Mental Development in the Child and the Race

Chapter 13: The Origin of Volition

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§ 1 Description and Analysis of Volition

IN earlier chapters I have endeavoured to trace the development of some aspects of the child's active life up to the rise of volition. The transition from the involuntary class of muscular reactions to which the general word 'suggestion' applies, to the performance of actions foreseen and intended, occurs, as has been intimated, through the persistence and repetition of imitative suggestions. The distinction between simple imitation and persistent imitation has been made and illustrated in an earlier place. [1] Now, in saying that volition -- the clearly conscious phenomenon of will -- arises historically on the basis of persistent imitation, what I mean is this: that the normal child's first exhibition of volition is found in its repeated efforts to imitate something; and what it imitates, its 'copy,' is of two great kinds: (1) something external, such as movements seen and noises heard; and (2) something internal, arising in its own memory, imagination, or thought. I shall consider, first, the rise of volition by imitation of external copies, -- since this comes first in natural history, or phylogenesis, -- and then consider the modifications which are necessary when we come to consider memory and imagination as setting copies for imitation to the individual child.

An adequate analysis of will, with reference to the fiat of

(350) volition, reveals three great factors for which a theory of the origin of this function should provide. These three elements of the voluntary process are desire, deliberation, and effort. Desire is distinguished from impulse by its intellectual quality, i.e. by the fact that it always has reference to a presentation or pictured object. This distinguishes desire from that formidable and refractory thing which is called 'restlessness.' Organic impulses may pass into desires, when their objects become conscious. Further, desire implies lack of satisfaction of the impulse on which it rests -- a degree of inhibition, thwarting, unfulfilment. Put more generally, these two characteristics of desire are: (I) a pictured object suggesting associated experiences which it does not suffice to realize, and (2) an incipient motor reaction which the imaged object stimulates but does not discharge. [2] Analysis shows, I think, that these two points are equally important, because correlative. Without associated experiences, the object would give rise only to simple ideo-motor suggestion, as in the cases already cited, and in hypnotic suggestion; but these associated experiences lack body, satisfying quality, the 'reality coefficient.' In Pauline phrase, 'What a man hath why cloth he yet hope for?' But the mere picturing of objects with their associates, of whatever kind, does not constitute desire. Desire is a tendency-state, an incipient action, a condition of high potential, which, however, does not discharge itself. For example, -- to take an illustration from our main subject, the infant, -- the child continues to cry for an apple which his nurse refuses to give him; the nurse's prohibition has not the requisite inhibitive force to obliterate the motor tensions aroused by the pictured fruit and its associated pleasures. But the child's father comes into the room,

(351) and says, 'No!' Forthwith the child gives it up, satisfies himself with other objects, and no longer shows the motor tendencies and expressions which indicate desire. Yet in this latter case, the object-picture and its suggested pleasures are still present just the same. Real desire is gone, I think, as completely as in the hypnotic trance, when a new command turns the patient's motor responses into new channels. I do not desire the millions of my neighbour, nor a seat in the House of Lords; my sense that such things are unattainable inhibits all active attitude. But, for the opposite reason, I do desire an increase in my salary, and a seat on the bench where competent psychologists hold counsel together.

These prerequisites of desire allowed, it becomes relatively easy to fix the rise of the phenomenon in the infant's growth. Evidently, memory must be well developed, and the clear defining of a mental picture, that it may be an appropriate nucleus to a particular desire. This defining, it is further evident, must be sought, first, in connection with the senses whose so-called 'presentative' element is earliest and most pronounced. Sight and sound memories fulfil this requirement first; they are most clear-cut and uncomplicated with other sense pictures. Further, muscular memories are among the earliest with which they become associated, some such connections being possibly congenital. And the necessary associations of pleasure, which powerfully impel to desire, are pungent and strong in the case of muscular sensations.

I think it is in connection with sight and hearing memories of pleasant experiences, accordingly, as they are associated with pleasurable or not very painful movements, that desire is to be first looked for normally. Of auditory memories, the voice of mother or nurse, and sounds associated with the preparation of food, etc., become evident stimulations to lively anticipatory reactions which express desire. On the

(352) side of vision, again, similar indications are abundant, and extend back yet earlier in the infant's mental history.

The theory which connects desire fundamentally with appetite and thirst for pleasure can be defended, I think, only when supplemented from the side of simple ideo-motor suggestion. It is clear that appetite is at first organic, purely sensational; it has no objective terminus. [3] And it is only as appetites get tied to some well-defined visual or auditory memory picture, that the unrest of hunger and thirst becomes the desire for food and drink. But all desires are not thus founded in appetite, nor aimed at pleasure. It is only going a step farther, therefore, in the recognition of the essentials of the state called desire in normal and typical cases, to say, as I have said elsewhere, [4] that "desire takes its rise in visual (or auditory) suggestion, and develops under its lead." [5]

As a matter of fact, it seems to me to be extremely likely that the first cases of real desire in the infant's consciousness find their expression in the movements of its hands toward or from objects which it sees. We have seen that hand-movements are the natural outlets for clear differences in consciousness. As soon as there is clear visual presentation of objects we find impulsive muscular reactions directed toward them, at first in an excessively crude fashion, but becoming rapidly refined. These movements are free and uninhibited -- simple sensori-motor suggestive reactions. But we have seen, in the experiments described above, that this vain and random grasping, which prevailed up to about the sixth month, tended to disappear rapidly in the two subsequent months -- just about the time of the rise of imitation. During the

(353) eighth month, my child, H., would not grasp at highly coloured objects more than sixteen inches distant, her reaching distance being ten to twelve inches. This training of impulse is evidently an association of muscular sensations from the arm with visual experiences of distance. The suggested reaction becomes inhibited in a growing degree by counteracting nervous processes which probably began their influence much earlier. Here are the conditions necessary to the rise of desire. It is a typical instance, at any rate, whether or not it be, [6] as I think, the first instance, of the full fact of desire.

The further requisite to volition, as analysis gives it, is 'deliberation.' The phenomenon called 'deliberative suggestion' has already been described and illustrated from child-life. [7] The line of cleavage between such suggestion and the deliberation of volition lies, I think, just where that between impulse and desire lies. The characteristic thing about desire is the advanced representative process it involves -- the third-level process on the brain side -- with the complex sensori-motor system which is the basis of various inhibitions. So in deliberation, the complexity actually present in deliberative suggestion passes up to a higher level. The elements of it became clearly pictured, co-ordinated in the attention, and estimated, as to relative suitableness for execution. It is a vivid, clear thing in consciousness, this deliberation, both as to the elements of representation and as to the

(354) motor tendencies which they represent. On the contrary, the child's mind, in 'deliberative suggestion,' is analogous to the state of conflicting impulse, motor jerkiness, unreasonable caprice, seen also in certain pathological subjects, who are victims of aboulia in any of its forms. The essential difference -- and it is essential, I think, functionally considered -- is that the deliberation of volition involves attention at its normal gait, and the motor co-ordinations which are characteristic of it and of its seat among the highest brain relationships. Now the resolution of this conscious complexity of motives, as found in deliberation, gives another and the culminating characteristic of volition i.e. effort.

Effort, in all its forms, from simple consent, acceptance, ratification, of an action as good or as real, to the violent exertion of despair, or passion, -- effort arises just after deliberation, and puts an end to it. We need not go into the vexed question of the meaning of effort, its basis, etc.; all we need here is its natural history. And everybody will admit that it puts an end to mental hesitation and deliberation, it settles things so far as one's attitude is concerned, and issues in action so far as inhibiting conditions will permit. The sense of effort, then, seems to accompany, or indeed to be, the passage of consciousness into a state of motor monoideism, or strong attention, after the perplexities of deliberation. It arises just when an end is put to motor plurality by synthesis or co-ordination. [8]

Endnotes

  1. Above, Chap. VI., § 4.
  2. See my Handbook of Psychology, II., Chap. XIV., § 2 (pp. 324 ff.), for the general analysis of desire.
  3. The cries and other movements which are associated with appetite are largely organic pain reflexes.
  4. Handbook, II., p. 324.
  5. Of course with blind or deaf children other senses supply the suggestions.
  6. Of course, like all other dividing lines in consciousness, such a line of division is not well marked. It is impossible to say just how far the dumb, unpictured, organic ends in cases of appetite, unrest, muscular discomfort, etc., must crystallize into outline and objective reference to be no longer impulse, but desire. The needs of our terminology rather than the mental facts themselves lead to such divisions. Sight and sound act first only because and when they are first as memory objects; if they are absent, then less clear mental pictures get to be desired, of course.
  7. Above, Chap. VI., § 3.
  8. Cf. the full treatment of the appropriate chapters in James, Princ. of Psychol.,II., Chap. XXVI., and Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., especially Chap. XV., § 1, and Chap. XVI., § 1.

§ 2. The Typical Case of the Rise of Volition in the Child

These three characters of volition -- desire, attentive deliberation, effort -- find their typical fulfilment, I think,

(355) in the 'try-try-again' experience of infants; and the evident ca, e of this' seen in the persistent imitation of sounds heard and movements seen, the 'external copies' spoken of above, may be now considered.

We have seen that sight and hearing, in direct association with muscular sensation, supply the materials for reproduction largely at this early period; and it has now been urged that we are to look to imitation, considered as a type of reaction, as the principal method of adjustment of the organism to its surroundings. Independently, however, of this last presumption, -- indeed, in my own mental progress it was the facts of early volition that led me to the broader view of imitation in mental development, -- the direct evidence on the point is quite convincing .

Persistent Imitation and Volition. -- In persistent imitation we have an advance on simple imitation in two ways: (I) A comparison of the first result produced by the child (movement, sound) with the suggesting image or 'copy' imitated. This is nascent deliberation. For, when the dynamogenic influences of these presentations are taken into account, we find a conflict on the motor side. The old hand-movement, let us say, associated with the 'copy,' as it has been established by simple imitation, instinct, or impulse, does not adequately represent the influence now exerted by the 'copy,' plus that of the new optical picture created by the reaction itself. The dynamogenic condition is now complex. This gives rise to the state of dissatisfaction, motor restlessness, which is desire, best described in this connection by the phrase 'will-stimulus'; (2) the outburst of this complex motor condition in a new reaction, accompanied in consciousness by the attainment of a monoideistic state -- the 'end in view' -- and the feeling of effort. Here, then, in persistent imitation we have, thus briefly put,

(356) the necessary elements of the voluntary psychosis for the first time clearly present.

