that mere
consciousness as such is not essentially a forerunner of activity, that
the latter must result from some superadded 'will-force,' is a very
natural inference from those special cases in which we think of an
act for an indefinite length of time without the action taking place.
These cases, however, are not the norm; they are cases of inhibition
by antagonistic thoughts. When the blocking is released we feel as if
an inward spring were let loose, and this is the additional impulse
or _fiat_ upon which the act effectively succeeds. We shall study
anon the blocking and its release. Our higher thought is full of it.
But where there is no blocking, there is naturally no hiatus between
the thought-process and the motor discharge. _Movement is the natural
immediate effect of feeling, irrespective of what the quality of the
feeling may be. It is so in reflex action, it is so in emotional
expression, it is so in the voluntary life._ Ideo-motor action is thus
no paradox, to be softened or explained away. It obeys the type of all
conscious action, and from it one must start to explain action in which
a special fiat is involved.
It may be remarked in passing, that the inhibition of a movement no
more involves an express effort or command than its execution does.
Either of them _may_ require it. But in all simple and ordinary cases,
just as the bare presence of one idea prompts a movement, so the bare
presence of another idea will prevent its taking place. Try to feel
as if you were crooking your finger, whilst keeping it straight. In a
minute it will fairly tingle with the imaginary change of position; yet
it will not sensibly move, because _its not really moving_ is also a
part of what you have in mind. Drop _this_ idea, think of the movement
purely and simply, with all breaks off; and, presto! it takes place
with no effort at all.
A waking man's behavior is thus at all times the resultant of two
opposing neural forces. With unimaginable fineness some currents
among the cells and fibres of his brain are playing on his motor
nerves, whilst other currents, as unimaginably fine, are playing on
the first currents, damming or helping them, altering their direction
or their speed. The upshot of it all is, that whilst the currents
must always end by being drained off through _some_ motor nerves,
they are drained off sometimes through one set and sometimes through
another; and sometimes they keep each other in equilibrium so long
that a superficial observer may think they are not drained off at all.
Such an observer must remember, however, that from the physiological
point of view a gesture, an expression of the brow, or an expulsion
of the breath are movements as much as an act of locomotion is. A
king's breath slays as well as an assassin's blow; and the outpouring
of those currents which the magic imponderable streaming of our ideas
accompanies need not always be of an explosive or otherwise physically
conspicuous kind.
ACTION AFTER DELIBERATION.
We are now in a position to describe _what happens in deliberate
action_, or when the mind is the seat of many ideas related to each
other in antagonistic or in favorable ways.[469] One of the ideas
is that of an act. By itself this idea would prompt a movement;
some of the additional considerations, however, which are present
to consciousness block the motor discharge, whilst others, on the
contrary, solicit it to take place. The result is that peculiar feeling
of inward unrest known as _indecision_. Fortunately it is too familiar
to need description, for to describe it would be impossible. As long as
it lasts, with the various objects before the attention, we are said to
_deliberate_; and when finally the original suggestion either prevails
and makes the movement take place, or gets definitively quenched by its
antagonists, we are said to _decide_, or to _utter our voluntary fiat_
in favor of one or the other course. The reinforcing and inhibiting
ideas meanwhile are termed the _reasons or motives_ by which the
decision is brought about.
The process of deliberation contains endless degrees of complication.
At every moment of it our consciousness is of an extremely complex
object, namely the existence of the whole set of motives and their
conflict, as explained on p. 275 of Vol. I. Of this object, the
totality of which is realized more or less dimly all the while, certain
parts stand out more or less sharply at one moment in the foreground,
and at another moment other parts, in consequence of the oscillations
of our attention, and of the 'associative' flow of our ideas. But no
matter how sharp the foreground-reasons may be, or how imminently
close to bursting through the dam and carrying the motor consequences
their own way, the background, however dimly felt, is always there;
and its presence (so long as the indecision actually lasts) serves as
an effective check upon the irrevocable discharge. The deliberation
may last for weeks or months, occupying at intervals the mind. The
motives which yesterday seemed full of urgency and blood and life
to-day feel strangely weak and pale and dead. But as little to-day as
to-morrow is the question finally resolved. Something tells us that
all this is provisional; that the weakened reasons will wax strong
again, and the stronger weaken; that equilibrium is unreached; that
testing our reasons, not obeying them, is still the order of the day,
and that we must wait awhile, patient or impatiently, until our mind
is made up 'for good and all.' This inclining, first to one then to
another future, both of which we represent as possible, resembles the
oscillations to and fro of a material body within the limits of its
elasticity. There is inward strain, but no outward rupture. And this
condition, plainly enough, is susceptible of indefinite continuance, as
well in the physical mass as in the mind. If the elasticity give way,
however, if the dam ever do break, and the currents burst the crust,
vacillation is over and decision is irrevocably there.
The decision may come in any one of many modes. I will try briefly to
sketch the most characteristic types of it, merely warning the reader
that this is only an introspective account of symptoms and phenomena,
and that all questions of causal agency, whether neural or spiritual,
are relegated to a later page.
* * * * *
The particular reasons for or against action are of course infinitely
various in concrete cases. But certain motives are more or less
constantly in play. One of these is _impatience of the deliberative
state_; or to express it otherwise, proneness to act or to decide
merely because action and decision are, as such, agreeable, and
relieve the tension of doubt and hesitancy. Thus it comes that we will
often take any course whatever which happens to be most vividly before
our minds, at the moment when this impulse to decisive action becomes
extreme.
