AND CONSCIOUSNESS
There are three fundamental factors in the relation of any
organism to the environment and in the relation of the various
parts of an organism to each other which we must now consider. To
consider a living thing of any kind as something separate from
the stimuli the world streams in on it, or to consider it as a
real unit, is a mistake that falsifies most of the thinking of
the world.
On us, as living things, the universe pours in stimuli of a few
kinds. Or rather there are few kinds of stimuli we are
specialized to receive and react to; there may be innumerable
other kinds to which we cannot react because they do not reach
us. The world for us is a collection of things that we see, hear,
smell, taste and feel, but there may be vast reaches of things
for which we have no avenues of approach,--completely
unimaginable things because our images are built upon our senses.
To some of the stimuli the world pours in on us we must react
properly or die. Certain "mechanisms" with which we are equipped
must respond to these stimuli or the forces of the world destroy
us. A lion on the horizon must awaken flight, or concealment, or
the modified fight reaction of using weapons; extreme cold or
heat must start up impulses and reflexes leading away from their
disintegrating effects. Food must, when smelled or seen, lead us
to conduct whereby we supply ourselves or we die from hunger.
Dangers and needs awaken reactions, both through instinctive
responses and through intelligence. The main activities of life
are to be classed as "averting" and "acquiring," for if life
showers us with the things we would or need to have, it also
pelts us with the things we fear, hate or despise. It would be
interesting to know which activities are the most numerous;
presumably the lucky or successful man is busy acquiring while
the unlucky or unsuccessful finds himself busiest averting. The
averting activities are directed largely against the
disagreeable, disgusting, dangerous and the undesired; the
acquiring activities are directed toward the pleasant, the
necessary, the desired. The problems of life are to know what is
really good or bad for us and how to acquire the one and avert
the other. While there are certain things that "naturally"[1] are
deemed good or bad, there are more that are so regarded through
training and education. Morality and Taste are alike concerned
with bringing about attitudes that will determine the "right"
response to the stimuli of the world.
[1] I place in quotations NATURALLY because it is difficult to
know what is "natural" and what is cultural. In the widest sense
everything is natural; in the narrowest very few things are
natural. Cooked food, clothing, houses, marriages, education,
etc., are not found in a state of nature, any more than clocks
and plays by Ibsen are. Our judgment as to what is good and bad
is mainly instinctive leaning directed or smothered by education.
The stimuli that thus pour in upon the individual, and to which
he must react, must find an organism ready to respond in some way
or other. A sleeping man naturally does not adjust himself to
danger, nor does a paralyzed man fly. The most attractive female
in the world causes no response in the very young male child and
perhaps stirs only reminiscences in the aged. Food, which causes
the saliva to flow in the mouth of the hungry, may disgust the
full. Throughout life there are factors in the internal life of
the organism instantly changing one's reaction to things of
physical, mental and moral significance. He talks loudest of
restraint and control who has no desire; and in satiation even
the sinner sees the beauty of asceticism. There must be a
coincidence of stimulus, readiness and opportunity for the full,
successful response to take place.[1]
[1] A slang epigram puts it better: The time, the place, and the
girl.