The reason that in imitation the material for volition is found is seen to be that here the 'circular process,' already described, maintains itself in a conscious way through the picturing of sights, sounds, etc. In reactions which are not consciously imitative, for example an ordinary pain-movement reaction, this circular process, whereby the result of the first movement becomes itself a stimulus to the second, etc., is not brought about; or, if it do arise, it consists simply in a repetition of the same motor event fixed by association -- as the repetition of the ma sound so common with very young infants. Consciousness remains monoideistic. But in persistent imitation, the reaction performed comes in by eye or ear as a new and different stimulus (see Fig. XIII.); here

Figure 13, Simple imitation

is the state of motor polyideism necessary for the rise of the feeling of effort. The motor process must be reduced by coordination to a reaction which will reproduce the copy, and at

(357) the same time employ, with least modification, the channels of discharge already fixed by the association between presentation and movement.

From this and the other lines of evidence given below, we are able to see more clearly the conditions under which effort arises. It seems clear that (1) the muscular sensations arising from a suggestive reaction do not present all the conditions; in young children, just as in habitual adult performances, muscular sensations simply tend to give a repetition of the muscular event by strict association, without any new attentive co-ordination at all. There is no new adaptation, and so no effort. The kinaesthetic centre empties into a lower motor centre in some such way as that described by James,[1] along the diagonal line mc, mp in the 'motor square' diagram given above (Fig. XIII.). This is also true when (2) sensations of the 'remote' kinaesthetic order, the sight or hearing of movements made, are added to the muscular sensations. They may all coalesce to produce again a repetition of the original reaction. The 'remote' and 'immediate' sources of motor stimulation reinforce each other. This is seen in a child's satisfied repetition of its own mistakes in speaking and drawing, although it hears and sees its own performances. Consequently (3) there is muscular effort only when the 'copy' persists and is compared with the result of the first reaction; that is, on the mental side, when the two presentations are held together in the attention, so that together they represent one intended movement or mental end; and on the physical side, when the two processes, started respectively by the 'copy' and the reactive result, are co-ordinated together in a common motor discharge (cc, mp' in Fig. XIV.). The stimulus to repeated effort arises from the lack of this co-ordination or identity in the motor influences of the dif-

(358)-ferent stimulations which reach a possible centre of co-ordination simultaneously; or if we consider such co-ordination only functionally -- instead of making it a matter of a separate local seat -- this will-stimulus represents the degree of difficulty these stimulations have in getting thus united in a common motor function.[2] The mental outcome, effort, ac-

Figure 14, Persistent Imitation with effort

companies the gathering of these combined influences, and, as soon as this outburst reproduces the 'copy,' the effort is said

(359) to 'succeed,' the subject is satisfied, 'will-stimulus' disappears, and the reaction tends to become simple as habit.

Physiologically the point which distinguishes persistent imitation with effort from simple imitation with repetition is this co-ordination of motor processes. In simple imitation the excitement aroused by the reaction, as its result is reported inwards by the eye or ear, finds no outlet except that already utilized in the earlier suggestive reactions. Hence it passes off in the way of a repetition of the earlier discharge, which represents inherited tendency, reflex movement, accidental association, pleasure-pain acquisition, or what not. All this is an affair of the 'second level,' of suggestion, of reactive consciousness. The child repeats its prattle over and over, as it lies abed in the early morning, simply from vigour, not from desire, nor from effort, least of all with deliberation. The sounds he makes are accompanied by sensations in his vocal organs, and what he hears he makes again, and so on, simply because his machinery works that way -- works easily and gives him the pleasure of exercise and rhythm.

But persistent imitation -- how different ! The same reaction is not repeated. He is no longer delighted with his simple activity. He detects differences between what he sees or hears and what he produces by hand or tongue, [3] and grows restless under these differences. Then he makes effort to reduce the difference by altering his movements, and what is

(360) most remarkable, he succeeds in doing so. How he does this, -- how he brings about a change in his reactions, from senseless repetition to intelligent conformity to the copy which he imitates, -- that is the question of accommodation, but he does it, and the least that this can mean is that there is in some way a modification of the impelling influence of his old associations.

What happens is an 'effort,' and by this effort the two stimulations, the original 'copy' and his own reproduction of it, are combined in one motor response. The two centres, or partial centres, stimulated by the original copy, on the one hand, and by the reaction as it is seen or heard, on the other hand, get combined in a common action, whose outcome is not carried off entirely by the old associated channel of discharge, but finds in part new adjacent channels; and so the external reaction becomes different and more adequate, only to be reported in again by eye or ear, and so by co-ordination to produce again a new effort, etc.

The foregoing development uses the term 'co-ordination' with a twofold application: first, it is applied to the physical process in the brain, whereby, as we may suppose, different areas of stimulation are brought together for a united function in a very complex way. It involves at once greater complexity and larger unity. It is the type of function characteristic of the highest level, the cortex. The lower reactions, the reflexes, suggestive responses, etc., are each, when taken alone, independent in great measure; each acts for itself on its own stimulus. But cortical processes are not so. While they are more varied, they are also more unstable and more interconnected. They coalesce in a single function which does not show its enormous complexity on its face. For example, speech involves five or six well-localized areas co-ordinated in a common discharge, and it is rare that one is injured with-

(361)out injuring the common function which draws support from each.

On the mental side we find co-ordination also, and it is always a process which takes attention in the learning and, until it becomes fixed by habit, in the execution also, invariably. Every original co-ordination of stimulations involving desire, deliberation, effort, is an act of attention. This, of course, cannot be a mere incidental or unessential fact. All that we know of attention shows it to be too central a thing for that. It remains, therefore, among the problems yet to be answered, what attention is, how its rise takes place, and what its presence means in the beginning of voluntary movement. [4] Here we may remark that the function of consciousness, in this act of persistent imitation, seems to be exhausted in the fact of close attention to the 'copy.' The infant does not attend to his movements, [5] nor does he shift his attention from his copy to his own imitation, except between his efforts. On the contrary, in visual imitation, for example, he keeps his eye fixed on the movement, the tracing, or the action of the person whom he is imitating; and his success in the effort seems to depend upon the degree in which he is able to hold this copy series up steady and unchanged before him. How it comes that during this concentration upon the copy, and by reason of it, the muscular actions are conforming themselves more and more to its exact reproduction -- this has been the topic of the earlier chapters on Development. [6]

The complex 'copy' of persistent imitation is necessary,

(362) therefore, as a stimulus to the tentative voluntary use of the muscles. The theory that all voluntary movements are led up to by spontaneous reactions which result in pleasure or pain, and then get repeated only because of their hedonic result, will not hold water for an instant in the presence of the phenomena of imitation. Suppose H. endeavouring in the crudest fashion to put a rubber on the end of a pencil, after seeing me do it, -- one of her earliest imitations. What a chaos of ineffective movements! But after repeated efforts she gets nearer and nearer it, till at last, with daily object lessons from me, she accomplishes it. Here one of the most valuable combinations of thumb and finger movements is acquired, simply by imitation, and in the face of constant discouragement, anything but pleasant to the child. If it is due to the fact simply that movement gives pleasure, why does she not turn to other movements? Why persist in this one failure-bringing thing? Suppose there had been no impulse to do what she saw me do, no motor force in the simple idea of the rubber on the pencil, no instinct to imitate; what happy combination of Bain's spontaneous and accidental movements would have produced this result, and how long would it have taken the child if she had waited for experiences actually pleasurable to build up this motor combination?

In cases of persistent imitation there is more than association as such. The movements imitated are new, as combinations. It is probable, it is true, that various ideas of former movements are brought up, and that the child has the consciousness of general motor capacity, resting, in the first place, upon spontaneous impulsive reactions, and it is probable that this consciousness is a kind of massed or bunched sense of the particular member whose action is necessary, arising from former movements of it; but on this insufficient associational basis he strikes out into the deepest water of

(363)untried experience. For this reason, as was said above, I believe that in persistent imitation we have the skeleton-process of volition; meaning that at this stage consciousness is not held down in its motor outcome strictly to past reactions held in memory, but issues as a new and more adaptive co-ordination of them. Physiologically, we would expect that the brain energy released by such a new stimulus as the pencil-rubber combination would pass off by the motor channels already fixed by spontaneous, reflex, and associated reactions, i.e. that the child would be content with a motor reaction of the suggestive kind. But not so. He is not content until he produces a new reaction of this particular sort; and we must suppose that, in consequence of each effort of the child, the physical process is heightened and its issuing movement selected from, until the one copy is reproduced. Volition is a case of functional selection.

It will be strange, in my opinion, if this view of the origin of volition do not seem quite the most natural one. What are we really bringing about in willing anything? Are we not hoping that through us a kind of experience, object, thing in the world, may be brought about after the pattern of our idea or purpose? Are we not trying to actualize something which we think ought to be reinstated for us or for others ? But is not this just the essential thing in imitation, -- the reinstatement of something, the copying of what has already been in us, in others, or in the world ? A child imitates automatically a sound he hears -- one case; and then, remembering it but not hearing it, wills to make it -- a second case. [7] Where is the difference in the type of occurrence in the two cases, as far as the child's active life is concerned ? The only difference is that, in the former case, his

(364) ear brings to him what he imitates, and his motor apparatus is ready for it; in the latter case, his memory brings it to him, and his motor apparatus Is not altogether ready for it. Is it not likely, therefore, that the simplest case of the more complex instance of this one typical process springs out of the most complex case of the simpler instance, -- that ,the growing complexity of the conditions is just what is meant by the child's desire, and that the growing richness and explicitness and difficulty of the conscious performance, what is meant by his volition ?

The position of volition in the progress of the individual, in his life history, may be depicted by a figure (Fig. XV.), the environment (I), in the shape of suggestion (2), in impinging upon the organism, stimulates to volition (3), which, when ratified and repeated, gives rise to habits (4), and these habits tend to become automatic reactions and impulses, only to come in contact with new suggestions from the environment, and so on. Thus the life plan becomes fuller and wider. I have used the spiral to denote this progress, which is continuous throughout the life period. Its analogue -- the 'life-spiral' of race development -- is given in the next figure below.

The crisis in the child's motor development, which is precipitated by persistent imitation, tends to come again and again to the front in later years in many interesting situations. The following game of my children, H., of five, and E., of nearly three years, reflects well the elements of choice, as the theory of the origin of volition requires them. I set the two children to walking fast around an oval table in contrary directions, marking the places where they were to meet, on the two opposite sides, with chairs drawn up to the table. They were to meet behind the first chair, shake hands, and then pass on to the second chair, and so on. On coming

(365) to the first chair, the smaller girl, E., was so impressed with the process of hand-shaking, in which she closely imitated her sister, and so thoroughly won over to her sister's action, that she invariably started off in the same direction with her, thus retracing her own steps, instead of passing on alone to

Figure 15, illustrating Ontogenetic development

the other chair. H. remonstrated with her again and again; and the child's conflict in motor impulses was instructive in the extreme. She always took at least one step with H., generally more, then turned and started off alone in a hesitating and uncertain way, and never seemed quite confident until she saw her sister coming around the table to meet her again.