Against this impulse we have the _dread of the irrevocable_, which
often engenders a type of character incapable of prompt and vigorous
resolve, except perhaps when surprised into sudden activity. These two
opposing motives twine round whatever other motives may be present at
the moment when decision is imminent, and tend to precipitate or retard
it. The conflict of these motives so far as they alone affect the
matter of decision is a conflict as to _when_ it shall occur. One says
'now,' the other says 'not yet.'
Another constant component of the web of motivation is the impulse to
persist in a decision once made. There is no more remarkable difference
in human character than that between resolute and irresolute natures.
Neither the physiological nor the psychical grounds of this difference
have yet been analyzed. Its symptom is that whereas in the irresolute
all decisions are provisional and liable to be reversed, in the
resolute they are settled once for all and not disturbed again. Now
into every one's deliberations the representation of one alternative
will often enter with such sudden force as to carry the imagination
with itself exclusively, and to produce an apparently settled decision
in its own favor. These premature and spurious decisions are of course
known to everyone. They often seem ridiculous in the light of the
considerations that succeed them. But it cannot be denied that in the
resolute type of character the accident that one of them has once been
made does afterwards enter as a motive additional to the more genuine
reasons why it should not be revoked, or if provisionally revoked, why
it should be made again. How many of us persist in a precipitate course
which, but for a moment of heedlessness, we might never have entered
upon, simply because we hate to 'change our mind.'
FIVE TYPES OF DECISION.
Turning now to the form of the decision itself, we may distinguish four
chief types. The first may be called _the reasonable type_. It is that
of those cases in which the arguments for and against a given course
seem gradually and almost insensibly to settle themselves in the mind
and to end by leaving a clear balance in favor of one alternative,
which alternative we then adopt without effort or constraint. Until
this rational balancing of the books is consummated we have a calm
feeling that the evidence is not yet all in, and this keeps action in
suspense. But some day we wake with the sense that we see the thing
rightly, that no new light will be thrown on the subject by farther
delay, and that the matter had better be settled _now_. In this
easy transition from doubt to assurance we seem to ourselves almost
passive; the 'reasons' which decide us appearing to flow in from the
nature of things, and to owe nothing to our will. We have, however, a
perfect sense of being _free_, in that we are devoid of any feeling
of coercion. The conclusive reason for the decision in these cases
usually is the discovery that we can refer the case to a _class_ upon
which we are accustomed to act unhesitatingly in a certain stereotyped
way. It may be said in general that a great part of every deliberation
consists in the turning over of all the possible modes of _conceiving_
the doing or not doing of the act in point. The moment we hit upon a
conception which lets us apply some principle of action which is a
fixed and stable part of our Ego, our state of doubt is at an end.
Persons of authority, who have to make many decisions in the day, carry
with them a set of heads of classification, each bearing its motor
consequence, and under these they seek as far as possible to range
each new emergency as it occurs. It is where the emergency belongs to
a species without precedent, to which consequently no cut-and-dried
maxim will apply, that we feel most at a loss, and are distressed at
the indeterminateness of our task. As soon, however, as we see our way
to a familiar classification, we are at ease again. _In action as in
reasoning, then, the great thing is the quest of the right conception._
The concrete dilemmas do not come to us with labels gummed upon their
backs. We may name them by many names. The wise man is he who succeeds
in finding the name which suits the needs of the particular occasion
best. A 'reasonable' character is one who has a store of stable and
worthy ends, and who does not decide about an action till he has calmly
ascertained whether it be ministerial or detrimental to any one of
these.
* * * * *
In the next two types of decision, the final fiat occurs before
the evidence is all 'in.' It often happens that no paramount and
authoritative reason for either course will come. Either seems a
case of a Good, and there is no umpire as to which good should
yield its place to the other. We grow tired of long hesitation and
inconclusiveness, and the hour may come when we feel that even a bad
decision is better than no decision at all. Under these conditions it
will often happen that some accidental circumstance, supervening at a
particular movement upon our mental weariness, will upset the balance
in the direction of one of the alternatives, to which then we feel
ourselves committed, although an opposite accident at the same time
might have produced the opposite result.
In the _second type_ of case our feeling is to a certain extent that of
letting ourselves drift with a certain indifferent acquiescence in a
direction accidentally determined _from without_, with the conviction
that, after all, we might as well stand by this course as by the other,
and that things are in any event sure to turn out sufficiently right.
_In the third type_ the determination seems equally accidental, but it
comes from within, and not from without. It often happens, when the
absence of imperative principle is perplexing and suspense distracting,
that we find ourselves acting, as it were, automatically, and as if by
a spontaneous discharge of our nerves, in the direction of one of the
horns of the dilemma. But so exciting is this sense of motion after
our intolerable pent-up state, that we eagerly throw ourselves into
it. 'Forward now!' we inwardly cry, 'though the heavens fall.' This
reckless and exultant espousal of an energy so little premeditated
by us that we feel rather like passive spectators cheering on the
display of some extraneous force than like voluntary agents, is a type
of decision too abrupt and tumultuous to occur often in humdrum and
cool-blooded natures. But it is probably frequent in persons of strong
emotional endowment and unstable or vacillating character. And in
men of the world-shaking type, the Napoleons, Luthers, etc., in whom
tenacious passion combines with ebullient activity, when by any chance
the passion's outlet has been dammed by scruples or apprehensions,
the resolution is probably often of this catastrophic kind. The flood
breaks quite unexpectedly through the dam. That it should so often do
so is quite sufficient to account for the tendency of these characters
to a fatalistic mood of mind. And the fatalistic mood itself is sure to
reinforce the strength of the energy just started on its exciting path
of discharge.
