The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

course these " schemata" are acquired, as far as action comes into account. They only can be means for acting and are in no sense whatever the acting or reacting factor itself. (See Zeitschr. f. Biol. 50, 1907.) It must be mentioned that von Uexkuell himself regards his "schemata" simply as " Erkennungsmz'^eZ." 1 Our argument burdens the brain with a certain, though limited, role to be played in relation to "memory." Bergson would not even go so far: to him "souvenir pur" has no relation whatever to matter, except so far as "perceptions purs" come into account. See his excellent analysis of "attention" and "recon naissance." Association (except in sleep) is a very active process, according to him (see Matibre et M^moire, Paris, 1896 ; compare also page 66, note 1).

acting, and the " historical basis of reacting " can only be said to have been created by physico-chemical processes, that is, by the stimuli affecting the brain, as regards its elements; these elements stand at the disposal of an agent that is autonomic. We have finished our discussion of the regulations occur ring in the brain and of all that is connected with them, and therewith have closed at the same time the study of the second type of the possible regulations concerned in move ment, those relating to the intermediate organs, at least as far as the " hemispheres " come into account. Before adding a few words about regulation among the so-called "lower" brain-centres certain remarks seem to be required about the third possible kind of regulation of movement, that is, about regulations regarding the motor organs as such. This may be done rather shortly, for facts may suitably be reduced here to the two other types of regulation.

The dog who is wounded in one of his legs, and therefore is forced to walk on three legs only, is a good instance of what we mean : regulations are going on here in the use of the three legs left; these three legs are used otherwise than they would have been used if there were still all four of them. It seems to me that all instances of this kind may without difficulty be sub sumed under our first class of regulations in motion, those dealing with the correspondence between stimuli and

reactions, and therefore a full discussion is not required. Indeed the fact that there are but three sound legs is an item in the sum of the motor stimuli and conditions just as a carriage crossing the path of our dog would be ; it forms part of the " individualised stimulus," according to which the individuality of the action is determined. But any one who prefers it might also gain an independent proof of autonomy from this kind of motor regulation, by saying that, besides the individual correspondence between the stimulus proper and the action, a correspondence of an individualised type is also going on between the specified state of the motor organs and the specified use of them. In some way, of course, it is to the brain again that this regulation relates ; other centrifugal nerves are used for one and the same action, according to what kind of abnormal state the motor organs are in.1

A very interesting clinical experiment, carried out by Vulpius, deserves mention in this connexion. The tendon of a flexor muscle of the foot was split and one of its halves was made to heal in such a way that it could perform the function of stretching — the extensor muscle being paralysed. After a certain time, in fact, the flexor muscle was " split " also physiologically : part of it was used for bending, part for stretching, as circum stances required. In a very strange and perfect manner the " acting principle " had succeeded here in using quite an abnormal centrifugal nerve, and, of course, quite

1 Ophiurids deprived of one or more arms also show good instances of this class of regulability in movement. Compare Preyer's experiments, which I have most completely confirmed myself. abnormal central parts also, in the service of certain "individualised" reactions that were needed. One could hardly imagine a better illustration of the role of the nervous system as a mere instrument for acting ; of course, in the light of this discovery the so-called " motor spheres " also appear as anything but absolutely fixed ; 1 in any case the organism may learn to use abnormal centripetal nerves for its normal performances.

To the whole of our discussion about the role of the brain in acting in general a few remarks must be added concerning 1 Flourens knew as early as 1842 that fowls use their wings in the right way, if the two main nerves of the plexus brachialis are crossed by a complicated operation. See also Spitzy, Zeitschr f. orthopad. Chir., 1904, vol. xiii. ; and Bethe, Miinchner med. Wochenschrift, 1905, No. 25. Most physiologists at present are strongly under the influence of materialistic doctrines, and therefore try to conceive all complicated animal movement as a mere sum of reflexes as far as possible. To such authors the formula which von Uexkuell has given for certain very primitive motions (page 30) was very welcome, and they sometimes have tried to found a general theory on it. According to von Uexkuell's formula, in animals with "simple nervenets " the state of the terminal (motor) organ determines the path of motor stimulation, the "centres " work almost passively here as mere "reservoirs" of " tonus. " How absolutely impossible it is thus to understand Vulpius's case, or the case of the dog walking on three legs, cannot be better shown, it seems to me, than by simply alluding to the fact that all the movements in question are notoriously under the influence of so-called "will," and certainly do not take their origin from the periphery. (See also Giardina's discovery, page 105, note 2.) Von Uexkuell's formula only holds good, as he concedes himself, for rhythmical movements once set going, but never for the origin or stopping or alteration of such movements. I can walk almost mechanically and unconsciously, but I can also "will" to walk or not ! In other words : Uexkuell's formula may explain a good deal of the movements of an animal as far as these movements depend on the spinal cord exclusively (see pages 30 and 103). But it never explains how abnormal regulatory movements tending to a normal end are first established.