(366) Here it is easy to see that the course of a continued suggestive reaction -- walking regularly forward -- is brought into conflict with the new copy for imitation, supplied by her sister's action. There arises a balancing of motor processes, attention is divided, and the final course is the outcome of a co-ordination of these rival processes in the attention. So she wills -- and it is a real act of will -- to go on [8] around the table alone, but only after the great hesitation or embarrassment which is a true indication of deliberation.

Endnotes

  1. Princ. of Psychology, Il., p. 582.
  2. This does not necessarily imply a central versus peripheral theory of the sense of effort; for the 'relative difficulty' spoken of in effecting the co-ordination in the attention may itself represent peripheral elements which inhibit the attention, or lack of the necessary peripheral elements to stimulate the attention, or the very feeling of effort may be made up of sensations from the muscles which are used in the act of attention. See Chap. XV, §§ I ff.
  3. "It seems just to say," remarks Janet (Autom. Psych., p. 475), "that voluntary effort consists in the systematization of images and memories which are accustomed to express themselves one at a time automatically"; and (p. 474), "the patient copies the movement of my arm automatically, while I copy a drawing voluntarily; the reason of it is that the patient acts only because he has an image of the action, and he carries it out without passing judgment upon it [simple imitative suggestion], while I copy the drawing, perceiving the resemblance, and because I perceive it" [persistent imitation or volition]. Compare his context.
  4. See below, Chap. XV.
  5. So we have seen in connection with 'tracery-imitation,' above .
  6. Golf-players know the disastrous effects of taking the eye off the ball; the attention is visual, and the entire co-ordination, the stroke, is secured through it.
  7. Cf Binet's exposition of James's view in terms of imitation (Alter. of Personality, pp. 156 f.).
  8. This 'game,' which became very popular with the children, was really an experiment on my part, suggested, in meditation on this topic, by contrast to an earlier experiment which I tried with El., when she was in her second and third years. This latter was an attempt to bring out the regularity of the operation of suggestion, by arranging attractive things about a room, so that only after reaching one could she see the next, etc. I found her the victim, of course, to this device. She rushed from one of the objects to another with great avidity.

§ 3. Phylogenetic

Coming to look at the place of volition in the race development of consciousness, we find that the determination of the method of its rise in the individual is instructive. Viewed objectively, a mental organism is subject, at any stage, to the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, already formulated above. Habit represents what is congenital with what it tends most naturally to do, under the guidance of all experiences up to date. Accommodation represents its degree of openness or adaptability, in giving the new reactions, which new stimulations or arrangements of stimulations call upon it to make. Now just as in the child the phenomena of suggestion became more and more complex, from the physiological reflex type up to the ideo-motor, deliberative, and, finally, the persistent type, which is volition; so, in the animal series, there is a corresponding development. Voli

(367)-tion is found only in animals having ideation, memory, desires. Who can doubt that the dog desires the morsel which he holds upon his nose, awaiting his master's permission to eat it ? All the conditions of desire are there: complex representation, incipient action, and inhibition. And who can doubt that there is volition when he gets permission and eats the morsel ? But lower in the scale, such cases shade down into the sphere of suggestion, as the animal becomes less ideational, less social, more organic, and more dependent upon a small circle of stimulations.

In volition, therefore, we find the point of meeting of the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, and their common function. It is through volition that the levelling effects of habit are counteracted in the higher orders of life, since it brings possibilities of adjustment to absent and distant conditions, and so wages conflict with the dictates of present sensation. Yet it is through volition on the other hand, that new habits are formed. Only by the continued inhibitions and controls of volition is a new action which is still hard to perform preserved amid the pressing urgencies of what is old and easy. So volition ministers to both kinds of development, and sums them up; and so justifies both its survival and its splendid eminence among all the survivals in the mental series.

To put the same thought from the point of view of any given stage of evolution, we may say that two factors are potent in the manifestations of the character of an organism at whatever stage: endowment and environment. Habits add to endowment, and all accommodations are concessions of endowment to environment. Now, as is seen in Fig. XVI., the environment (1), working as suggestion (2), brings about a new volition (3), this is repeated by persistent reaction, and so forms habit (4), this is added to endowment (5) by

(368) natural selection, [1] and so constitutes an element of instinctive character (6), in later generations, and this character or instinct, in the new individual, again confronts the suggestions of the physical and moral environment (1). So we have in the highest exhibition of reflective volition no departure in type -- however wide a departure it be in mean-

Figure 16, illustrating phylogenetic development

-ing and implications for philosophy -- from the first adaptive reactions of organic life. Habit is formed, in the face of suggestion, through persistent imitation and volition, and habit, selected for character, is modified in turn by changed environment which is reacted to by imitation and volition.

(369) What is this but a phylogenetic exhibition of the 'circular activity' seen in all development? -- just what we would expect, if volition is really a new, more complex form of the interaction of Habit and Accommodation in the growth of the individual.

Endnotes

  1. By selection of variations that 'coincide,' in Lloyd Morgan's phrase.

§ 4. Special Evidence

Besides the very high presumption that volition, considered as a departure in the mental life, arises in the way of a new adaptation of the living creature to its surroundings, and that it also follows the law of accommodation by imitation which is the agent of all the earlier adaptations; and besides the presumption afforded by the great reasonableness of the view as based upon an adequate analysis of desire and volition -- besides all this, there are several lines of objective evidence which connect early volition directly with reactions of the imitative type.

I. In the first place, the instances of so-called pre-imitative volition in infants, reported by various observers, can generally be explained in much simpler terms. The categories of suggestion which I have marked out in an earlier chapter, shading off into one another as they do by imperceptible degrees, seem to afford plenty of latitude for these cases. They differ greatly from the well-defined classes of movements called reflex, impulsive, automatic, etc., inasmuch as normal suggestion represents a side of mental growth which has heretofore gone largely unformulated. Reflex, impulse, instinct, etc., all represent habit, but they all presuppose accommodation, and it is only as we get some kind of a unifying principle of accommodation, that the partial statements of the law of habit get any common significance. Suggestion is the accommodation side of growth, all the way

(370) up to the most vivid forms of consciousness, and imitation is certainly -- in its conscious form -- the most direct form of suggestion. And even after volition ushers in a higher type of accommodation, suggestion still supplies most of its impetus. So when it seems impossible to assign a given reaction to any one of the categories of habit, that is no reason for leaping at once to volition, the most advanced form of accommodation; rather ought we to attempt to find its place under suggestion, which is the simpler form of accommodation.

Accordingly, we may, as the result shows, place all of the infant's so-called 'efforts,' in its early months, under the category of suggestion, only having to recognize certain cases which are, more evidently than others, germinal to volition. My child E., early in her second month, strained to lift her head at the sound of any one entering the room, and in her fourth month, after the child had been frequently lifted to a sitting posture by the clasping of her hands around her mother's fingers, the mere sight of fingers extended before her made her grasp at them and 'attempt' to raise herself. Now, as it happens, it is just the case of so-called 'effort' that is appealed to as showing very early volition. Preyer says: [1] "We may, therefore, without hesitation, refer the period of the first distinct manifestation of the activity of will in the infant in this field, to that week in which the head, while he is awake, no longer bobs hither and thither -- in general, the fourth to the fifth month." That is, Preyer holds that the successful holding up of the head is voluntary, while the various unsuccessful attempts of the child to do so were possibly not.

These earlier 'efforts' are reactions perfected by association between the advantageous sensations secured through

(371) sight, taste, etc., while the child is held erect, and the muscular sensations of erectness, So Preyer holds, and this explanation is, I think, quite correct as far as it goes. But as to this particular act, we find these 'efforts' suggested by noises, sights, especially by personal suggestions, at such an early age that the reaction for erect posture is probably to be considered a matter of native congenital tendency, just as the walking reflex is. So that the whole thing becomes a case of physiological and sensori-motor suggestion. And even when acquired completely -- when there is no 'bobbing hither and thither' -- there is no need whatever to find in it, as Preyer does, evidence of will. We adults hold our heads up because our normal sensational series, especially of the visual and muscular sensations, and their correspondences, have been acquired since we have been holding our heads up, and so they all conspire by their associative influence to stimulate the contractions necessary for this head position. There is no need to bring in volition, or even attention. And it is probable that these associations only reinforce the native tendency I have spoken of. Such efforts, therefore, on the part of the child, lack deliberation, and all but, perhaps, the faintest glimmerings of desire.

A similar account may be given of 'simple imitation.' It does not involve volition; it is, rather, simple ideo-motor suggestion made possible by associations between visual, auditory, or other stimulations, on the one hand, and muscle sensations on the other. Here, again, I differ from Preyer, instead of having the advantage of agreeing with him, which the following quotation seems to give me. [2] He says: [3] "The first imitations are the first distinct, represented, and

(372) willed movements." This makes all imitations voluntary: both the simple and the persistent forms. Now Preyer recognizes such a distinction, -- 'spontaneous' and 'deliberative' imitation are his terms, -- but does nothing with the distinction. To me it is as fundamental in the child's development as the distinction between suggestion and volition, between reaction and conduct. Simple imitation falls easily under suggestion, because it may not involve memory, nor selection, nor variation, nor desire, nor deliberation, nor effort; only a sensation and a movement in organic connection. This is mere habit. How many of the essentials of volition does the parrot have, or the young bird that imitates the old one's flight? Why should these acts be thought voluntary? But persistent imitation, as we have seen, presents new problems: the breaking up of habit; vivid selection on the part of consciousness; the new, strenuous experience called effort; and the actual accomplishment of the new, by a real process of learning. Indeed, so great is the difference, that whenever a natural history view of consciousness, which involves continuous development, is desired, it is just this magnificent appearance of discontinuity which is the point of greatest difficulty; and it may be as well to remind the disciples of Maine de Biran, Reid, and William James, that the act of the infant's 'try-try-again' gives them their golden opportunity.

These instances may serve to show the way in which, as I think, the category of suggestion, on the accommodation side of mental development, has been neglected, with the result that the 'psychologist's fallacy' has been committed regularly by those who have read volition into the infant's consciousness at such early stages of its growth.

So far, therefore, as cases of so-called effort shade downwards into suggestions, they are properly classified as pre-

(373)-volitional. But there is a distinct class of phenomena in which the shading is the reverse, -- cases in which the rudiments of volition must be recognized even in the absence of 'external copies' for imitation. This brings us, in a later section, [4] to the child's imitation of its own memories and imaginations, and to those cases which illustrate the relation of 'organic' and 'plastic' imitation to volition.