There is a _fourth form_ of decision, which often ends deliberation
as suddenly as the third form does. It comes when, in consequence of
some outer experience or some inexplicable inward charge, _we suddenly
pass from the easy and careless to the sober and strenuous mood,_
or possibly the other way. The whole scale of values of our motives
and impulses then undergoes a change like that which a change of the
observer's level produces on a view. The most sobering possible agents
are objects of grief and fear. When one of these affects us, all 'light
fantastic' notions lose their motive power, all solemn ones find theirs
multiplied many-fold. The consequence is an instant abandonment of the
more trivial projects with which we had been dallying, and an instant
practical acceptance of the more grim and earnest alternative which
till then could not extort our mind's consent. All those 'changes of
heart,' 'awakenings of conscience,' etc., which make new men of so many
of us, may be classed under this head. The character abruptly rises to
another 'level,' and deliberation comes to an immediate end.[470]
In the _fifth and final type_ of decision, the feeling that the
evidence is all in, and that reason has balanced the books, may be
either present or absent. But in either case we feel, in deciding, as
if we ourselves by our own wilful act inclined the beam; in the former
case by adding our living effort to the weight of the logical reason
which, taken alone, seems powerless to make the act discharge; in the
latter by a kind of creative contribution of something instead of a
reason which does a reason's work. The slow dead heave of the will that
is felt in these instances makes of them a class altogether different
subjectively from all the three preceding classes. What the heave of
the will betokens metaphysically, what the effort might lead us to
infer about a will-power distinct from motives, are not matters that
concern us yet. Subjectively and phenomenally, the _feeling of effort_,
absent from the former decisions, accompanies these. Whether it be the
dreary resignation for the sake of austere and naked duty of all sorts
of rich mundane delights, or whether it be the heavy resolve that of
two mutually exclusive trains of future fact, both sweet and good, and
with no strictly objective or imperative principle of choice between
them, one shall forevermore become impossible, while the other shall
become reality, it is a desolate and acrid sort of act, an excursion
into a lonesome moral wilderness. If examined closely, its chief
difference from the three former cases appears to be that in those
cases the mind at the moment of deciding on the triumphant alternative
dropped the other one wholly or nearly out of sight, whereas here
both alternatives are steadily held in view, and in the very act of
murdering the vanquished possibility the chooser realizes how much in
that instant he is making himself lose. It is deliberately driving a
thorn into one's flesh; and the sense of _inward effort_ with which the
act is accompanied is an element which sets the fourth type of decision
in strong contrast with the previous three varieties, and makes of it
an altogether peculiar sort of mental phenomenon. The immense majority
of human decisions are decisions without effort. In comparatively few
of them, in most people, does effort accompany the final act. We are,
I think, misled into supposing that effort is more frequent than it
is, by the fact that _during deliberation_ we so often have a feeling
of how great an effort it would take to make a decision _now_. Later,
after the decision has made itself with ease, we recollect this and
erroneously suppose the effort also to have been made then.
The existence of the effort as a phenomenal fact in our consciousness
cannot of course be doubted or denied. Its significance, on the other
hand, is a matter about which the gravest difference of opinion
prevails. Questions as momentous as that of the very existence of
spiritual causality, as vast as that of universal predestination or
free-will, depend on its interpretation. It therefore becomes essential
that we study with some care the conditions under which the feeling of
volitional effort is found.
THE FEELING OF EFFORT.
When, awhile back (p. 526), I said that _consciousness_ (or the
neural process which goes with it) _is in its very nature impulsive,_
I added in a note the proviso that _it must be sufficiently intense_.
Now there are remarkable differences in the power of different sorts
of consciousness to excite movement. The intensity of some feelings
is practically apt to be below the discharging point, whilst that
of others is apt to be above it. By practically apt, I mean apt
under ordinary circumstances. These circumstances may be habitual
inhibitions, like that comfortable feeling of the _dolce far niente_
which gives to each and all of us a certain dose of laziness only
to be overcome by the acuteness of the impulsive spur; or they may
consist in the native inertia, or internal resistance, of the motor
centres themselves making explosion impossible until a certain inward
tension has been reached and overpast. These conditions may vary from
one person to another and in the same person from time to time. The
neural inertia may wax or wane, and the habitual inhibitions dwindle or
augment. The intensity of particular thought-processes and stimulations
may also change independently, and particular paths of association
grow more pervious or less so. There thus result great possibilities
of alteration in the actual impulsive efficacy of particular motives
compared with others. It is where the normally less efficacious motive
becomes more efficacious and the normally more efficacious one less so
that actions ordinarily effortless, or abstinences ordinarily easy,
either become impossible or are effected, if at all, by the expenditure
of effort. A little more description will make it plainer what these
cases are.
* * * * *
_There is a certain normal ratio in the impulsive power of different
sorts of motive, which characterizes what may be called ordinary
healthiness of will,_ and which is departed from only at exceptional
times or by exceptional individuals. The states of mind which normally
possess the most impulsive quality are either those which represent
objects of passion, appetite, or emotion--objects of instinctive
reaction, in short; or they are feelings or ideas of pleasure or of
pain; or ideas which for any reason we have grown accustomed to obey
so that the habit of reacting on them is ingrained; or finally, in
comparison with ideas of remoter objects, they are ideas of objects
present or near in space and time. Compared with these various
objects, all far-off considerations, all highly abstract conceptions,
unaccustomed reasons, and motives foreign to the instinctive history
of the race, have little or no impulsive power. They prevail, when
they ever do prevail, _with effort; and the normal,_ as distinguished
from the pathological, _sphere of effort is thus found wherever
non-instinctive motives to behavior are to rule the day._
Healthiness of will moreover requires a certain amount of complication
in the process which precedes the fiat or the act. Each stimulus or
idea, at the same time that it wakens its own impulse, must arouse
other ideas (associated and consequential) with their impulses,
and action must follow, neither too slowly nor too rapidly, as the
resultant of all the forces thus engaged. Even when the decision is
very prompt, there is thus a sort of preliminary survey of the field
and a vision of which course is best before the fiat comes. And where
the will is healthy, _the vision must be right_ (i.e., the motives must
be on the whole in a normal or not too unusual ratio to each other),
_and the action must obey the vision's lead._
* * * * *
_Unhealthiness of will may thus come about in many ways._ The action
may follow the stimulus or idea too rapidly, leaving no time for the
arousal of restraining associates--_we then have a precipitate will_.