The simplest response to any stimulus from the outer world is the
reflex act. Theoretically a reflex act is dependent upon the
interaction of a sensory surface, a sensory nerve cell, a motor
nerve cell and a muscle, i. e., a receptive apparatus and a motor
apparatus in such close union that the will and intelligence play
no part. Thus if one puts his finger on a hot stove he withdraws
it immediately, and such responses are present even in the
decapitated frog and human for a short time. So if light streams
in on the wide-open pupil of the eye, it contracts, grows
smaller, without any effort of the will, and in fact entirely
without the consciousness of the individual. Swallowing is a
series of reflexes in a row, so that food in the back part of the
mouth sets a reflex going that carries it beyond the epiglottis;
another reflex carries it to the esophagus and then one reflex
after the other transports the food the rest of the way. Except
for the first effort of swallowing, the rest is entirely
involuntary and even unconscious. Those readers who are
interested would do well to read the work of Pavlow on the
conditioned reflex, in which the great Russian physiologist
builds up all action on a basis of a modification of the
primitive reflex which he calls the "conditioned reflex."[1]
[1] Pavlow is one of the scientists who regard all mental life as
built up out of reflexes. The immediate reflex is only one
variety; thought, emotion, etc., are merely reflexes placed end
to end. Pavlow divides action into two trends, one due to an
unconditioned reflex, of innate structure, and the other a
modified or conditioned reflex which arises because some stimulus
has become associated with the reflex act. Thus saliva dripping
from a dog's mouth at the smell of food is an unconditioned
reflex; if a bell is heard at the same time the food is smelled
then in the course of time the saliva flows at the sound of the
bell alone,--a conditioned reflex. A very complex system has been
built up of this kind of facts, which I have criticized
elsewhere.
The simple reflex, immediate response to a stimulus, has only a
limited field in human life or adult life. Sherrington points out
in his notable book, "The Integrative Action of the Nervous
System," that there is a play of the entire organism on each
responding element, and there is also a competition throughout
each pathway to action. Let us examine this a little closer.
A man is hungry, let us say; i. e., there arise from his
gastro-intestinal tract and from the tissues stimuli which arouse
motor mechanisms to action and the man seeks food. The need of
the body arouses desire in the form of an organic sensation and
this arouses mechanisms whose function is to satisfy that desire.
Let us assume that he finds something that looks good and he is
about to seize it when an odor, called disagreeable, assails his
nostrils from the food, which stops him. Then there arises a
competition for action between the desire for food and the visual
stimulus, associated memories, etc., on the one hand, and the
odor, the awakened fear, memories, disgust, etc., on the other
hand. This struggle for action, for use of the mechanisms of
action, is the struggling of choosing, one of the fundamental
phenomena of life. In order for a choice to become manifest, what
is known as inhibition must come into play; an impulse to action
must be checked in order that an opposing action can be
effective. The movement of rejection uses muscles that oppose the
movement of acquirement; e. g., one uses the triceps and the
other the biceps, muscles situated in opposite sides of the upper
arm and having antagonistic action. In order for triceps to act,
biceps must be inhibited from action, and in that inhibition is a
fundamental function of the organism. In every function of the
body there are opposing groups of forces; for every dilator there
is a contractor, for every accelerator of action there is
inhibition. Nature drives by two reins, and one is a checkrein.
This function of inhibition, then, delays, retards or prevents an
action and is in one sense a higher function than the response to
stimulation. Its main seat is the cerebrum, the "highest" nervous
tissue, whereas reflex and instinctive actions usually are in the
vegetative nervous system, the spinal cord, the bulbar regions
and the mid-brain, all of which are lower centers. Choice, which
is intimately associated with inhibition, is par excellence a
cerebral function and in general is associated with intense
consciousness. The act of choosing brings to the circumstances
the whole past history of the individual; it marshals his
resources of judgment, intelligence, will, purposes and desires.
In choice lies the fate of the personality, for it is basically
related to habit formation. Further, in the dynamics of life a
right, proper choice, an appropriate choice, opens wide the door
of opportunity, whereas an unfortunate choice may commit one to
the mercies of wrecking forces. Education should aim to teach
proper choosing and then proper action.
The capacity for perceiving and responding to stimuli, for
inhibiting or delaying action and for choosing, are of cardinal
importance in our study. But there is another phase of life and
character without which everything else lacks unity and is
unintelligible. From the beginning of life to the end there is
choice. Who and what chooses? From infancy one sees the war of
purposes and desires and the gradual rise of one purpose or set
of purposes into dominance,--in short, the growth of unity, the
growth of personality. The common man calls this unity his soul,
the philosopher speaks of the ego and implies some such thing as
this organizing energy of character.