II. The results of a research on students, reported elsewhere [5] under the title, 'Persistent Imitation Experiments.' The subject is told to imitate a simple figure, called the 'copy,' set before him, drawing in pencil or chalk, at a single stroke. Then he compares his performance with the copy and tries Table VIII

Copy Will Stimulus (Av. No. Of Efforts In Each Experiment) No of Experiments No. Of Persons
a. External visual, with comparison 3.57 Ratio 1.79 51 6
b. External visual, without comparison 2.09
c. Memory image after ten minutes, with comparison 2. ratio 1.60 30 4
d. Memory image after ten minutes, without comparison 1.27
c. Memory image after fifteen minutes with comparison 5.66 ratio 1.55 6 1
d. Memory image after fifteen minutes, without comparison 3.66


Persistent Imitation Experiments: B. Diminution of motor force of memory after ten minutes = from about 60% to 80% according as comparison is made, or not, or results with memory image.

(374) again; and so on, until satisfied with the result. This done, the number of his efforts is noted. This I may call in the tables (VIII., IX.) the case 'with comparison.' Then he is instructed to go through the same experiment again, except that his eyes are now bandaged, so that he is not able to compare his own results with the copy. The number of efforts is noted as before. This is the case 'without comparison.'

Now it is evident that the relative number of 'efforts' in each case may be taken to indicate the amount of tendency the subject has to continue the imitation, -- a quantity technically known as 'will-stimulus.' The results given in the tables show that in the case 'without comparison' the subject is liable to be satisfied with a smaller number of efforts; this would indicate that when the new visual picture is not reported, there is not the same will-stimulus. But in the other case, 'with comparison,' effort after effort is made, until success is attained, or until the subject gives it up; so the inference is that there is then continued will-stimulus until

Copy Will Stimulus (Av. No. Of Efforts In Each Experiment) No of Experiments No. Of Persons
a. External visual, with comparisons 3.57 Ratio 1.79 51 6
b. Memory Image after ten minutes, with comparison 2   30 4
c. Memory image after one minute without comparison 2.09 ratio 1.65 51 6
d. Memory image after 10 minutes, without comparison 1.27   30 4


Persistent Imitation Experiments: B. Diminution of motor force of memory after ten minutes = from about 60% to 80% according as comparison is made, or not, or results with memory image.

(375) either the motor plurality is overcome, or the stimulus effect is itself inhibited by discouragement. The figures (Table VIII., A) show that in the case of comparison there Is an increase of from 75 per cent. down to 50 per cent. in the will stimulus for memory durations from one down to ten minutes.

Table IX., B. shows the further interesting result that if the external 'copy' be removed and the subject rely upon his memory, the number of efforts tends to decrease in some ratio with the length of time elapsed. This is what we should expect from other experiments on the faithfulness of memory,[6] which show that the memory process loses its definite character with time. The figures show a diminution of the motor force of a memory after ten minutes from about 60 per cent. to 80 per cent., according as comparison of results with the memory image is made or not.

This investigation gives evidence of the necessity for motor co-ordination -- what is called 'comparison' -- in the antecedents to voluntary movement. This is the essential contention of the doctrine of the genesis of volition stated above; and it is interesting to find that in our adult life our choices are still backed in a regular way by that dynamogenic agency called 'will-stimulus.'

III. Another kind of evidence is found in the behaviour of the attention. In a great class of pathological cases of

(376) anaesthesia which involves paralysis when the eyes or ears are closed, but not when they are open -- we find evidence that disturbances of attention bring about derangements of voluntary movement. This may occur even when the patient keeps intact all the apparatus of movement, and all the memories of the movements which he desires to make. And the result is sometimes reversed; a patient may be able to move a member except when he sees it. Here the visual images inhibit the movement. [7] In the former case, the attention has become dependent, for certain voluntary functions, upon immediate visual or auditory stimulation, and in its absence, these voluntary functions are impossible. [8] This shows that a degree of correlation of optical, kinaesthetic, auditory, etc., impressions is necessary for voluntary movement, and that this correlation is here, as everywhere else, a function of the attention. In normal voluntary movement, attention need not be given necessarily to the muscular movement itself, -- although that is one type of voluntary attention, -- but it may be given to some other kind of sensation, auditory, visual, etc., which has come to play the leading part in this particular movement, and under the lead of which the correlation which issues in movement is effected.

More is said of this below in the general theory of voluntary movement; [9] but here it may be noted how clearly this accords with what we found above to be the behaviour of the child's attention in performing its first voluntary drawings. His attention has to be fastened upon the thing or 'copy' imitated, not on his hand, nor on his memories of movement.

(377) Passy finds that a young child copies a new thing or copy by giving attention to his visual memory pictures. This is shown, as I have said above, by the fact that he puts into his drawing, certain features such as ears, arms, and minor details, which are not in the actual thing or copy, but only in his own earlier visual pictures. So I find that in imitating new words, there is a constant tendency on the part of the child, to reproduce terms he already knows in place of the words of the new lesson. In imitating speech also, the child does not learn by paying attention to the lips of the speaker. He sometimes learns the guttural letters, which are not spoken with the lips, sooner than many of the others. Much less does he pay attention to his own lips; from all appearances he does not know that he is using his lips. The most that lip sensations or memories do is to supply to him the series of associations which follow upon the auditory stimulations. It is these last to which he pays attention.

Cases are abundant not only in which aphasia follows lesions of the auditory centre, but in which it follows lesions located in the connections between the auditory and the word seeing and word-hearing centres. Such a lesion interferes with the correlative or associative function. And it is indeed very suggestive of the new function found in persistent imitation, that while this latter often becomes impossible, in these cases, yet the simple imitative copying of sounds heard or movements seen, may still take place. Simple ideomotor suggestion, as typified in simple imitation, remains intact; but persistent imitation, effort, the correlation involved in voluntary attention and movement, all this is lost. Janet thinks [10] the incapacity to feel objects by touch in certain cases, is inversely as the degree of customary recognition of the objects, their uses, etc.; which is to say, -- when we

(378) come to understand that recognition may itself be simply due to an attitude of tendency of attention, -- that the patient's ability depends largely upon the degree of involuntariness of attention, that is, of the degree of the simple habit of attending.

In view of what has now been said, the real difference between what is voluntary and what is not becomes very emphatic, and we have the key, I think, to the understanding of total aboulia, or lack of will, in cases of disease; and of partial aboulia, seen in the loss of particular voluntary functions, such as speech, writing, etc. [11] These matters furnish a further line of evidence which I shall now put forward.

IV. Evidence from aboulia, partial or total, may now be brought. The general principle of mental pathology that the dissolution of complex functions follows the inverse order of their acquisition, applies to the voluntary activities in two ways.

First, we should find stages of degeneration corresponding to the great epochs of mental development seen in the phylogenetic or race series; this would seem to require that vol-

(379)-untary action should be impaired by a less serious derangement than are simple suggestive reactions; and that the derangement of the ideo-motor should precede that of the sensori-motor. Also that these last, which involve clear consciousness, might be damaged or absent while reflex functions still remain; and that, last of all, the rhythmic, so-called automatic processes, which are necessary to life in general, might remain alone upon the field. All of these propositions, except the first, which concerns voluntary action, are such commonplaces in psychology as well as in physiology, that I need mention them only to give new confirmation to the great features of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic parallelism on the side of mind.

But, second, this progressive impairment of mental faculty in the individual repeats inversely the process by which the individual himself learns his lessons in action. The man retrogrades literally into second childhood, both in regard to his power of mind as a whole, and in regard to the particular elements of any distinct functions which happen to be affected by disease or accident.

These two cases illustrate the two very distinct and instructive phases of voluntary failure, already characterized as total and partial aboulia. In the former case, the impairment is general, extending to the co-ordinating function as a whole, and so involving each particular activity equally. The old man writes tremblingly, speaks falteringly, recognizes faces and things badly, walks haltingly, -- all of which follow from the fact that he is able to attend only partially and fitfully. In partial aboulia, on the other hand, one special function is impaired, or more; the rest remain intact. Here belong sensory aphasia, agraphia, arising from arterial obstructions, central lesion, etc. Some particular prop to the attention gets knocked away, and so one line of voluntary activity is

(380) seriously injured or destroyed; but the co-ordination of the other brain seats is still intact, and their functions are weakened only to the degree in which their structure of attention also rested upon this prop.

Both these cases of loss or impairment of will may be put in evidence as showing the place of volition in mental development, provided only the law be true that mind degenerates in the same order as it grows, only backwards; that is, that the function which it acquires latest, it loses first and most easily. We then have to ask what the actual facts of mental pathology are which show conditions of the impairment of will.

Considering total aboulia first, the condition of general levelling down or decay of the mental faculties gives us our instances. There are several recognized cases of such general mental break-down, all involving total or progressive aboulia; first, destruction of the cerebral hemispheres, corresponding to their removal from animals by the experimental physiologists; second, temporary subsidence of consciousness under the influence of drugs, or in derangement of the vaso-motor mechanism, as in faintness, trance, fits, etc.; and third, diseases distinctly recognized as mental, such as hysteria, of which the universal symptoms are certain derangements of consciousness, enfeebled attention, remarkable perversions of movement, etc. To these must be added idiocy or congenital mental defect.[12] Looking at each of these four cases, we find very evident confirmation of the view of volition explained in the foregoing pages.

In the various experiments recorded of extirpation of

(381) the hemispheres, the phenomena now well known by the phrase" 'psychic blindness,' 'psychic deafness,' etc., appear. These phrases are contrasted with 'cortical' blindness, deafness, etc. In the former, the animal loses all his sense of the meaning, associations, value, of what he sees and hears. He still sees and hears, and he still has reactions appropriate to sight and hearing; but he does not show the reactions peculiar to what he has learned, in all his life, about what he sees and hears. After certain operations upon his brain the dog sees a whip, but is no longer afraid of it; sees food, but no longer moves forward to secure it; hears a voice, but no longer recognizes it. What psychologists mean by 'apperception' -- the understanding of a thing, as opposed to the mere seeing or hearing of it -- this is gone. The thing seen or heard is no longer a co-ordinated thing, built up of memories, varied sensations, motor dynamogenies, and pleasures or pains; but it is a bare, worthless stimulus to reflex or suggestive reaction.

Lack of co-ordination? Then lack of attention, lack of persistence, of effort, of volition ! 'Exactly,' says the brainless pigeon, 'that is what I lack.' Sustained attention, effort, volition -- these are the correlatives of the co-ordinations of memories with present sensations, the motor correlatives of association and apperception. Lack on one side, the sensory, then a fortiori lack on the other, the motor. The motor it is, exactly, which holds the sensory elements together. The creature shows, in fact, no complex activity, no curiosity, no constancy of attention, no persistence in his undertakings -- indeed, no undertakings, no adaptation to new conditions. He lacks all means of taking care of himself, and perishes of hunger with food under his nose.