Or, although the associates may come, the ratio which the impulsive and
inhibitive forces normally bear to each other may be distorted, and
we then have _a will which is perverse_. The perversity, in turn, may
be due to either of many causes--too much intensity, or too little,
here; too much or too little inertia there; or elsewhere too much
or too little inhibitory power. _If we compare the outward symptoms
of perversity together, they fall into two groups,_ in one of which
normal actions are impossible, and in the other abnormal ones are
irrepressible. Briefly, _we may call them respectively the obstructed
and the explosive will._
It must be kept in mind, however, that since the resultant action is
always due to the _ratio_ between the obstructive and the explosive
forces which are present, we never can tell by the mere outward
symptoms to what _elementary_ cause the perversion of a man's will may
be due, whether to an increase of one component or a diminution of the
other. One may grow explosive as readily by losing the usual brakes
as by getting up more of the impulsive steam; and one may find things
impossible as well through the enfeeblement of the original desire as
through the advent of new lions in the path. As Dr. Clouston says,
"the driver may be so weak that he cannot control well-broken horses,
or the horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver can pull them up."
In some concrete cases (whether of explosive or of obstructed will) it
is difficult to tell whether the trouble is due to inhibitory or to
impulsive change. Generally, however, we can make a plausible guess at
the truth.
THE EXPLOSIVE WILL.
There is a normal type of character, for example, in which impulses
seem to discharge so promptly into movements that inhibitions get
no time to arise. These are the 'dare-devil' and 'mercurial'
temperaments, overflowing with animation, and fizzling with talk,
which are so common in the Latin and Celtic races, and with which
the cold-blooded and long-headed English character forms so marked
a contrast. Monkeys these people seem to us, whilst we seem to them
reptilian. It is quite impossible to judge, as between an obstructed
and an explosive individual, which has the greatest sum of vital
energy. An explosive Italian with good perception and intellect will
cut a figure as a perfectly tremendous fellow, on an inward capital
that could be tucked away inside of an obstructed Yankee and hardly
let you know that it was there. He will be the king of his company,
sing all the songs and make all the speeches, lead the parties, carry
out the practical jokes, kiss all the girls, fight the men, and, if
need be, lead the forlorn hopes and enterprises, so that an onlooker
would think he has more life in his little finger than can exist in the
whole body of a correct judicious fellow. But the judicious fellow all
the while may have all these possibilities and more besides, ready to
break out in the same or even a more violent way, if only the brakes
were taken off. It is the absence of scruples, of consequences, of
considerations, the extraordinary simplification of each moment's
mental outlook, that gives to the explosive individual such motor
energy and ease; it need not be the greater intensity of any of his
passions, motives, or thoughts. As mental evolution goes on, the
complexity of human consciousness grows ever greater, and with it the
multiplication of the inhibitions to which every impulse is exposed.
But this predominance of inhibition has a bad as well as a good side;
and if a man's impulses are in the main orderly as well as prompt, if
he has courage to accept their consequences, and intellect to lead
them to a successful end, he is all the better for his hair-trigger
organization, and for not being 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought.' Many of the most successful military and revolutionary
characters in history have belonged to this simple but quick-witted
impulsive type. Problems come much harder to reflective and inhibitive
minds. They can, it is true, solve much vaster problems; and they can
avoid many a mistake to which the men of impulse are exposed. But
when the latter do not make mistakes, or when they are always able to
retrieve them, theirs is one of the most engaging and indispensable of
human types.[471]
In infancy, and in certain conditions of exhaustion as well as in
peculiar pathological states, the inhibitory power may fail to arrest
the explosions of the impulsive discharge. We have then an explosive
temperament temporarily realized in an individual who at other times
may be of a relatively obstructed type. I cannot do better here than
copy a few pages from Dr. Clouston's excellent work:[472]
"Take a child of six months, and there is absolutely no such
brain-power existent as mental inhibition; no desire or tendency is
stopped by a mental act.... At a year old the rudiments of the great
faculty of self-control are clearly apparent in most children. They
will resist the desire to seize the gas-flame, they will not upset
the milk-jug, they will obey orders to sit still when they want to
run about, all through a higher mental inhibition. But the power
of control is just as gradual a development as the motions of the
hands.... Look at a more complicated act, that will be recognized by
any competent physiologist to be automatic and beyond the control of
any ordinary inhibitory power, e.g., irritate and tease a child of
one or two years sufficiently, and it will suddenly strike out at
you; suddenly strike at a man, and he will either perform an act of
defence or offence, or both, quite automatically, and without power
of controlling himself. Place a bright tempting toy before a child
of a year, and it will be instantly appropriated. Place cold water
before a man dying of thirst, and he will take and drink it without
power of doing otherwise. Exhaustion of nervous energy always lessens
the inhibitory power. Who is not conscious of this? 'Irritability'
is one manifestation of this. Many persons have so small a stock of
reserve brain-power--that most valuable of all brain-qualities--that
it is soon used up, and you see at once that they lose their power
of self-control very soon. They are angels or demons just as they
are fresh or tired. That surplus store of energy or resistive force
which provides, in persons normally constituted, that moderate
excesses in all directions shall do no great harm so long as they
are not too often repeated, not being present in these people,
overwork, over-drinking, or small debauches leave them at the mercy
of their morbid impulses without power of resistance.... Woe to the
man who uses up his surplus stock of brain-inhibition too near the
bitter end, or too often!... The physiological word inhibition can
be used synonymously with the psychological and ethical expression
self-control, or with the will when exercised in certain directions.
