The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

Can we now form a notion of what the inward physical changes may be like, in organs whose habits have thus struck into new paths ? In other words, can we say just what mechanical facts the expression ' change of habit1 covers when it is applied to a nervous system ? Certainly we cannot in anything like a minute or definite way. But our usual scientific custom of interpreting hidden molecular events after the analogy of visible massive ones enables us to frame easily an abstract and general scheme of processes which the physical changes in question may be like. And when once the possibility of some kind of mechanical inter pretation is established, Mechanical Science, in her present mood, will not hesitate to set her brand of ownership upon the matter, feeling sure that it is only a question of time when the exact mechanical explanation of the case shall be found out.

If habits are due to the plasticity of materials to out ward agents, we can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any, the brain-matter is plastic. Not to mechanical pressures, not to thermal changes, not to any of the forces to which all the other organs of our body are exposed ; for nature has carefully shut up our brain and spinal cord in bony boxes, where no influences of this sort can get at them. She has floated them in fluid so that only the severest shocks can give them a concussion, and blanketed and wrapped them about in an altogether excep tional way. The only impressions that can be made upon them are through the blood, on the one hand, and through the sensory nerve-roots, on the other ; and it is to the infi nitely attenuated currents that pour in through these latter channels that the hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so peculiarly susceptible. The currents, once in, must find a way out. In getting out they leave their traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones ; and the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call it an organ in which currents pouring in from the sense-organs make with extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course, a simple habit, like every other nervous event — the habit of snuffling, for example, or of putting one's hands into one's pockets, or of biting one's nails — is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex

discharge ; and its anatomical substratum must be a path in the system. The most complex habits, as we shall presently see more fully, are, from the same point of view, 1 nothing but concatenated discharges in the nerve-centres, lue to the presence there of systems of reflex paths, so >rganized as to wake each other up successively — the im pression produced by one muscular contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke the next, until a final impression inhibits the process and closes the chain. The only diffi cult mechanical problem is to explain the formation de novo of a simple reflex or path in a pre-existing nervous system. Here, as in so many other cases, it is only the premier pas qui coute. For the entire nervous system is nothing but a system of paths between a sensory terminus a quo and a mus cular, glandular, or other terminus ad quern. A path once traversed by a nerve-current might be expected to follow the law of most of the paths we know, and to be scooped out and made more permeable than before ; * and this ought to be repeated with each new passage of the current. Whatever obstructions may have kept it at first from being a path should then, little by little, and more and more, be swept out of the way, until at last it might become a natural drainage-channel. This is what happens where either solids or liquids pass over a path ; there seems no reason why it should not happen where the thing that passes is a mere wave of rearrangement in matter that does not dis place itself, but merely changes chemically or turns itself round in place, or vibrates across the line. The most plausible views of the nerve-current make it out to be the passage of some such wave of rearrangement as this.

If only a part of the matter of the path were to ' rearrange ' itself, the neighboring parts remaining inert, it is easy to see how their inertness might oppose a friction which it would take many waves of rearrangement to break down and overcome. If we call the path itself the ' organ,' and the wave of rearrangement the ' function,' then it is obvi- * Some paths, to be sure, are banked up by bodies moving through them under too great pressure, and made impervious. These special cases we disregard.

ously a case for repeating the celebrated French formula of ' La f (motion fait V organs.' So nothing is easier than to imagine how, when a cur rent once has traversed a path, it should traverse it more readily still a second time. But what made it ever traverse it the first time ? * In answering this question we can only fall back on our general conception of a nervous system as a mass of matter whose parts, constantly kept in states of different tension, are as constantly tending to equalize their states. The equalization between any two points occurs through whatever path may at the moment be most per-j vious. But, as a given point of the system may belong,' actually or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the

i play of nutrition is subject to accidental changes, blockf may from time to time occur, and make currents shoot through unwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would be a new-created path, which if traversed repeatedly, would become the beginning of a new reflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that } in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter, f It must be noticed that the growth of structural modi fication in living matter may be more rapid than in any lifeless mass, because the incessant nutritive renovation of which the living matter is the seat tends often to corroborate

* We cannot say the will, for, though many, perhaps most, human habits were once voluntary actions, no action, as we shall see in a later chapter, can be primarily such. While an habitual action may once have been voluntary, the voluntary action must before that, at least ouce, have been impulsive or reflex. It is this very first occurrence of all that we consider in the text. f Those who desire a more definite formulation may consult J. Fiske's 'Cosmic Philosophy,' vol. n. pp. 142-146 and Spencer's 'Principles of Biology,' sections 302 and 803, and the part entitled ' Physical Synthesis' of his ' Principles of Psychology.' Mr. Spencer there tries, not only to show how new actions may arise in nervous systems and form new reflex arcs therein, but even how nervous tissue may actually be born by the pas sage of new waves of isometric transformation through an originally indif ferent mass. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Spencer's data, under a great show of precision, conceal vagueness and improbability, and even self contradiction.