Now substitute men for dogs and pigeons, and substitute disease or drugs for the operator, and you have, in cases of

(382) varying clearness, cases of general progressive aboulia in man; all those cases in which consciousness subsides into the depths of mere vague fellness, so to speak, or sensations coming in and movements made upon them. Two typical instances may be cited, the two for which we have exact observations. One of these is the rather obscure phenomenon of 'Jacksonian re-evolution,' and the other is the case, equally obscure until very recently, of hysteria.

By 're-evolution' is meant gradual recovery from a swoon or fit of such a gross character that the mental faculties had given way, and the patient had become all but unconscious. It is evident that in such cases, in which the recovery is comparatively slow, tests may be applied at intervals to discover the order in which the various functions return; this order will evidently represent the inverse order of their loss in the fit, and so the original order of their development.

A recent case reported by Pick [13] furnishes perhaps the most careful and detailed observances yet made on the re-evolution of the function of speech -- a function which, by reason of its complexity, lends itself to recovery by stages. Four stages were found in this epileptic patient's recovery from apparent unconsciousness: first, no response whatever to words spoken or written; second, the parrot-like repetition of words heard (an imitative condition called echolalia; the man could strike a match only when he saw some one else strike one); third, a dazed sort of reply by counter-questions; and fourth, intelligent speech with voluntary forming of sentences.

The evidence from such cases as this as to the place of volition in the evolution scale is self-evident. The first form of response, echolalia, is simple verbal imitation, i.e. sensorimotor suggestion from a brain-level below the cortex. It involves no extended associations. The next stage represents,

(383) I think, a groping of the man after unity, coherence, coordination; just as the child gets dissatisfied with his simple Imitations, has a sense of dawning capacity to identify, compare, and select, of a tendency to be a willing being; and gropes toward the next stage of development. Then comes the recovery of the centres and their connections. The man's associative channels open up and the currents flow in and out. He remembers his word-meanings, compares them, feels the proper energies tingle in lip and tongue in co-ordinate movement, and so reaches voluntary speech again. In short, volition in speech has come back on the basis of simple imitation, through a period of tentative trial and effort to coordinate movements. Could there be a reconstruction in plainer terms of the child's attainment of voluntary speech through imitations, tentative and then repeated; or a plainer demonstration that the normal way of volition is through imitation ?

The other case -- the general phenomena of hysteria in their varied combinations -- may be spoken of only in a general way, since the quotation of observations would be too lengthy. For authority, let us appeal, as before we have done, to Professor Pierre Janet, whose works are more psychological than those of most professed alienists, and who, unlike many of the rest, is aware that there are philosophical problems in the world, no less than medical. At the end of a recent discussion of 'Definitions of Hysteria,' he concludes by himself defining hysteria thus: [14] " A disease especially characterized by mental symptoms of which the principal are enfeeblement of the faculty of mental synthesis; retraction of the field of consciousness; the disappearance of a certain number of elementary phenomena -- called stigmata -- from consciousness

(384) and from personal perception; a tendency to the permanent and complete division of personality; the formation of many independent groups of phenomena; the coexistence of these systems with each other or their alteration by each other, giving rise to crises, somnambulisms, subconscious actions; and finally, through the defect of synthesis, the formation of certain parasitic ideas whose development is so complete and independent that they break up all normal control of consciousness and manifest themselves in various troubles of a physical and accidental sort."

From this definition and from the description of the phenomena by Charcot and other writers, we may say that the outstanding psychological characteristics of this sort of malady are: (1) 'enfeeblement of the faculty of psychic synthesis'; (2) loss of control and direction of the mental life; (3) the breaking up of the material of personality, and the possible formation of several independent psychic groups, either successive or existing together; (4) an enormous development of the tendency to imitation; (5) the growth of mental suggestibility, tending to the complete dominion of controlling ideas and imperative movements, all of which contribute to a last characteristic -- (6) general and progressive aboulia.

Here, again, we note at once, that with enfeeblement of mental synthesis goes increased suggestibility, which takes the form, whenever possible, of direct imitation. And, further, we find the process of re-evolution striving to do its proper work in the tendency of the separate groups of psychic facts to take on the semblance of personality by partial synthesis. As James puts it, they 'tend to personal form.' What is this but the reverse way of mental growth, whose terms are in order: simple suggestion, -- sensori- and ideomotor, -- imitation, synthesis, which last, in its various stages, illustrates the growing success of effort, and the growing in-

(385)-dependence of the one great synthesis whose pre-eminence stands for stable personality and intelligent volition?

The absence of effort in certain cases is shown in the fact that the patients are often unable to learn any new movements, although they can perform, in response to a suggestion, those which have become habits, [15] -- just the condition of the child before its first 'persistent' imitations.

A further interesting confirmation of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary imitation is seen in the phenomena of unconscious writing, from which the hypothesis of 'secondary personality' gets some support. The anesthetic hands of certain blindfolded patients respond in writing appropriately, either in lines of habit, or by imitative repetition. Not only are the movements here involuntary; they are also quite unconscious. [16] And the view that the attention and the co-ordination which it effects are the real vehicle of volition is shown in the negative [17] fact, that as soon as the patients are allowed to see the limbs in question, which they believe they cannot move, no response whatever from these limbs can be secured. This belongs to the theory of 'control' taken up in a later connection.. Furthermore, the anaesthetic hand, hidden behind a screen, will imitate the movements made by the patient voluntarily with the unanaenesthetic hand, giving

(386) what may be called acquired 'accompanying movements.' [18] And yet again, the anaesthetic hand traces out, when a pencil is put into it, and it is left undisturbed, mental pictures as they exist in the subconsciousness of the owner of the hand -- what I have called, in the case of the child, simple 'tracery imitation.' The development of this tendency under the law of habit accounts, by the way, for all the 'intelligent' results of automatic writing.

Cases of congenital mental defect, of which idiocy and imbecility are the extremes, teach us about the same thing. Weak-minded children are notably different from other children in two things: the difference in the character of their early movements, and the difference in their ability to learn new movements. In regard to the first point: their movements are abrupt, undisciplined, isolated from the rest of the organic happenings, jerky, and essentially unaccountable. The normal child gets disciplined by his first experiences, and his movements show the subduing and regulating effects of all kinds of suggestion. But the child which we call, in varying degrees, 'natural,' is not so; much that we mean by acquired nervous inhibition is wanting, and the character of the movements becomes at once an index of the mental state. He imitates, but repeats his imitations without modification. He lacks voluntary power both for action and for control.

This characteristic leads at once to the second: the child fails to learn. He progresses as far as the natural growth of the organism carries him. All his senses may be perfect; his vegetative processes normal; his reflexes good; his native reactive couples responsive. This means, in general, that he grows well up to the simple imitative stage; then he stops ! Stops where, in the reverse process of unlearning, the hysteric and hypnotic patients stop! He gets a few useful associations

(387) drilled into him by force of habit. He may come to do the simpler things which he sees others do, and make the simpler
word sounds which others make. But he does not initiate anything, does not learn by his own effort. He is much like the brainless pigeon. Idiots are generally very imitative. Imbeciles are lower still; if they get any form in the sounds they emit, it is only what Seglas calls 'reflex echolalia.'

I think this indicates very fairly, in these poor defectives, about the condition of things which we have found in cases of hysterical and cataleptic degeneracy. Here is the same lack of mental synthesis, so-called 'mental' blindness, deafness, dumbness,[19] the exaggeration of unruly movements, inability to acquire anything new, excessive imitation, general suggestibility. The idiot lacks the 'third-level' coordination, just as all the rest do. Voluntary inhibition is gone, and, in a measure, involuntary inhibition also. Attention is weakened, vacillating, inconstant. Hereditary defect has done, in this case, what disease has done in the other cases, i.e. it has drawn a sharp line between action which is imitative and simple, and action which is still imitative, but complex, -- the latter alone being persistent, effortful, acquisitive, voluntary. These poor creatures have mental images, and make responses to them, but they are unable, in Janet's phrase, d'effectuer la synthèse. [20]

Passing now to what has been designated partial aboulia, we have to consider the decay or destruction of particular

(388) motor functions, asking whether, if we apply the law that the order of loss is the inverse of that of development, we
find evidence for our theory of the rise of volition. This examination can best be made in connection with complex functions or acquisitions, and speech and handwriting at once suggest themselves. I accordingly have to cite evidence from aphasia and agraphia. Other functions which do not involve so clearly the complex co-ordinations learned by voluntary effort may also be cited in their place as we proceed.

It may be well to give, at the outset, the general result of the detailed examination of cases of such troubles. The order of acquisition of the elements of speech and handwriting is this: [21] first, in the stage of suggestive reaction before the rise of conscious imitation, we find hearing of sounds with some very simple associations, also suggestive adaptation of movements of the tongue, hands, etc., under the direct stimulus of associations, pleasures, and pains, etc.; second, in the stage of simple imitation, we find full recognition of objects and musical tunes, some slight power of song in individual children, imperfect articulation, increasing co-ordination of movements, though still without effort or volition; third, in the epoch of persistent imitation, we find full understanding of speech, the rapid acquisition of co-ordinated movements in speaking and writing, and also visual sign interpretation which leads on to the ability to read.

On the side of disease, therefore, we should expect, if the acquisition proceeds by stages so well marked, that at least the same three great types of function would be reasonably independent in their loss. That is, we should find that the highest type of function, revealed in volition and conscious synthesis, would in some cases be lost alone, and that to its

(389) loss might then be added that of the function which corresponds to perception and simple imitative adaptation. Finally, in the most fundamental derangement of all, even the degree of acquisition represented by direct imitation and reflex speech, etc., should be impaired along with the two higher kinds.

Our expectations are so clearly fulfilled in current interpretations of defects in the active life,[22] that the very nomenclature of the subject gives us words for these very distinctions. Loss of the first type is called, as we have seen, psychic blindness, deafness, etc., according as one sense or another is affected, issuing in associative ataxia or aphasia. The term dyslogia has been applied to this state by Seglas. It has equal application to various functions, but applies especially to speech. The second stage has had, if not equally general recognition, equally happy characterization by the same author, who calls defects of speech of this general nature dysphasia. It is aphasia of the sensory or motor type, due to the loss of a specific kind of sensory or motor memory through a lesion in a specific centre. Finally, the greatest defect of speech is dyslalia, or aphasia due to lesions in the lower centres.

We may now, before going into more detail, draw up a table showing these functions, and the corresponding defects of the three great classes described, using the terms current for the function of speech, but bearing in mind the general application of the divisions themselves to complex motor acquisitions in general. See Table X.