When once established, of course, these movements may again obey Uexkuell's law, as far as their mere going on — not their origin or stopping — is concerned. the physiological importance of the so-called lower braincentres in vertebrates. Pflliger was the first to speak of a " Kiickenmarksseele," that is, of the faculty of the spinal cord of frogs that had been deprived of their whole brain to react to stimuli in a manner which resembles action. But later researches have left it doubtful whether these reactions of the spinal cord really deserve the name of acting, it being perhaps more probable that there occurs nothing but a con secutive line of different single motions in correspondence to a permanent stimulation which has not been removed by the first or second of them. We have seen already that Jennings has found such a sort of behaviour — besides real acting — in the infusorium Stentor, and that there is no reason for speaking of actions in such cases.

It was Goltz who showed for the first time that frogs deprived of the hemispheres, but possessing more of their central system than the mere spinal cord, are capable of reactions which — to speak in our own terminology — show most clearly the two fundamental characters of action : the " historical basis " and the " individuality of correspondence." Schrader afterwards proved the same to hold for the nervous system of birds, and finally we have the experiments carried out by Goltz on a dog with no hemispheres at all.1

What these animals performed, was indeed much less than what they would have done with the use of the parts removed. But, after all, they did " act " in the true sense of the word : obstacles were avoided, even if one of the legs was made helpless ; there were reactions to specific optic sensations; dogs (but not pigeons) ate and drank spontaneously, frogs caught flies, pigeons flew with an absolutely right calculation of distance. The " memory " of these animals, it is true, for the greater part related to experience gained before the operation, but to a certain extent they also were able to acquire new experience even in their defective state. In other words, on the basis of a general " prospective potency " the lower parts of the brain acquired a definite "prospective value," which otherwise they would not have acquired.1 It therefore cannot be denied that acting in some measure is possible even without the main part of the brain, though the degree of this acting is of a much lower kind.

The term " Antwortsreaktion," which we have already made use of elsewhere, was invented by Goltz to describe what he had discovered in his frog deprived of the hemi spheres. He himself speaks of the impossibility of imagining a machine as the basis of the phenomena, and then tries to introduce a psychological terminology. It is strange that he did not notice that it was vitalism, the autonomy of vital processes, that had been proved by his discoveries. But Goltz does not stand alone here : many authors agree that the so-called " soul " plays a positive and causal role in act ing, without noticing that a natural factor which is neither chemical nor physical is thus introduced into the argument.

That real acting may go on in animals deprived of the hemispheres, is of great importance, of course, for the theory 1 Therefore, as Lewandowsky also well observes, operative experiments are not able to teach us the "normal" performances of the parts left by them. But they demonstrate what I call the "prospective potency," and that is more valuable. All experiments about electric irritability of parts of the brain, of course, relate to their "prospective value" only. Compare our hypothetical remarks on the newly born in the text.

of life-autonomy in general : it shows that the " psychoid " is not only related to the cerebrum, but may also use the lower parts of the brain. One might say that a higher sort of psychoid governs the main brain, a lower one the thalanms opticus, the cerebellum, the medulla, and so on, and this would correspond, in some way, with the discrimination between consciousness and " subconsciousness " that is made by some modern psychologists or rather pseudo-psychologists. But it may well be true, in spite of our statement, that all motor entelechy is one and the same in one individual, and that it is only on account of the primitive state of their organisation that it can do less with the lower parts of the brain than with the hemispheres. In any case there must remain an open question.