fix the impressed modification, rather than to counterjact it by renewing the original constitution of the tissue / that has been impressed. Thus, we notice after exercising our muscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time ; but after a day or two of rest, when ! we resume the discipline, our increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed this in learning a tune ; and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer. Dr. Carpenter writes :*

" It is a matter of universal experience that every kind of training for special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a more per manent impress, when exerted on the growing organism than when brought to bear on the adult. The effect of such training is shown in the tendency of the organ to ' grow to ' the mode in which it is habitually exercised ; as is evidenced by the increased size and power of particular sets of muscles, and the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are acquired by such as have been early exercised in gymnastic performances. . . . There is no part of the organism of man in which the reconstructive activity is so great, during the whole period of life, as it ; is in the ganglionic substance of the brain. This is indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it receives. ... It is, moreover, a fact of great significance that the nerve-substance is specially dis tinguished by its reparative power. For while injuries of other tissues (such as the muscular) which are distinguished by the speciality of their structure and endowments, are repaired by substance of a lower or less specialized type, those of nerve-substance are repaired by a complete reproduction of the normal tissue ; as is evidenced in the sensibility of the newly forming skin which is closing over an open wound, or in the recovery of the sensibility of a piece of ' transplanted ' skin, which has for a time been rendered insensible by the complete interruption of the continuity of its nerves. The most remarkable example of this repro duction, however, is afforded by the results of M.

Brown-Sequard'st \experiments upon the gradual restoration of the functional activity of }the spinal cord after its complete division ; which takes place in a way that indicates rather a reproduction of the whole, or the lower part of the cord and of the nerves proceeding from it, than a mere reunion of divided surfaces. This reproduction is but a special manifestation of the reconstructive change which is always taking place in the nervous system ; it being not less obvious to the eye of reason that the ' waste ' occasioned by its functional activity must be constantly repaired by the

production of new tissue, than it is to the eye of sense that such repa ration supplies an actual loss of substance by disease or injury. "Now, in this constant and active reconstruction of the nervous system, we recognize a most marked conformity to the general plan ' manifested in the nutrition of the organism as a whole. For, in the I / first place, it is obvious that there is a tendency to the production of a / ! determinate type of structure ; which type is often not merely that of

<. the species, but some special modification of it which characterized one or both of the progenitors. But this type is peculiarly liable to modi fication during the early period of life ; in which the functional activity of the nervous system (and particularly of the brain) is extraordinarily great, and the reconstructive process proportionally active. And this modifiability expresses itself in the formation of the mechanism by which those secondarily automatic modes of movement come to be established, which, in man, take the place of those that are congenital in most of the animals beneath him ; and those modes of sense-percep tion come to be acquired, which are elsewhere clearly instinctive. For there can be no reasonable doubt that, in both cases, a nervous mechanism is developed in the course of this self-education, correspond ing with that which the lower animals inherit from their parents. The plan of that rebuilding process, which is necessary to maintain the integrity of the organism generally, and which goes on with peculiar activity in this portion of it. is thus being incessantly modified ; and in this manner all that portion of it which ministers to the external life of sense and motion that is shared by man with the animal kingdom at large, becomes at adult age the expression of the habits which the individual has acquired during the period of growth and development. Of these habits, some are common to the race generally, while others . are peculiar to the individual ; those of the former kind (such as walk ing erect) being universally acquired, save where physical inability prevents ; while for the latter a special training is needed, which is usually the more effective the earlier it is begun — as is remarkably seen in the case of such feats of dexterity as require a conjoint edu cation of the perceptive and of the motor powers.

And when thus developed during the period of growth, so as to have become a part of the constitution of the adult, the acquired mechanism is thenceforth K maintained in the ordinary course of the nutritive operations, so as to j /< be ready for use when called upon, even after long inaction. "What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic , activity of the mind. For, as already shown, the study of psychology has evolved no more certain result than that there are uniformities of mental action which aro so entirely conformable to those of bodily action as to indicate their intimate relation to a ' mechanism of thought and

' feeling,' acting under the like conditions with that of sense and motion. The psychical principles of association, indeed, and the physiological principles of nutrition, simply express — the former in terms of mind, the latter in terms of brain — the universally admitted fact that any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself ; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed pur pose, or anticipation of results. For there is no reason to regard the cerebrum as an exception to the general principle that, while each part of the organism tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is habitually exercised, this tendency will be especially strong in the nervous apparatus, in virtue of that incessant regeneration which is the very condition of its functional activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits of doubt that every state of ideational consciousness which is either very strong or is habitually repeated leaves an organic impres sion on the cerebrum ; in virtue of which that same state may be re produced at any future time, in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it. ... The 'strength of early association' is a fact so universally recognized that the expression of it has become proverbial ; and this precisely accords with the physiological principle that, during the period of growth and development, the formative activity of the brain will be most amenable to directing influences. It is in this way that what is early ' learned by heart ' becomes branded in (as it were) upon the cerebrum ; so that its ' traces ' are never lost, even though the conscious memory of it may have completely faded out. For, when the organic modification has been once fixed in the growing brain, it becomes a part of the normal fabric, and is regularly maintained by nutritive substitution ; so that it may endure to the end of life, like the scar of a wound."