It is the characteristic of most forms of mental disease for
self-control to be lost, but this loss is usually part of a general
mental affection with melancholic, maniacal, demented, or delusional
symptoms as the chief manifestation of the disease. There are other
cases, not so numerous, where the loss of the power of inhibition is
the chief and by far the most marked symptom.... I shall call this
form 'Inhibitory Insanity.' Some of these cases have uncontrollable
impulses to violence and destruction, others to homicide, others to
suicide prompted by no depressed feelings, others to acts of animal
gratification (satyriasis, nymphomania, erotomania, bestiality),
others to drinking too much alcohol (dipsomania), others towards
setting things on fire (pyromania), others to stealing (kleptomania),
and others towards immoralities of all sorts. The impulsive tendencies
and morbid desires are innumerable in kind. Many of these varieties
of Insanity have been distinguished by distinct names. To dig up and
eat dead bodies (necrophilism), to wander from home and throw off
the restraints of society (planomania), to act like a wild beast
(lycanthropia), etc. Action from impulse in all these directions may
take place from a loss of controlling power in the higher regions of
the brain, or from an over-development of energy in certain portions
of the brain, which the normal power of inhibition cannot control.
The driver may be so weak that he cannot control well-broken horses,
or the horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver can pull them
up. Both conditions may arise from purely cerebral disorder ... or
may be reflex.... The _ego_, the man, the will, may be non-existent
for the time. The most perfect examples of this are murders done
during somnambulism or epileptic unconsciousness, or acts done in the
hypnotic state. There is no conscious desire to attain the object at
all in such cases. In other cases there is consciousness and memory
present, but no power of restraining action. The simplest example of
this is where an imbecile or dement, seeing something glittering,
appropriates it to himself, or when he commits indecent sexual acts.
Through disease a previously sane and vigorous-minded person may get
into the same state. The motives that would lead other persons not to
do such acts do not operate in such persons. I have known a man steal
who said he had no intense longing for the article he appropriated
at all, at least consciously, but his will was in abeyance, and he
could not resist the ordinary desire of possession common to all human
nature."
It is not only those technically classed imbeciles and dements who
exhibit this promptitude of impulse and tardiness of inhibition. Ask
half the common drunkards you know why it is that they fall so often a
prey to temptation, and they will say that most of the time they cannot
tell. It is a sort of vertigo with them. Their nervous centres have
become a sluice-way pathologically unlocked by every passing conception
of a bottle and a glass. They do not thirst for the beverage; the
taste of it may even appear repugnant; and they perfectly foresee
the morrow's remorse. But when they think of the liquor or see it,
they find themselves preparing to drink, and do not stop themselves:
and more than this they cannot say. Similarly a man may lead a life
of incessant love-making or sexual indulgence, though what spurs him
thereto seems rather to be suggestions and notions of possibility than
any overweening strength in his affections or lusts. He may even be
physically impotent all the while. The paths of natural (or it may
be unnatural) impulse are so pervious in these characters that the
slightest rise in the level of innervation produces an overflow. It
is the condition recognized in pathology as 'irritable weakness.' The
phase known as nascency or latency is so short in the excitement of
the neural tissues that there is no opportunity for strain or tension
to accumulate within them; and the consequence is that with all the
agitation and activity, the amount of real feeling engaged may be very
small. The hysterical temperament is the playground _par excellence_ of
this unstable equilibrium. One of these subjects will be filled with
what seems the most genuine and settled aversion to a certain line of
conduct, and the very next _instant_ follow the stirring of temptation
and plunge in it up to the neck. Professor Ribot well gives the name
of 'Le Règne des Caprices' to the chapter in which he describes the
hysterical temperament in his interesting little monograph 'The
Diseases of the Will.'
Disorderly and impulsive conduct may, on the other hand, come about
where the neural tissues preserve their proper inward tone, and where
the inhibitory power is normal or even unusually great. In such cases
_the strength of the impulsive idea is preternaturally exalted_, and
what would be for most people the passing suggestion of a possibility
becomes a gnawing, craving urgency to act. Works on insanity are full
of examples of these morbid insistent ideas, in obstinately struggling
against which the unfortunate victim's soul often sweats with agony,
ere at last it gets swept away. One instance will stand for many; M.
Ribot quotes it from Calmeil:[473]
"Glénadal, having lost his father in infancy, was brought up by his
mother, whom he adored. At sixteen, his character, till then good
and docile, changed. He became gloomy and taciturn. Pressed with
questions by his mother, he decided at last to make a confession.
'To you,' said he, 'I owe everything; I love you with all my soul;
yet for some time past an incessant idea drives me to kill you.