But a naturalistic view of character must reject such a
metaphysical entity, for one sees the organizing energy increase
and diminish with the rest of character through health, age,
environment, etc. Further, there is at work in all living things
a similar something that organizes the action of the humblest bit
of protoplasm. This organizing energy of character will be, for
us, that something inherent in all life which tends to
individualize each living thing. It is as if all life were
originally of one piece and then, spreading itself throughout the
world, it tended to differentiate and develop (according to the
Spencerian formula) into genera, species, groups and individuals.
This organizing energy works up the experiences of the individual
so that new formulae for action develop, so that what is
experienced becomes the basis of future reaction.
It must be remembered that the world we live in has its great
habits. Night follows day in a cycle that never fails, the
seasons are repeated each year, and there is a periodicity in the
lives of plants and animals that is manifested in growth,
nutrition, mating and resting. Things happen again and again,
though in slightly altered form, and our desires, satisfied now,
soon repeat their urge. The great organic needs and sensations
repeat themselves and with the periodic world of outer experience
must be dealt with according to a more or less settled policy. It
is the organizing energy that works out the policy, that learns,
inhibits, chooses and acts,--and it is the essential
character-developing principle. For like our bodily organs which
are whipped into line by the nervous system, our impulses,
instincts, and reflexes[1] have their own policy of action and
therefore need, for the good of the entire organism, discipline
and coordination. It may sound as if the body were made up of
warring entities and states and that there gradually arose a
centralized good, and though the analogy may lead to error, it
offers a convenient method of thinking.
[1] Roux, the great French biologist, has shown that each tissue
and each cell competes with the other tissues and the other
cells. The organism, though it reaches a practical working unity
as viewed by consciousness, is nevertheless no entity; it is a
collection, an aggregate of living cells which are organized on a
cooperation basis just as men are, but maintain individuality and
competition nevertheless.
Moreover, the organizing energy seems often to be at work when
consciousness itself is at rest, as in sleep. Often enough a man
debates and debates on lines of conduct and wakes up with his
problem solved. Or he works hard to learn and goes to bed
discouraged, because the matter is a jumble, and wakes up in the
morning with an orderly and useful arrangement of the facts. A
writer seeks to find the proper opening,--and gives up in a
frenzy of despair. He is perhaps walking or driving when suddenly
he lifts his head as one does who is listening to a longed-for
voice, and in himself he finds the phrases that he longs for.
Something within has set itself, so it seems, the task of
bringing the right associations into consciousness. What we call
quickness of mind, energy of mind, is largely this function.
It is this which adapts us to different situations, different
groups, by calling into play organized modes of talking or
acting. We pass from a group of ladies in whose presence we have
been friendly but decorous, perhaps unconventionally formal, to a
group of business intimates, men of long acquaintance. Without
even being conscious of it we lounge around, feet on the table,
carelessly dropping cigarette ash to the floor, using language
chosen for force rather than elegance; we discuss sports, women,
business and a whole group of different emotions, habits and
purposes come to the surface, though we were not at all conscious
of having repressed them while in the presence of the ladies. A
faux pas is where the organizer has "slipped" on his job; lack of
tact implies in part a rigid organizing energy, neither plastic
nor versatile enough.
We are now ready to face certain developments of these three main
factors, viz., the response to stimuli; choice and inhibition,
and the organizing energy. Largely we might classify people
according to the type of vigor of their reactions to stimuli, the
quality and vigor of choice and of inhibition, and the quality
and vigor of the organizing energy. We note that there are people
who have, as it were, exquisitely sensitive feelers for the
stimuli of one kind or another and who react vigorously, perhaps
excessively; that there are others of a duller, less reactive
nature, largely because they are stimuli-proof. Others are
under-inhibited, follow desire or outer stimulus without heed,
without a brake; others are over-inhibited, too cautious, too
full of doubt, unable to choose the reaction that seems
appropriate. The organizing energy of some is low; they never
seem to unify their experiences into a code of life and living;
they are like a string of beads loosely strung together with
disharmonious emotions, desires, purposes. In others this energy
is high, they chew the cud of every experience and (to change the
metaphor) they weld life's happenings, their memories, their
emotions and purposes into a more unified ego, a real I,
harmonious, self-enlightened; clearly conscious of aim and end
and striving bravely towards it. Or there is over-unification and
fanaticism, with narrow aim and little sympathy for other aims.