Eegulability in a vicarious sense l among the parts of the lower brain themselves is beautifully shown by some experiments of Luciani carried out on the cerebellum, whose function it is to maintain the equilibrium of the body during movement. All disturbances of its functions caused by partial extirpation were regulated after a short time. Even the extirpation of a whole half was followed by ataxy only for a while, and then regulation set in, and swimming and walking went on as well and symmetrically as before.2

1 Compare our analysis of the "potencies" of the hemispheres. 2 Recent discoveries of Giardina's (Arch. Entiv.-mech. 23, 1907) seem to belong here also. Pieces of the tail of tadpoles, if taken from very young animals, move in co-ordination, but if they are taken from animals of a certain age co-ordination is established only after a while. In the latter case the lumbar spinal cord had already exercised a certain influence in the sense of a general governing, and the co-ordination ' ' centres " had to be established secondarily in the nervous system of the tail, whilst they were arranged ab origine in the very young pieces. So-called "shock" was excluded experi mentally. All this is directed in the first place against Loeb's so-called "segmental theory" of nervous physiology, and is, in fact, well able to

Human acting was the starting-point and centre of our analysis of acting ; but our discussion would be incomplete if we said nothing about the different kinds and degrees of acting in the other parts of the animal kingdom. Darwinism and phylogeny laid stress on man's affinity to animals, and with justice in respect to most details of his organisation ; that was all right so far, though there was always a difficulty with regard to the hemispheres of the brain. In agreement with this particular the experi ments of the last few years, carried out by English and American authors (Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike, Hobhouse, Kinnamann), have shown that as far as the degree of acting is the point of comparison, there is a difference between man and even the highest ape which is simply enormous : man after all remains the only " reasoning " organism, in spite of the theory of descent.

We have said more than once that motions of animals are the only subject we are studying in this chapter, motions and nothing else. But to describe them at all satisfactorily disprove it. Giardina claims to have proved by his experiments an " indipendenzainiziale o virtuale, " but not an " indipendenza effectiva" ; these concepts seem to signify about the same as the terms "prospective potency" and " prospective value," as applied to brain physiology.

1 A fuller reference to the subject will be found in the following works : Thorndike, Animal Intelligence, 1898. Lloyd Morgan, Introduction to Com parative Psychology, 1903. "Wasmann, Instinkt und Intelligenz im Tierreich, 3. Auflage, 1905. Here the full literature may be found. The recent litera ture on the subject is well discussed in the articles of the "Comparative Psychology number " of the Psychological Bulletin (vol. v. No. 6), and in the article "Animal Behaviour" in The American Naturalist, vol. xlii. p. 207.

we hardly can avoid psychological terminology, and in fact nobody would blame us for applying it, after we have stated emphatically that we make use of it only in the sense of a descriptive analogy. Apes and dogs, it is true, learn a good deal ; there is an " historical basis " to their acting of a very complicated character indeed, but their acting lacks all that we call "abstraction." This would seem to be the chief reason why they invent nothing, and have nothing resembling language except quite superficially. Wundt has well said somewhere that animals have no language not for any reason of their organisation, but because they have nothing to talk about. It is very strange indeed how absolute the lack of a real inventive or imitative faculty is even in the highest apes. Thorndike observed some apes kept in a sort of stable with several doors that might easily be opened ; he opened a door several times very carefully and distinctly in order to show the apes the mechanism of opening, but not one of them followed his manipulations. Only after one of the animals had succeeded in opening the door by chance did it notice what opening was, and thus " learn " opening. Even then his fellows did not profit by their companion's experience : each animal had to learn by personal experi ence, realising absolutely by chance what opening was.

Certainly there exists even in apes that which our term " historical basis of reacting " expresses. The specificity of their behaviour is determined by their individual history, i.e. by the specificity of the stimuli that occurred to them, and by the effects of these stimuli. But the individual combination of the elements of their experience is far less complicated and far less variable than it is in mau. Some authors, like Wasmann, for instance, have said aptly that animals may possess a " sensorial memory" (" sinnliches Gedachtnis ") but nothing more.1

It seems to me that analysis must keep especially to one point of the characteristics of acting in order to state well in what the differences in behaviour between man and higher animals have their foundations. We have said on another occasion that the term " element " as a part of the analysis of action means something relative. Everything in the stimuli and effects concerned in the creation of the historical basis may be regarded as an " element " in some way. Single words or letters may be the elements of a phrase ; in a landscape the elements may be whole parts of it, or the individual bodies in it, or some parts of the individual bodies, or anything else. Now I think a fair description of the behaviour even of higher animals would be, that they are far less capable than man of resolving data into elements. They cling to the combinations in the form in which they have occurred, at any rate they do not go farther than to resolve what is given into individual bodies ; a stick and a bone are as it were the very letters of a dog's alphabet.