Prevent so terrible a misfortune from happening, in case some day the
temptation should overpower me: allow me to enlist.' Notwithstanding
pressing solicitations, he was firm in his resolve, went off, and
was a good soldier. Still a secret impulse stimulated him without
cessation to desert in order to come home and kill his mother. At
the end of his term of service the idea was as strong as on the
first day. He enlisted for another term. The murderous instinct
persisted, but substituted another victim. He no longer thought
of killing his mother--the horrible impulse pointed day and night
towards his sister-in-law. In order to resist the second impulse,
he condemned himself to perpetual exile. At this time one of his
old neighbors arrived in the regiment. Glénadal confesses all his
trouble. 'Be at rest,' said the other. 'Your crime is impossible;
your sister-in-law has just died.' At these words Glénadal rises like
a delivered captive. Joy fills his heart. He travels to the home of
his childhood, unvisited for so many years. But as he arrives he sees
his sister-in-law living. He gives a cry, and the terrible impulse
seizes him again as a prey. That very evening he makes his brother tie
him fast. 'Take a solid rope, bind me like a wolf in the barn, and
go and tell Dr. Calmeil....' From him he got admission to an insane
asylum. The evening before his entrance he wrote to the director of
the establishment: 'Sir, I am to become an inmate of your house. I
shall behave there as if I were in the regiment. You will think me
cured. At moments perhaps I shall pretend to be so. Never believe me.
Never let me out on any pretext. If I beg to be released, double
your watchfulness; the only use I shall make of my liberty will be to
commit a crime which I abhor.'"[474]
The craving for drink in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium or chloral in
those subjugated, is of a strength of which normal persons can form
no conception. "Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room and were a
cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not
refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get the rum;" "If
a bottle of brandy stood at one hand and the pit of hell yawned at
the other, and I were convinced that I should be pushed in as sure
as I took one glass, I could not refrain:" such statements abound in
dipsomaniacs' mouths. Dr. Mussey of Cincinnati relates this case:
"A few years ago a tippler was put into an almshouse in this State.
Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum,
but failed. At length, however, he hit upon one which was successful.
He went into the wood-yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon
the block, and with an axe in the other, struck it off at a single
blow. With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and
cried, 'Get some rum! get some rum! my hand is off!' In the confusion
and bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he
plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his
mouth, drank freely, and exultingly exclaimed, 'Now I am satisfied.'
Dr. J. E. Turner tells of a man who, while under treatment for
inebriety, during four weeks secretly drank the alcohol from six jars
containing morbid specimens. On asking him why he had committed this
loathsome act, he replied: 'Sir, it is as impossible for me to control
this diseased appetite as it is for me to control the pulsations of my
heart.'"[475]
The passion of love may be called a monomania to which all of us are
subject, however otherwise sane. It can coexist with contempt and
even hatred for the 'object' which inspires it, and whilst it lasts
the whole life of the man is altered by its presence. Alfieri thus
describes the struggles of his unusually powerful inhibitive power with
his abnormally excited impulses toward a certain lady:
"Contemptible in my own eyes, I fell into such a state of melancholy
as would, if long continued, inevitably have led to insanity or
death. I continued to wear my disgraceful fetters till towards the
end of January, 1775, when my rage, which had hitherto so often been
restrained within bounds, broke forth with the greatest violence. On
returning one evening from the opera (the most insipid and tiresome
amusement in Italy), where I had passed several hours in the box of
the woman who was by turns the object of my antipathy and my love, I
took the firm determination of emancipating myself forever from her
yoke. Experience had taught me that flight, so far from enabling me
to persevere in my resolutions, tended on the contrary to weaken and
destroy them; I was inclined therefore to subject myself to a still
more severe trial, imagining from the obstinacy and peculiarity of my
character that I should succeed most certainly by the adoption of such
measures as would compel me to make the greatest efforts. I determined
never to leave the house, which, as I have already said, was exactly
opposite that of the lady; to gaze at her windows, to see her go in
and out every day, to listen to the sound of her voice, though firmly
resolved that no advances on her part, either direct or indirect,
no tender remembrances, nor in short any other means which might be
employed, should ever again tempt me to a revival of our friendship. I
was determined to die or liberate myself from my disgraceful thraldom.
In order to give stability to my purpose, and to render it impossible
for me to waver without the imputation of dishonor, I communicated my
determination to one of my friends, who was greatly attached to me,
and whom I highly esteemed. He had lamented the state of mind into
which I had fallen, but not wishing to give countenance to my conduct,
and seeing the impossibility of inducing me to abandon it, he had
for some time ceased to visit at my house. In the few lines which I
addressed to him, I briefly stated the resolution I had adopted, and
as a pledge of my constancy I sent him a long tress of my ugly red
hair. I had purposely caused it to be cut off in order to prevent my
going out, as no one but clowns and sailors then appeared in public
with short hair. I concluded my billet by conjuring him to strengthen
and aid my fortitude by his presence and example. Isolated in this
manner in my own house, I prohibited all species of intercourse,
and passed the first fifteen days in uttering the most frightful
lamentations and groans. Some of my friends came to visit me, and
appeared to commiserate my situation, perhaps because I did not myself
complain; but my figure and whole appearance bespoke my sufferings.
Wishing to read something I had recourse to the gazettes, whole pages
of which I frequently ran over without understanding a single word....
I passed more than two months till the end of March 1775, in a state
bordering on frenzy; but about this time a new idea darted into my
mind, which tended to assuage my melancholy."