Sketched in this very broad way we see masses of people, rather
than individuals, and we are not finely adjusted to our subject.
Psychologists rarely concern themselves to any extent with these
matters; they deal mainly with their outgrowths,--emotions,
instinct, intelligence and will. We are at once beset with
difficulties which are resolved mainly by ignoring them. In such
a book as this we are not concerned with the fundamental nature
of these divisions of the mental life, we must omit such
questions as the relation of instinct to racial habit, or the
evolution of instinct from habit, if that is really its origin.
Again I must repeat that we shall deal with these as organic, as
arising in the sensitized individual as a result of environmental
forces, as manifestations of a life which is as yet--and perhaps
always will be--mysterious to us. We shall best consider these
manifestations of mental activity as an interplay of the
reactions of stimulation, inhibition, choice, organizing energy,
and not as separate and totally different matters. We shall see
that probably emotion is one aspect of reaction to the world,
while instinct is merely another aspect; that intelligence is a
cerebral shift of instinct, and that will is no unity but the
energy of instincts and purposes.
Before we go farther we must squarely face a problem of human
thought. Man, since he started reflecting about himself, has been
puzzled about his consciousness. How can a person be aware of
himself, and what identifies and links together each phase of
consciousness? There is an enormous range of thought on this
subject: from those who identified consciousness as the only
reality and considered what the average person holds as
realities--things and people--as only phases of consciousness, to
those who, like Huxley, regard consciousness as an
"epi-pbenomenon," a sort of overture to brain activity and having
nothing whatever to do with action, nothing to do with choice and
plan, so that, as Lloyd Morgan points out, "An unconscious
Shakespeare writes plays acted by an unconscious troupe of actors
to an unconscious audience." The first extreme view, that of
Berkeley and the idealists, nullifies all other realities save
that of the individual thinker and reduces one to the absurdities
of Solipsism where a man writes books to convince persons
conjured up by himself and having no existence outside of
himself; the other view nullifies that which seems to each of us
the very essence of himself.
I shall take a very simple view of consciousness,[1] simply
because I shall deliberately dodge the great difficulties.
Consciousness is the result of the activities of a group of more
or less permanently excited areas of the brain--areas having to
do with positions of the head, eyes and shoulders; areas having
to do with vision, hearing and smell; areas having to do with
speech,--these constituting extremely mobile, extremely active
parts of the organism. From these consciousness may irradiate to
the activities of almost every part of the organism, in different
degrees. We are often extremely conscious of the activities of
the hands, in less degree of the legs; we may become wrapped up
almost completely in a sensation emanating from the sex organs,
and under fear or excitement the heart may pound so that we feel
and are conscious of it as ordinarily we can never be. The state
of consciousness called interest may shift our feeling of self to
any part of our body (as in pain, when a part usually out of
consciousness swings into it, or when the hand of a lover grips
our own so that the great reality of our life at the moment seems
to be the consciousness of the hand) or it may fasten us to an
outside object until our world narrows to that object, nothing
else having any conscious value. This latter phenomenon is very
striking in children; they become fascinated by something they
hear or see and project themselves, as it were, into that object;
they become the "soapiness of soap, or the wetness of water" (to
use Chesterton's phrase), and when they listen to a story they
hold nothing in reserve. Consciousness may busy itself with its
past phases, with the preceding thought, emotion, sensation
--how, I do not know--or it may occupy itself mainly with the
world of things which are hereby declared to have a reality in
our theory. In the first instances we have introspection and
subjectiveness, and in the second we have extroversion and
objectivity.