The main point in discussion -- the origin of Volition -- is isolated in the question as to the distinction between dyslogia and dysphasia. The question is this: Do we find that whenever the mind is impaired to the degree designated, in respect of special acts, by the phrase amnesia, -- the loss

(390)

Order of Acquisition Order of Loss
1. Pre-imitative Suggestion Hearing of Sounds Cortical Deafness Dyslalia3.
Random and Inherited Movements Motor Aphasia
Movements co-ordinated by Simple Suggestion, Pleasure, and Pain, etc. General Ataxia
2. Simple Imitative Suggestion Recognition of Objects Object Blindness
Verbal Deafness		 Dysphasia
Words and Tunes Rhythmic Deafness
Imperfect Articulation Partial Ataxia
Sensory Aphasia
Slight Power of Song Sensory Agraphia
Motor Amusia
3. Persistent Imitation Understanding of Speech Verbal Amnesia Dyslogia
Use of Objects, etc. Apraxia, Psychic Blindness, etc.
Voluntary Co-ordination of Movements:  
Speaking Amnesic Aphasia
Writing Amnesic Agraphia
Music-Performing Amnesic Amusia
Visual Interpretation of Sings and Reading Alexia

(391)of some function demanding spontaneous co-ordinated memories' and action in view of such co-ordinated memories, -- effective volitions are then impaired, while purely sensori-motor action remains? In other words, do these kinds of aphasia -- speaking of speech in particular -- show a functional line between persistent effort and simple imitation ?

In support of the truthfulness of the exhibit from pathology made in the table I may make certain observations: --

Among the numerous schematic diagrams which have been proposed to illustrate aphasia in its different forms, that of Lichtheim has had most recognition. [23] It is not my purpose to add to these constructions, which have represented, in part at least, the individual interpretations of the particular writers. The 'motor square' which has been found serviceable in the preceding sections, presents a modification of Lichtheim's scheme in the one direction in which current psychology finds some of its most important problems; and it thus enables us to bring the problems to aphasia into connection with general psychological theory. Lichtheim's diagram, Fig. XVII.,a.,gives no means of distinguishing between the centre of muscular sensations and memories, the kin~esthetic centre, on one side, and the true motor centre, the innervation centre, on the other side; but includes both, under the one symbol M. In my 'motor square' diagram, Fig. XVII., b., these two possibly distinct areas, and perfectly distinct functions, are distinguished (mc and mp), thus making it possible to represent, diagrammatically, a distinction current in psychology. The distinction is required in the interpretation of cases of aphasia. Lichtheim himself admits this, and constructs an awkward supplement to his

(392) diagram when he comes to interpret certain individual cases.[24] If the 'motor square' be squeezed together, so that the opposite corners, mc and mp, coincide, it then becomes identical with Lichtheim's. The isolation of mp, however, is required by all the evidence now accumulated, which goes to show that movements may be stimulated directly from the sensory centres (sg; sight, hearing, etc.), or directly from the higher co-ordinating centre (cc, Lichtheim's B) -- supposing it to exist, as all the diagrams, interpreting the facts functionally,

Figure 17

represent -- without necessary stimulation of the kinesthetic cortical centre (mc). This class of cases, now very generally accepted, has no separate recognition, I think, in any of the schemes except the 'motor square.'

Interpreting the 'motor square' in terms of the three great functional classes of motor acquisitions, we may say

(393) that aboulia, and the equivalent dyslogia, result from some disturbance in cc, or its connections, whereby this co-ordinating centre (Lichtheim's Begriffscentrum, B) is cut off, either (I), from the motor discharge centre mp, for the particular function in question, or (2), from the centres (Sg) from which the stimulus or material of co-ordination comes. All the varieties of amnesia fall under (2), in so far as the particular memory pictures whose absence constitutes the amnesia observed, are necessary to the concentration of attention by which the voluntary performance of the action in question is brought about. That is, it is possible that a particular case of inability to employ intelligent speech may be due, apart from injury to cc, to a lesion which breaks any of the three connections cc, mp; cc, Sg, mp; or cc, mc, mp. The other case (I) includes instances in which the failure to speak is due to lack of ability to get the attention fixed upon anything which would represent the movement itself apart from both kinaesthetic impressions and special sense memories. Such cases are cited in proof of innervation sensations and memories due to the condition of the motor discharge centre itself.[26]

The other cases of possible lesion in this highest region, involving aboulia only, represent respectively sensory amnesic aphasia of the several kinds known as visual, auditory, etc., and motor amnesic aphasia. It is evident that a break in the line CC, sg would accomplish both of these; that is, the patient would be unable to speak voluntarily, however he might preserve all his special centres, both sensory and motor.

(394)This is the case where a patient is unable to speak or write spontaneously' although he can repeat or write words which he hears or sees, written or printed (using the line mc, mp or sg, mp). It is possible, however, since the symbol sg represents the various sensory seats taken together, that a function like speech might in some cases not be impaired when a particular connection cc, sg is cut, since the attention might be stimulated by a discharge from an alternative sensory seat. This alternative arrangement gives its validity to the distinction between the so-called types of speech, as auditory, visual, motor, etc.

It is evident, therefore, that a certain very important class of functions would be left to a man of such partial aboulia. First, he might be able to perform a voluntary function when his attention was supplied with some indirect stimulus: so the cases in which voluntary movement is possible only when the eyes are open. Or, second, he might be able to perform other voluntary co-ordinations in which the particular class of memories now cut off are not essential elements; and third, he might be able to perform, reflexly or by suggestion, imitation, etc., functions which he could not perform voluntarily.

All of these deductions respecting aboulic patients are securely established by pathological facts. The last-mentioned is the critical distinction for our purposes, and some cases illustrating it may be cited. They are selected with two especial points in view: first, as showing the fact of conscious simple imitation in patients to whom all effortful performance of the actions had become impossible; and, second, as showing the inability of such patients to learn again the function which is lost, without resorting to a painstaking repetition by imitation of a new kind of motor association. By this means such a patient may train

(395) his attention over again upon a new class of memory images.

1. Case of Pick already cited. [27] This man was able to strike a match only when he saw the proper movements of another (pp. 764 and 768). He echoed words he heard, and he even repeated with the questioning inflection questions addressed to himself (pp. 568-569 and 771-773); but he had lost all spontaneous speech. Pick interprets the case (p. 774) as one of 'transcortical word-deafness' described by Lichtheim and Wernicke, which arises from a lesion of the line BM in Lichtheim's diagram, or of the line cc, sg in the 'motor square.' It is a case of verbal amnesic aphasia, or dyslogia involving aboulia, but not dysphasia.

2. Case of Pitres,[28] showing agraphia, in which 'tracery imitation' remained. This case also shows the possible mutual isolation of speech and writing, inasmuch as there was no aphasia. Here we have a lesion of the tract cc, sg (Lichtheim's BM) for writing movements only, the lesion not extending to the corresponding tracts for speech movements.

3. A different complication is shown in another case cited by Ross,[29] in which deep-seated aphasia (dysphasia) is associated with alexia, without agraphia. This patient's speech movements were probably dependent upon the visual word centre for stimulation, while his writing movements were not so dependent; consequently alexia (lesion of the visual word centre) carried with it amnesic aphasia, but not agraphia.

4. Case cited by Lichtheim. [30] It shows the preservation of a variety of simple imitative or ideo-motor suggestive reactions, while the corresponding voluntary functions were

(396) lost. The patient could copy handwriting, write to dicta. tion, repeat words heard, and read aloud, but he could not write nor speak spontaneously. It is accordingly a case of amnesic aphasia and agraphia, involving loss of the voluntary functions only. This case is a very fine illustration of my thesis, inasmuch as it shows the action of the principle of Habit, whereby activities at first learned by persistent effort have become ideo-motor, so that it is only their voluntary performance, and the ability to learn more, which are impaired by the injury.

Again there are cases which show a finer application still of the law of Habit, in connection with each of the functions of voluntary movement. It is impossible to say beforehand just how much or how little of what is, as a whole, an action learned by imitative effort still involves voluntary control at any time. A great part of any one of our habitual actions is regularly under subcortical or ideo-motor control, except for inhibitions or unusual exercises of it.

We find that speech, for example, is subject to a great many finer degrees of impairment. Sentence-making may be impossible, while the words taken alone may be spoken. Words again may be impossible, while the simple syllabic sounds may be quite possible. Certain classes of words, as nouns and names, may disappear, while other classes of words remain. And finally, all that the patient may be capable of is some single oft-repeated sound. [31] In all this we see reversed the child's progress from simple imitation of sounds, to effortful repetition, then to the co-ordination of sounds or syllables into words, then to imitations of short

(397) sentences which he hears, and finally to spontaneous combinations of his own to express his meaning.

A similar series of facts is found also in agraphia, or derangements of writing; stages in which there are, in order, certain defects becoming more and more grave. There is trembling handwriting, failure to write sentences, when certain words can still be written; failure to write words, while musical notation, or single letters, or both, may still be written; failure to write letters, while figures [32] may still be written; failure to write anything except to dictation; [33] and finally, failure to write at all without copies, although copies may still be traced. Here is retrogression from the highest coordination of hand movements, down to the tracery-imitation already described; [34] the final stage being that in which meaningless scrawls show the absence of all central coordination.[35]

So in the case of alexia, or impairment of reading; a function which may be destroyed without impairing either speech or writing. [36] It may extend to the reading of handwriting only (even the patient's own [37]); or to reading of music notation only; [38] or to all printing and handwriting except numerical figures; [39] or to all but drawings and outlines of objects; or to all signs except music notation; or, finally, to all interpretation of visual signs; in which case

(398) only simple sensations of sight remain, and the patient reaches the condition called psychic blindness.[40]

Recent observations show a corresponding analysis by disease of the faculty of musical expression. The power of playing on instruments, or singing by note, may be lost, while familiar selections may still be executed from memory; and, when the disease has developed further, an air becomes impossible from memory, but may still be executed by the imitation of another's performance. [41] Oppenheim cites the case of a patient who could not sing until the words of a familiar song were spoken to him,[42] although he could not repeat the words; and Franckl cites the case of a patient with right-sided hemiplegia, agraphia, alexia, and aphasia to the extent of echolalia, who yet sang one song, but without the words .[43] These last two cases [44] illustrate purely suggestive or automatic singing. [45]

The connection between speech and music which has been spoken of above,[46] may also be serviceable in another way. Patients have been reported who could speak only by singing the words. In such cases they may be able thus to understand the words, [47] or even yet not to understand them. The latter illustrates the reflex or suggestive movements of speech, which

(399) may be stimulated through the centre of the understanding of music, whether it be visual or auditory. Gowers accounts for this latter case by the observation that the text, in musical execution, is simply a convenience, not an essential, and the meaning of the words is, in learning, entirely subordinated to the correct music.[48] It is again essential to remark here, -- in order to keep our argument clearly in view, -- that there may be aboulia for musical execution, leaving reflex or imitative execution intact; but that in such cases no new musical acquisitions can be made.[49]

V. Still another class of facts may be cited as affording evidence in favour of this view of the rise of volition; the facts of brain development, as comparative embryology and early brain anatomy supply them. Two very general questions arise in view of our present topic: we are interested to know, first, what kind of motor apparatus the child is born with; and, second, in what order he adds to his motor equipment in the way of activities which may be described as voluntary. In answer to the first question, we may say without hesitation that the child begins life without the necessary apparatus for any voluntary action whatever. He lacks two

(400) very important, indeed essential, things: associative connections between the lower central organs and the cortex' with all traces of medullated nerve fibres and, second, his cerebrum has not developed the different local centres and their connections with one another. So far there is no dispute.[50]

In regard to the second inquiry, -- the time and order of development of complete activities, -- experimental evidence is largely lacking and anatomical evidence is notoriously uncertain. Putting the anatomical evidence, however, with that of comparative physiology, we see ground to justify us in the position that volition is a matter of cortical co-ordination, occurring possibly about the sixth to eighth month, after simple imitation has become common and varied. It should be borne in mind, however, -- lest this seem like special pleading, in view of the very scanty evidence at hand, -- that it is not a question here of what is the true hypothesis, but of what alternatives may be true.