And from all this follows the comparatively small range of their power of combination : for it follows that their association is only by contiguity, be it in space or in time, but never by similarity or contrast in the real sense, and therefore the material to be combined in acting, according to individualised circumstances, is very small. 1 But I do not agree with Wasmann when he tries to regard this "sinn liches Gedachtnis " as akin to instinct ; for it is the chief criterion of instinct that it does not rest upon a " historical basis."

Thus the lack of the power of resolving data seems to be the reason of the rather low mental state of animals ; all the other differences between the acting of men and the acting of animals are consequences of this fundamental diversity. But we should not learn very much more for our philosophical purposes by entering more deeply into this subject, and I therefore must leave the further study of the differences in the acting of the highest animals and of man to your personal meditation.

Acting of the type found in apes and in dogs seems by no means restricted to the higher vertebrates only : many insects, not only ants and bees but also beetles, seem to be capable of actions of almost the same degree of complexity. Many of you know, I suppose, that Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, has carried out numerous beautiful experi ments about the experience of ants. I need only remind you of his " bridge-experiment," for instance. He found what modern students of the behaviour of dogs and apes have found also : there is acting, but so-called abstraction is almost completely lacking.

We can now assert with perfect confidence that the old view was very mistaken which regarded the behaviour of ants and bees as quite like the behaviour of a human society. Acting is of a far less high degree in these creatures than it is in man, but their instinctive life is developed in a much higher degree, as we know ; in a degree in fact that is almost inconceivable to us. We of course take the word instinct here in its strictest meaning, as sig nifying a complicated reaction that is perfect the very first time, and I take this opportunity to remind you once more of the fundamental problems of the doctrine of instincts, relating to the possibility of their regulability and to their being called forth by individualised stimuli.

Experience in insects, of course, though of a far less high degree if compared with human experience, may in spite of that be of a very different character, and may relate to very different occurrences that are experienced. Thus it might be possible, as we have said already, that bees are able to remember the absolute amount and direction of a change of their localisation in space ; that in fact would be something of which man can be said to have only a very shadowy idea.

Let us close our present discussions with a few words about the most inferior kinds of experience. Psychologically, as we know, the most simple case of remembering occurs by the mere observation of " sameness," that is, in noticing that a certain stimulus is the same as a former one. It would hardly be possible to prove objectively the existence of this sort of experience in organisms ; there may very likely be something of this sort when an animal reacts quicker to a certain stimulus the second time than the first.1

1 Compare the experiment on Daphnids, carried out by Davenport and Cannon, Journ. of Physiol 21, 1897. remembering in the psychological sense, is constituted by the mere act of association by contiguity : a stimulus not only recalls the idea of sameness but also recalls other stimuli (and effects) which had been combined with it the first time. Memory of this sort, of course, is only concerned in acting, but is not acting; it even is better kept sepa rate from true "experience" altogether, the word "experi ence " being reserved for something about acting as an actuality.

" Experience " in this sense is seen in its most simple type, if one of the elements concerned in associative memory is a certain behaviour of the motor organs, able to call forth liking or to overcome disliking. It is from this kind of experience that the acting of man takes its origin, as we have discussed already, when dealing with the so-called origin of the act of volition ; but it is this kind of experience, too, which fully deserves the name of a basis of " acting," even if almost no resolution of the given " historical basis of reacting " into its remoter elements occurs.

American authors l especially have studied the most simple types of acting in lower animals, in particular in Infusoria, Actiniae, worms, and crayfishes. We have stated on another occasion already, when trying to define the concept of acting in its contrast to other kinds of changeable motor reactions, that a mere consecutive line of changes of reactions in response to one and the same often repeated stimulus, as discovered by Jennings in the Protozoon Stentor and in the earthworm, never deserves the name of real acting, but may be due either to fatigue or to some