[1] For discussion of consciousness read Berkeley, Locke, Hume,
Spencer, Lotze, Moyan, James, Wundt, Munsterberg and every other
philosopher and psychologist. I have not attempted to discuss the
matter from the philosopher's point of view for the very obvious
reason that I am no philosopher.
Since consciousness is most intense when the new or unfamiliar is
seen, heard, felt or attempted, we may assume it has a chief
function in acquainting the individual with the new and
unfamiliar and in the establishment of habitual reactions, We are
extraordinarily conscious of a queer, unexplainable thing on the
horizon, we bring into the limelight (or IT brings into the
limelight) all our possible reactions,--fear, flight, anger,
fight, circumvention, curiosity and the movements of
investigation; we are thrown into the maelstrom of choice. Choice
and consciousness, doubt and consciousness, are directly related;
it is only when conduct becomes established as habit, with
choosing relegated to the background, that consciousness, in so
far as the act is concerned, becomes diminished.
A moderate constant sensation tends to disappear from
consciousness, as when we keep our hand in warm water. It then
takes a certain increase of the stimulus to keep the sensation
from lapsing out of consciousness. This lapsing out of
consciousness of the steady stimulus, in its ramifications, is
responsible for a good deal of the activity of man, since
sensation is a goal of effort.[1] Under emotion we become aware
of two sets of things,--the reaction of our body in its sum
total of pleasure or the reverse, and second the object that sets
up this reaction. Consciousness fastens itself on the body and on
the world, and the bodily reaction becomes a guide for future
action. Extreme bodily reactions are painful and may result in
the abolishing of consciousness.
[1] The physiologists speak of this phenomenon under the heading
of the Weber-Fechner law, after the two physiologists who gave it
prominence. James pokes a good deal of fun at the "law," which is
expressed mathematically. Perhaps the mathematics should have
been eliminated as too "scientific" for our present attainment,
but it does remain true that it is not the ACTUAL stimulus
increase that is important in sensation or perception, but the
RELATIVE stimulus increase. This is behind all of "getting used
to things"; it removes the pain from humiliation and also the
novelty from joy. It is the reason behind all of the searching
for novelty and excitement.
We assume that consciousness is organic, though we concede that
it may be true that it is borrowed from a great pool of
consciousness[1] out of which we all come. Consciousness IS
organic because a blow on the head may abolish it as may drugs
and disease, or a shifting of the blood supply as in emotion or
fatigue in the form of sleep, etc. Where does it go to and how
does it come back? The savage answered that question by building
up the idea of a soul, a thing that might migrate, had an
independent existence, took journeys in the form of dreams and
lived and flourished after death. Most of these ideas still
persist, perhaps as much through the fear of annihilation as
anything else, but as to whether or not they are true this book
does not concern itself. We have no proof of these matters, but
we can prove that we can play on consciousness as we play on a
piano, through the body and brain. A blow injures groups of nerve
cells and consciousness disappears; when they recover, it
returns. Where does any function go when structure is injured? We
have practically the same kind of proof for the position of
consciousness as a function of the brain and body that we have
for gastric juice as a secretion of gastric cells.
[1] Even if it were true that consciousness is the only reality,
nobody really believes it in that nobody acts as if it were true.
Conversely, everybody acts as if trees, rocks, and people were
realities; as if fatigue, sickness, age, etc., affected
consciousness. That is why, in this book, we are discarding as
irrelevant the "ultimate" truth concerning consciousness. My
humble belief is that the ultimate truth in this matter will
never concern us because we shall never know it.
However widely we spread the function of consciousness and its
domain, we still leave a large field of activities untouched. And
so we come to the conception of the subconsciousness. There are
two prevailing sets of opinions concerning the subconscious.