The main facts now known may be thrown together very briefly. Soltmann [51] found that young dogs did not respond to stimulation of the cortical motor centres until nine days old, i.e. until two days after the eyes were open; then the reaction came first only from the fore paw. The same results were shown by looking for laming in the dog's movements after extirpation of the motor centres. Further, Soltmann, in considering the analogies of structure, finds voluntary action in the child beginning from the middle to the end of the first quarter-year, and that it develops first for the arm, then hand, and last for the leg (the dog's hind paw was quite lawless -- regellos -- in its responses to stimulation as late as the sixth month). These deductions are accepted by

(401) Vierordt. [52] Further, Soltmann finds that the child does not get the eyelid-touch reflex? which is a cortical reflex, till its seventh or eighth week.

Again, authorities have shown that the composition of the brain is not favourable to cortical action until the seventh month. The nerve sheath is absent in the brain, the quantity of water is very large as compared with the later brain condition,[53] the necessary fibres have not developed between the motor cortex and the striate bodies (Vierordt), and certain cells then undergo changes making them comparable to the voluntary cells.[54] Meynert [55] has found further lack of preparation in the nerve courses of voluntary action in the human infant of four months. As to the difference between the young dog and the human infant, Ferrier says, in discussing Soltmann's results, " The degree of development and control over movements which a puppy reaches in ten days or a fortnight are not attained by the human infant under a year or more." [56] Further, if we suppose that in the child, as in the dog, the sight function is the first to develop its connections sufficiently to stimulate to voluntary action, we may fall back upon the researches of Flechsig, showing that fibres from the sight centres in the occipital cortex do not begin to appear in the child until the second or third month. Bernheim quotes Parrot to the effect that the nervous apparatus is not entirely ready for voluntary action until toward the end of the ninth month.

However uncertain some of these detailed observations and deductions may be, it is nevertheless easy to strike fair

(402) limits inside of which we may say conclusions are safe. Let us say, therefore, all allowances being made for differences between man and dog, and for errors of observation, that voluntary action in the child arises and develops to perfection gradually, in connection with single functions separately, between about the fifth and ninth months; that the hand becomes first capable of voluntary use, and that its use occurs first in connection with stimulation through the eye.

Even with this very modest outcome, we find several interesting side-lights upon our results already arrived at in earlier connections.

1. Volition seems to come about the time of advent of suggestive reactions of the consciously imitative kind.

2. It arises first in connection with the sight-hand-movement reaction, a result which we have already had reason to anticipate. This seems to give some justification both to the use of the hand in connection with eye stimulations of colour, etc., in the 'dynamogenic method' of study which we have been pursuing, and also to the view that sight (with hearing) goes ahead of the other senses in stimulating to the higher co-ordinating processes of the organism. This means, in my jargon, that they are the avenues of greatest progress and attainment in the 'circular' form of reaction, the 'organic imitation,' by which accommodation comes about. So it is no accident that they are the most imitative of the senses, when imitation becomes conscious.

3. It is interesting to note that we found that the tendency to use the right hand more than the left began (allowing for the differences in children) about the sixth to the eighth month. Comparing this with the result given above, that the arm gets ready for voluntary use before any other member, and about the seventh month, it seems possible to surmise that one motor arm centre gets started before the other, and more vigorously,

(403) in its preparation for voluntary action; and that the use of the right hand in preference to the left is evidence, at this first stage, of just this preparation going on in the left hemisphere. As the speech function follows this up pretty closely, beginning to be slightly voluntary in the shape of verbal imitations about the eighth or ninth month, the idea we had earlier, that voluntary speech proceeds upon an earlier predominant dextral function, gets, at any rate, no contradiction.[57]

VI. I need not take much space to point out, as a final piece of evidence, that the hypnotic condition shows a line drawn, in a most unmistakable way, just between imitation which is suggestion under the reign of habit, and imitation which involves accommodation and volition. The theory of hypnotism now most widely current, under the name of the 'suggestion theory,' amounts to a direct recognition of the fact that the somnambule is an abnormally good imitator. Spontaneity, synthesis, self-direction, these are gone; but these are volition. The somnambule never learns anything new. He is always satisfied with what he imitates. His critical attitudes, his criteria of belief, are all taken from him. The careful examination of the facts of hypnosis, with the view of volition now advanced, in mind, will convince any one, I think, that the line of division between suggestion and volition is where we have placed it.

And the limits of the somnambule's suggestibility show the way out of his dilemma very plainly; the way nature has

(404) actually taken in the development of the child and in the series of animal forms. When the suggested course comes into hard collision with the root-habits, sentiments, realities, of his nature, -- his modesty, his veracity, his self-interests, -- then he may be aroused to a kind of hesitation. He delays, avoids, perhaps refuses to act upon the suggestion. This reproduces exactly the condition in the child's consciousness which we have called 'deliberative suggestion.' [58] The child has to reconcile seeming irreconcilables, to violate his nature sometimes. And it is just in the stress of such issues among the suggestive influences that move him, that he gets the higher form of conscious plurality of motives which his volition goes out to unite in one.

Endnotes

  1. ' Mind of the Child, Vol. I., p. 265.
  2. Professor Sully called my attention to this apparent agreement. See his remarks, Proc. of Cong. of Exp. Psychol., London meeting, 1892, p. 55.
  3. Below, § 5 of this chapter.
  4. See Proc. of Cong. of Exp. Psychology, London, August, 1899, p. 51, for first statement.
  5. Preyer, Mind of the Child, I., 340.
  6. Experiments on memory faithfulness have been made by Wolfe, by Ebbinghaus, by Müller, and by Warren and myself (Proceedings of the Amer. Psych. Assoc., 1893, p. 18; see also The Psychological Review 1895, pp. 236 f., cf. Kennedy, Psychol. Review, Vol. V., 1898, p. 477).

The method of testing memory by measuring the amount of motor force or 'will-stimulus' possessed by memories after various intervals, was first proposed in connection with these experiments (see Proceedings of Cong. of Exp. Psychol., 2d Session, London, 1892, p. 51). This method is called the 'dynamogenic method,' and a correlation is suggested between the relative motor force of a memory, after a certain interval, and its degree of faithfulness to its original perception, after the same interval.