This was the idea of poetical composition, at which Alfieri describes
his first attempts, made under these diseased circumstances, and goes
on:
"The only good that occurred to me from this whim was that of
gradually detaching me from love, and of awakening my reason which
had so long lain dormant. I no longer found it necessary to cause
myself to be tied with cords to a chair, in order to prevent me from
leaving my house and returning to that of my lady. This had been
one of the expedients I devised to render myself wise by force. The
cords were concealed under a large mantle in which I was enveloped,
and only one hand remained at liberty. Of all those who came to see
me, not one suspected I was bound down in this manner. I remained in
this situation for whole hours; Elias, who was my jailer, was alone
intrusted with the secret. He always liberated me, as he had been
enjoined, whenever the paroxysms of my rage subsided. Of all the
whimsical methods which I employed, however, the most curious was
that of appearing in masquerade at the theatre towards the end of the
carnival. Habited as Apollo, I ventured to present myself with a lyre,
on which I played as well as I was able and sang some bad verses of
my own composing. Such effrontery was diametrically opposite to my
natural character. The only excuse I can offer for such scenes was my
inability to resist an imperious passion. I felt that it was necessary
to place an insuperable barrier between its object and me; and I saw
that the strongest of all was the shame to which I should expose
myself by renewing an attachment which I had so publicly turned into
ridicule."[476]
Often the insistent idea is of a trivial sort, but it may wear the
patient's life out. His hands feel dirty, they must be washed. He
_knows_ they are not dirty; yet to get rid of the teasing idea
he washes them. The idea, however, returns in a moment, and the
unfortunate victim, who is not in the least deluded _intellectually_,
will end by spending the whole day at the wash-stand. Or his clothes
are not 'rightly' put on; and to banish the thought he takes them off
and puts them on again, till his toilet consumes two or three hours of
time. Most people have the potentiality of this disease. To few has it
not happened to conceive, after getting into bed, that they may have
forgotten to lock the front door, or to turn out the entry gas. And few
of us have not on some occasion got up to repeat the performance, less
because they believed in the reality of its omission than because only
so could they banish the worrying doubt and get to sleep.[477]
THE OBSTRUCTED WILL.
In striking contrast with the cases in which inhibition is insufficient
or impulsion in excess are those in which impulsion is insufficient
or inhibition of in excess. We all know the condition described on
p. 404 of Vol. I, in which the mind for a few moments seems to lose
its focussing power and to be unable to rally its attention to any
determinate thing. At such times we sit blankly staring and do nothing.
The objects of consciousness fail to touch the quick or break the skin.
They are there, but do not reach the level of effectiveness. This
state of non-efficacious presence is the normal condition of _some_
objects, in all of us. Great fatigue or exhaustion may make it the
condition of almost all objects; and an apathy resembling that then
brought about is recognized in asylums under the name of _abulia_ as
a symptom of mental disease. The healthy state of the will requires,
as aforesaid, both that vision should be right, and that action should
obey its lead. But in the morbid condition in question the vision may
be wholly unaffected, and the intellect clear, and yet the act either
fails to follow or follows in some other way. "_Video meliora proboque,
deteriora sequor_" is the classic expression of the latter condition of
mind. The former it is to which the name _abulia_ peculiarly applies.
The patients, says Guislain,
"are able to will inwardly, mentally, according to the dictates of
reason. They experience the desire to act, but they are powerless to
act as they should.... Their will cannot overpass certain limits:
one would say that the force of action within them is blocked up:
the _I will_ does not transform itself into impulsive volition, into
active determination. Some of these patients wonder themselves at
the impotence with which their will is smitten. If you abandon them
to themselves, they pass whole days in their bed or on a chair. If
one speaks to them or excites them, they express themselves properly
though briefly; and judge of things pretty well."[478]
In Chapter XXI, as will be remembered, it was said that the sentiment
of reality with which an object appealed to the mind is proportionate
(amongst other things) to its efficacy as a stimulus to the will.
Here we get the obverse side of the truth. Those ideas, objects,
considerations, which (in these lethargic states) fail to _get to_ the
will, fail to draw blood, seem, in so far forth, distant and unreal.
The connection of the reality of things with their effectiveness
as motives is a tale that has never yet been fully told. The moral
tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the
link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the
truth and action, and that this pungent sense of effective reality
will not attach to certain ideas. Men do not differ so much in
their mere feelings and conceptions. Their notions of possibility
and their ideals are not as far apart as might be argued from their
differing fates. No class of them have better sentiments or feel more
constantly the difference between the higher and the lower path in
life than the hopeless failures, the sentimentalists, the drunkards,
the schemers, the 'dead-beats,' whose life is one long contradiction
between knowledge and action, and who, with full command of theory,
never get to holding their limp characters erect. No one eats of the
fruit of the tree of knowledge as they do; as far as moral insight
goes, in comparison with them, the orderly and prosperous philistines
whom they scandalize are sucking babes. And yet their moral knowledge,
always there grumbling and rumbling in the background,--discerning,
commenting, protesting, longing, half resolving,--never wholly
resolves, never gets its voice out of the minor into the major key,
or its speech out of the subjunctive into the imperative mood, never
breaks the spell, never takes the helm into its hands. In such
characters as Rousseau and Restif it would seem as if the lower motives
had all the impulsive efficacy in their hands. Like trains with the
right of way, they retain exclusive possession of the track. The more
ideal motives exist alongside of them in profusion, but they never get
switched on, and the man's conduct is no more influenced by them than
an express train is influenced by a wayfarer standing by the roadside
and calling to be taken aboard. They are an inert accompaniment to the
end of time; and the consciousness of inward hollowness that accrues
from habitually seeing the better only to do the worse, is one of the
saddest feelings one can bear with him through this vale of tears.
* * * * *
We now see at one view when it is that effort complicates volition.