The first is quite matter-of-fact. It states that the movements
and activities of a large part of the body are outside of the
realm of consciousness, such as the activities of the great
viscera--heart, lungs, intestines, liver, blood vessels, sex
glands--and are largely operated by the vegetative nervous
system.[1] There are influences pouring into the brain from these
organs, together with influences from muscles, joints, tendons,
and these influences, though not consciously itemized, are the
subconsciously received stimuli which give us feelings of vigor,
energy, courage, hopefulness, or the reverse, according to the
state of the organism. In health the ordinary result of these
stimuli is good, though people may have health in that no
definite disease is present, and yet there is some deficiency in
the energy-arousing viscera which brings a lowered coenesthesia,
a lessened vigor and lowered mood. In youth the state of the
organs brings a state of well feeling; in old age there is a
constant feeling of a low balance of energy and mood, and the
person is always on the verge of unpleasant feeling. In the great
change periods of life--at puberty and the climacteric (or the
menopause)--the sudden change in the activity of the sex organs
may produce great alterations[2] in the coenaesthesia and
therefore in the energy and mood of the individual.
[1] This is not the place to describe the vegetative nervous
system. (It was formerly called the sympathetic nervous system,
but this term is now limited to one part of this system, and the
term autonomic to another part, although some writers still use
the term sympathetic for the whole, and others [the English] the
term autonomic for the whole.) This system is the nervous
mechanism of organic life, regulating heart, lungs, blood
vessels, intestines, sex organs, acting together with endocrines,
etc. A huge amount of work has been done of late years on this
system and we know definitely that it stimulates, inhibits and
regulates these organs, and also that it records their
activities. We are commencing to believe that this system is
fully as important, in mental life, as the brain. See Langley,
Schaeffer, Higier, etc.
[2] This is especially true of the menopause in women, and often
enough of each menstrual period. That there is a climacteric in
men is not so clear, but something corresponding to it occurs, at
least in the case of some men.
In addition, these activities, which are so all-important,
determine the basic conduct by arousing the basic appetites and
desires of the individual. It is the change in the
gastro-intestinal tract and in the tissues of the body that
starts up the hunger feeling and the impulses which prompt men to
seek food; in other words, this type of coenaesthesia has set
going all the physical and mental activities relating to food; it
is the basic impulse behind agriculture and stock raising, as
well as energizing work activities of all kinds. It is the
tension in the seminal vessels of the male that wakes up his
passion, if it is not the sole source of that passion. Sex desire
in the adult male has many elements in it, not pertinent at
present, but the coenaesthetic influence of the physical
structures is its starting point. In men as well as women there
is a cycle of desire, with height due to physical tension and
abyss following the discharge or disappearance of tension, that
profoundly influences life and conduct. Here the sympathetic
nervous system and the internal secretion of the genital glands
awaken into sexual activity brain, spinal cord and muscles, so
that the individual seeks a mate, plunges into marriage and
directs his conduct, conscious of taste and desire, but largely
unconscious of the physical condition that is impelling him on.
In this sense the subconscious activities dominate in life,
because the functions of nutrition and reproduction are largely
unconscious in their origin, but there is no organized, plotting
subconsciousness at work.
Once a thing is experienced, it is stored in memory. What is the
basis and position of a memory when we are not conscious of it,
when our conscious minds are busy with other matters? What
happens when a desire is repressed, inhibited into inaction; when
consciousness revolts against part of its own content? Is a
"forgotten" memory ever really lost, or a desire that is
squelched and thrust out of "mind" really made inactive? Do our
inhibitions really inhibit, or do we build up another self or set
of selves that rise to the surface under strange forms, under the
guise of disease manifestations?
Sigmund Freud and his followers have made definite answers to the
foregoing, answers that are incorporated in a doctrine called
Freudianism. Freud is an Austrian Jew, a physician, and one that
soon specialized in nervous and mental diseases. Early in his
career he did some excellent work in the study of the paralysis
of childhood (infantile hemiplegia), but his attention and that
of an older colleague, Breuer, were soon drawn (as has occurred
to almost every neurologist) to the manifestations of that
extraordinary disease, hysteria. Hysteria has played so important
a role in human history, and Freud's ideas are permeating so
deeply into modern thought that I deem it advisable to devote a
chapter to them.