  1. Janet, 'Un cas d'Aboulie,' Revue Philosophique, March, 1891.
  2. See Binet and Féré, who report a patient who could thrust out his tongue only when he saw it in a mirror, Arch. de Physiologie, 1887, II., p. 371; Pick, Zeitsch. für Physiologie, IV., 1892, pp. 161 ff.; and Baldwin, Philos. Review, II., 1893, p. 206.
  3. Below, Chap. XV., §§ 3, 4.
  4. Loc. cit.
  5. While not able to speak as an expert in Mental Pathology, I yet venture to express the opinion that there is only a difference of degree between the complete loss of will, the-inability to make effort or to inhibit impulse, called aboulia, and the cases of the loss of particular voluntary functions only, -- giving aphasia, agraphia, etc., -- despite the apparent difference that, in these latter cases, mental determination or effort to do the act in question seems to be unimpaired. The patient in agraphia, it might be said, makes effort to write, but fails; his will is healthy, only his handwriting fails. On the contrary, the function called will really gets its right to be from the co-ordination of simpler functions; its stability and force must depend upon the support it gets from these co-ordinations of simpler functions; and the derangement of any one of them, such as handwriting, -- unless of course the lesion be peripheral, -- must withdraw support from the whole, and so weaken the function of will generally. We are all aboulic just to the degree in which our attentive co-ordinations are unstable and independent of one another. This seems to be required on any psycho-physical conception of will.
  6. I omit the phenomena of old age, since neither physiologists nor psychologists have given them any very fruitful study. The appearance of what seems to be increased power of will -- self-will -- in old persons, is perhaps due to the great strengthening of habit, together with the general narrowness of consciousness.
  7. Archiv für Psychiatrie, XXII., Heft 3, pp. 25 ff.
  8. 'Quelques Definitions recentes de l'Hysterie' in Arch. de Neurologie,, Juin et Juillet, 1893.
  9. Janet (Aut. psy., p. 64) calls this condition, on the memory side, 'anterograde amnesia' -- an unfortunate phrase, I think. It is simply, so far as action is concerned, general 'apraxia,' or the inability to effect the synthesis necessary for a movement.
  10. See Binet and Féré, Arch. de Phys., 1877, II., pp. 339 ff., and Binet, Alterations of Personality.
  11. Negative, i.e., to the other remarkable case of patients who cannot move the limbs unless they do see them. In the cases now cited, voluntary movement is impossible, and the incapacity is extended by suggestion to the involuntary movements of the organ upon which the attention is fixed. For the other, contrasted, cases see the reference given in the next note but one.
  12. See Chap. XV., § 4, below.
  13. Binet and Féré, loc. cit., pp. 340-345.
  14. The expression 'mental dumbness' was suggested by the present writer for the inability to speak intelligently, as opposed to the mere ability to imitate sounds. See the article, 'Internal Speech and Song,' Philos. Review, II., 1893, p. 38,0. See also, below, Chap. XIV., § I, p. 415.
  15. The characteristics of the idiot's movements are given by Guicciardi, Zeitsch. für Psychologie, IV., p. 154, as, in order, progressive inco-ordination of voluntary movement, loss of voluntary movement, increased imitation.
  16. Cf. the left column in Table X.
  17. Cf. the right column in Table X.
  18. Brain, Part XXVIII., January, 1885, p. 436 (his Fig. I).
  19. Loc. cit., pp. 437, 443, 451 (his Figs. 2, 4, 5).
  20. For the other symbols, see Fig. IX. My use of this diagram, before I saw Lichtheim's, in class-room demonstration of the 'motor' problems in psychology, has proved it so convenient that I have ventured to print it in my text-books. Most of the diagrams proposed by others are intended to illustrate the different sensory areas which contribute to speech (Charcot's, Kussmaul's in Störungen der Sprache, p. 182, etc ); these centres are all bunched in Lichtheim's and mine, the purpose being to illustrate types of motor disturbance, rather than particular local lesions.
  21. So Waller's region (Brain, XIV., p. 179, and xv., pp. 380 ff.), which is called by him the 'locus' of subjective as well as objective fatigue, would, if cut off from its connection with the co-ordinating centre, produce aphasia, even when the kinaesthetic sensation series were all intact. This possibility, whatever we may think of its probability, it is impossible to represent on Lichtheim's or any other of the earlier diagrams.
  22. Archiv für Psychiatrie, XXII., Heft 3.
  23. Cited by Ross, Wood's Medical Monographs, Vol. VI., No. I, 1890
    pp. 152 -- 153.
  24. Ibid., pp. 197 -- 199.
  25. Brain, VII., 1891, p- 437
  26. See Kussmaul, Störungen der Sprache, pp. 9 and 164. Also Bateman, On Aphasia, p. 75. Ribot traces this progress, as a phenomenon of memory, Maladies de la Memoire, pp. 132 ff.; cf. Brazier, Revue Philosophique, October, 1892, p. 364.
  27. Case of Dejerine, Com. Rend. Soc. de Biologie, Feb. 27, 1892; cf. Brain, 1893 p. 318
  28. Lichtheim's case, Brain, VII., p. 447.
  29. Above, Chap. V.
  30. See Starr's case, Medical Record (N.Y.), XXXIV., 1888, p. 500.
  31. Alexia without agraphia is rare; but see the remarkable case of Dejerine cited in the second note above. Agraphia came on subsequently in consequence of a second lesion found at the autopsy.
  32. Oppenheim, Charité Annalen, XVII.
  33. Ballet, quoted by Wallaschek.
  34. See Glashey's case, Archiv für Psychiatrie, XVI., 1885, p. 661.
  35. Cf. the analysis into five stages of defect in reading, by Weissenberg Archiv für Psychiatrie, XXII., 1891, p. 442.
  36. See Brazier, loc. cit., and Case 3 of Oppenheim, Charité Annalen, XIII., 1888, p. 354, quoted by Wallaschek, Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Vol. VI., p. 8.
  37. Loc. cit., XIII., p. 358; cf. also Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. I2.
  38. Franckl-Hochwart, Deutsch. Zeitsch. für Nervenheilkunde, 1891, I.,
    p. 287.
  39. See also another of Oppenheim's (a man who could not read, but yet sang off correctly a printed musical score), loc. cit., p. 364; and yet another, of a boy who sang a tune in his eleventh month, before he learned to speak (Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. I3).
  40. See my own case above, Chap. VI., § 5, ad fin.
  41. Chap. IV., § 2.
  42. Case referred to by Starr, Psychological Review, 1., 1894, p. 92.
  43. Diseases of the Brain, 1885, p. 122.
  44. 'The final loss of the imitative function as involved in gesture, general movement, etc. (so-called amimia; see Kussmaul, loc. cit., pp. 159 ff., and Ballet, loc. cit., p. 75), and its amnesic phase need not be dwelt upon. Amimia reduces the patient to the stage of pre-imitative suggestion, again confirming the reverse parallel between order of acquisition and order of loss. A case recently reported by Mills in Philada. Hosp. Reports, 1893, brings out the facts clearly. A patient, having right hemiplegia and motor aphasia, without word-deafness, lost all expression by movements of any kind, except that he uttered 'la-la' over and over, and could still laugh when pleased. The expressive movements which he retained longest -- apart from those mentioned -- were the 'nod' and 'shake' of head to signify 'yes' and 'no.' As we would expect, facial expression usually remains intact, even in cases of anumia which involves all voluntary pantomime, gesture, etc.
  45. Foster, Preyer, Bastian, Soltman, Meynert.
  46. Jahrbuch für Kinderheilkunde, IX., 1875, pp 115 ff.
  47. Vierordt's Lehrbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, Bd., I., p. 420.
  48. Wiesbach, Archiv für Psychiatrie, II., III.
  49. Jastrowicz, Parrot (Arch. de Physiologie, I., 530 ff.), Virchow.
  50. Cited by Soltmann, loc. cit.
  51. Functions of the Brain, 2d edition, p. 364.
  52. It is interesting to know that both Soltmann found with young dogs and v. Gudden with a young rabbit, that the motor centre of one hemisphere may control both the right and the left limb in the first two months or more. Soltmann kept a young dog alive a number of weeks after its left fore leg centre had been removed, and succeeded in getting movements of bothe the fore paws by stimulating the proper centre in the right hemisphere. Such double contraction from stimulating one side failed with a grown dog, as it commonly does in other instances. Soltmann, loc. cit., pp. 128-131.
  53. Above, Chap. VI, § 3.

§ 5. Variations in the Rise of Volition: Self-imitation

It is now time to ask whether the requisites to volition in the child may arise in another way than by the imitation of external movements, sounds, etc.

We find present, indeed, in the child certain congenital tendencies which have arisen in the process of development -- tendencies to act in certain ways, to pursue certain classes of objects, to be satisfied with certain gratifications, and to urge himself toward them. The case of volition is not narrowed down, as would seem to be the case in the typical instance figured above, [1] which seems in effect to make the child ready for all suggestions which come, and equally ready for all. On the contrary, he has appetites, instincts, impulses; and it would not be surprising if we should find that these may precipitate him before the time into a certain unready choice or a certain conflict of choices.

Moreover, the principle of 'organic imitation' has shown

(405) us that the rise of memory and imagination is the direct outcome of the need which confronts the organism of meeting
its stimulations halfway: the organism comes to reinstate within consciousness, on occasion, through the development of its central cortical processes, certain elements which we call memories, pictures, thoughts, without waiting for the stimulations outside. If it be true that memories and imaginations differ from perceptions only in the fact that they are 'away' from external nature and not dependent upon its present objects, then why may not all the motor consequences which were at first associated with the objects follow from the images simply ?

If we put these two things together, namely, organized habits of action in particular ways, and the motor force of memories as prompting, by their dynamogenic influence, to the repetition of the reactions with which they themselves are joined -- then we have the possibility of volition without overt imitation of external events, and possibly earlier than the time of the first such imitations, i.e. by self imitation.

In certain instances clearly present in children, the facts are simple, and show three cases: either, first, the child simply remembers something and aims to imitate it; or, second, the synthesis or co-ordination demanded for volition is really present, as our scheme in Fig. XIV. demands, but one of the motor tendencies involved is a special native tendency; its stimulus is organic. And when a new stimulation comes to excite a movement in conflict with the one prescribed by nature, then there is all the complexity of volition. A subtle inner controversy arises and the child has to settle it, quite subconsciously perhaps, by a choice which is voluntary. Or third, both -- all -- the tendencies may be native, but one of them modified by experience, reflection, etc., into a partial

(406) conflict with others, so that effort arises in the solution of the case for action.

The first case may be illustrated by any volition aimed at a memory, and bringing out the movement which reinstates the sensations which the memory stands for. My child persistently reaching for a colour and then moving nearer to get it, illustrates this case; or H. dragging a table-cloth in her seventh month to bring my bunch of keys within reach. She remembers the movements necessary and makes them voluntarily for an end -- movements she had before found out by accident, or had seen some one else make. She strives to reproduce the sensations of movement and with them the touch of the keys by just the circular process of imitation, except that it starts in the memory centre instead of in eye or ear.

The second case has interesting illustrations too: a conflict brought about between a native impelling instinct on one hand, and a suggested course on the other. Many direct modifications of instinct arise in this way, the inhibition of sobbing and crying, the self-denial of not reaching for attractive things, all responses, to parent or companion, which conflict with spontaneous tendency, and then consciously master it. These are voluntary, in the transition sense, just in so far as there is motor duality or conflict, resolved consciously and by effort into a motor unity, which effects a repetition of the one reaction or the other.

And still more deep-going is the third class of these so-called, in our developmental phraseology, 'phylogenetic imitations,' which show the clash of nature against itself. We have seen the lower form of it in 'deliberative suggestion'; [2] suggestion locking horns with suggestion, and then -- the outcome, to tell us which is victorious. A corresponding state of things

(407) occurs on a higher scale, at the cortical level, when we feel two alternatives so strongly and consent to one of them, by seeming to ourselves not to choose it at all. It simply chooses itself, and we stand and wonder. So the child often acts voluntarily when it is practically blind to pros and cons, when the whole complex condition is made up of elements so characteristic and strenuous for utterance, that allowance or recognition is all he has to do. The child's early moral decisions are of this kind, I think. The ought, the right, simply represents a growing habit, his nature coming to feel what it ought to be by what it is getting to be, in the midst of crying imperative appetites and suggestions. He acts voluntarily for the right, let us say; but who can say that his choice is in every case in any real sense intended beforehand ?

It is interesting to note, further, under this head, an instance of what is to be spoken of again as the 'interaction of habit and accommodation.' We find volition brought out on occasion of imitation, a higher kind of imitation called 'persistent,' in which the child does not rest content with the degree of success his old reactions provide, but aims 'to try again' for better things. Now the imitative instinct itself is thus, in this transition, brought to the bar, and violated by its own passage into volition. In volition, the agency of the actor comes to instruct him. He learns his power to resist and to conquer, as well as his weakness and subjection to a copy. And the child comes, just in this conflict between imitation, an instinct, and suggestion, an innovation, to break through and make himself an inventor, and a free agent. In fact, we have found a type of action realized in the phrase 'contrary' or 'wayward' suggestion, in which just this revolt becomes a way of action. The boy won't imitate. This simply means that he won't imitate what other people ask him to, but prefers to imitate what he asks himself to.

(408) He imitates just the same, of course. But the difference is world-wide. Such a 'contrary' boy has learned the lesson of volition, has passed from suggestion to conduct, has mounted from the second to the third level, and is available for genius-material. [3]

I have said enough now to show that the rise of volition is but another illustration of the one law of motor development. It is the form that the process of accommodation takes on when the central processes become complex.

Endnotes

  1. Fig. XIV., p. 377.
  2. Above, Chap. VI., § 3.
  3. The great question of invention versus imitation -- how can any one be original if even volition and thought be imitative functions ? -- is treated in Chaps. III.-V., of the later volume, Social and Ethical Interpretations.

 

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