It does so whenever a rarer and more ideal impulse is called upon to
neutralize others of a more instinctive and habitual kind; it does
so whenever strongly explosive tendencies are checked, or strongly
obstructive conditions overcome. The _âme bien née_, the child of the
sunshine, at whose birth the fairies made their gifts, does not need
much of it in his life. The hero and the neurotic subject, on the other
hand, do. Now our spontaneous way of conceiving the effort, under all
these circumstances, is as an active force adding its strength to that
of the motives which ultimately prevail. When outer forces impinge
upon a body, we say that the resultant motion is in the line of least
resistance, or of greatest traction. But it is a curious fact that
our spontaneous language never speaks of volition with effort in this
way. Of course if we proceed _a priori_ and define the line of least
resistance as the line that is followed, the physical law must also
hold good in the mental sphere. But we _feel_, in all hard cases of
volition, as if the line taken, when the rarer and more ideal motives
prevail, were the line of greater resistance, and as if the line of
coarser motivation were the more pervious and easy one, even at the
very moment when we refuse to follow it. He who under the surgeon's
knife represses cries of pain, or he who exposes himself to social
obloquy for duty's sake, feels as if he were following the line of
greatest temporary resistance. He speaks of conquering and overcoming
his impulses and temptations.
But the sluggard, the drunkard, the coward, never talk of their conduct
in that way or say they resist their energy, overcome their sobriety,
conquer their courage, and so forth. If in general we class all springs
of action as propensities on the one hand and ideals on the other, the
sensualist never says of his behavior that it results from a victory
over his ideals, but the moralist always speaks of his as a victory
over his propensities. The sensualist uses terms of inactivity, says he
forgets his ideals, is deaf to duty, and so forth; which terms seem to
imply that the ideal motives _per se_ can be annulled without energy
or effort, and that the strongest mere traction lies in the line of
the propensities. The ideal impulse appears, in comparison with this,
a still small voice which must be artificially reinforced to prevail.
Effort is what reinforces it, making things seem as if, while the force
of propensity were essentially a fixed quantity, the ideal force might
be of various amount. But what determines the amount of the effort
when, by its aid, an ideal motive becomes victorious over a great
sensual resistance? The very greatness of the resistance itself. If the
sensual propensity is small, the effort is small. The latter is _made
great_ by the presence of a great antagonist to overcome. And if a
brief definition of ideal or moral action were required, none could be
given which would better fit the appearances than this: _It is action
in the line of the greatest resistance._.
The facts may be most briefly symbolized thus, P standing for the
propensity, I for the ideal impulse, and E for the effort:
I _per se_ < P.
I + E > P.
In other words, if E adds itself to I, P immediately offers the least
resistance, and motion occurs in spite of it.
But the E does not seem to form an integral part of the I. It appears
adventitious and indeterminate in advance. We can make more or less as
we please, and _if_ we make enough we can convert the greatest mental
resistance into the least. Such, at least, is the impression which the
facts spontaneously produce upon us. But we will not discuss the truth
of this impression at present; let us rather continue our descriptive
detail.
PLEASURE AND PAIN AS SPRINGS OF ACTION.
Objects and thoughts of objects start our action, but the pleasures
and pains which action brings modify its course and regulate it; and
later the thoughts of the pleasures and the pains acquire themselves
impulsive and inhibitive power. Not that the thought of a pleasure
need be itself a pleasure, usually it is the reverse--_nessun
maggior dolore_--as Dante says--and not that the thought of pain
need be a pain, for, as Homer says, "griefs are often afterwards an
entertainment." But as present pleasures are tremendous reinforcers,
and present pains tremendous inhibitors of whatever action leads to
them, so the thoughts of pleasures and pains take rank amongst the
thoughts which have most impulsive and inhibitive power. The precise
relation which these thoughts hold to other thoughts is thus a matter
demanding some attention.
* * * * *
If a movement feels agreeable, we repeat and repeat it as long as
the pleasure lasts. If it hurts us, our muscular contractions at the
instant stop. So complete is the inhibition in this latter case that
it is almost impossible for a man to cut or mutilate himself slowly
and deliberately--his hand invincibly refusing to bring on the pain.
And there are many pleasures which, when once we have begun to taste
them, make it all but obligatory to keep up the activity to which they
are due. So widespread and searching is this influence of pleasures
and pains upon our movements that a premature philosophy has decided
that these are our only spurs to action, and that wherever they seem to
be absent, it is only because they are so far on among the 'remoter'
images that prompt the action that they are overlooked.
This is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of
pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our
only stimuli. With the manifestations of instinct and emotional
expression, for example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles
for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the
frown? Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blushing? Or who in
anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by
the pleasures which they yield? In all these cases the movements are
discharged fatally by the _vis a tergo_ which the stimulus exerts upon
a nervous system framed to respond in just that way. The objects of our
rage, love, or terror, the occasions of our tears and smiles, whether
they be present to our senses, or whether they be merely represented
in idea, have this peculiar sort of impulsive power. The _impulsive
quality_ of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go.
Some states of mind have more of it than others, some have it in this
direction, and some in that. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it,
and perceptions and imaginations of fact have it, but neither have it
exclusively or peculiarly. It is of the essence of all consciousness
(or of the neural process which underlies it) to instigate movement of
some sort. That with one creature and object it should be of one sort,
with others of another sort, is a problem for evolutionary history to
explain. However the actual impulsions may have arisen, they must now
be described as they exist; and those persons obey a curiously narrow
teleological superstition who think themselves bound to interpret them
in every instance as effects of the secret solicitancy of pleasure and
repugnancy of pain.[479]