Dr. Carpenter's phrase that our nervous system groivs to the modes in which it has been exercised expresses the philos ophy of habit in a nutshell. We may now trace some of the practical applications of the principle to human life. The first result of it is that habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue. 1 ' The beginner at the piano not only moves his finger up and down in order to depress the key, he moves the whole hand, the forearm and even the entire body, especially moving its least rigid part, the head, as if he would press down the key with that organ too. Often a con traction of the abdominal muscles occurs as well. Principally, however, the impulse is determined to the motion of the hand and of the single finger. This is, in the first place, because the movement of the finger is the movement thought of, and, in the second place, because its move ment and that of the key are the movements we try to perceive, along with the results of the latter on the ear. The more often the process

is repeated, the more easily the movement follows, on account of the increase in permeability of the nerves engaged. "But the more easily the movement occurs, the slighter is the stimulus required to set it up ; and the slighter the stimulus is, the more its effect is confined to the fingers alone. " Thus, an impulse which originally spread its effects over the whole body, or at least over many of its movable parts, is gradually deter mined to a single definite organ, in which it effects the contraction of a few limited muscles. In this change the thoughts and perceptions which start the impulse acquire more and more intimate causal relations with a particular group of motor nerves.

" To recur to a simile, at least partially apt, imagine the nervous system to represent a drainage-system, inclining, on the whole, toward certain muscles, but with the escape thither somewhat clogged. Then streams of water will, on the whole, tend most to fill the drains that go towards these muscles and to wash out the escape. In case of a sudden ' flushing,' however, the whole system of channels will fill itself, and the water overflow everywhere before it escapes. But a moderate quantity of water invading the system will flow through the proper escape alone.

" Just so with the piano-player. As soon as his impulse, which has gradually learned to confine itself to single muscles, grows extreme, it overflows into larger muscular regions. He usually plays with his fingers, his body being at rest. But no sooner does he get excited than his whole body becomes 'animated,' and he moves his head and trunk, in particular, as if these also were organs with which he meant to belabor the keys."* Man is born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centres. Most of the performances of other animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so ^normous, that most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of ner vous and muscular energy, he would therefore be in a sorry plight. As Dr. Maudsley says : f

"If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds — that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and undressing himself ; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy ; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by his ex ertions. Think of the pains necessary to teach a child to stand, of the many efforts which it must make, and of the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious of any effort. For while secondarily auto matic acts are accomplished with comparatively little weariness — in this regard approaching the organic movements, or the original reflex movements — the conscious effort of the will soon produces exhaus tion. A spinal cord without . . „ memory would simply be an idiotic spinal cord. ... It is impossible for an individual to realize how much he owes to its automatic agency until disease has impaired its functions."

The next result is that habit diminishes the conscious atten tion loith which our acts are performed. One may state this abstractly thus : If an act require for its execution a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events, then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present them selves ; but habit soon brings it about that each event calls up its own appropriate successor without any alternative offering itself, and without any reference to the conscious will, until at last the whole chain, A, B, C, J}, E, F, G, rattles itself off as soon as A occurs, just as if A and the rest of the chain were fused into a continuous stream. When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by un necessary movements and false notes. When we are pro ficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous < cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have rippled through a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involun tarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual

thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking oft* his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latch key out on arriving at the door-step of a friend ? Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when per formed at a later hour. The writer well remembers how, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and, finding himself in the street in which for one winter he had attended school, he lost himself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding himself upon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets away in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his steps from the school had then habitually led. We all of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily offices connected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. Our lower centres know the order of these movements, and show their knowledge by their ' surprise ' if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way. But our higher thought-centres know hardly anything about the matter. Few men can tell off-hand which sock, shoe, or trousers-leg they put on first. They must first mentally rehearse the act ; and even that is often insufficient — the act must be performed. So of the questions, Which valve of my double door opens first ? Which way does my door swing ? etc. I cannot tell the answer ; yet my hand never makes a mistake. iSo one can describe the order in which he brushes his hair or teeth ; yet it is likely that the order is a pretty fixed one in all of us.

These results may be expressed as follows : In action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular contraction to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a perception, but the sensation occa sioned by the muscular contraction just finished. A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual ac tion, mere sensation is a sufficient guide, and the upper regions of brain and mind are set comparatively free, i diagram will make the matter clear :

Let A, B, C, D, E, F, G represent an habitual chain of muscular contractions, and let a, b, c, d, e, f stand for the respective sensations which these contractions excite in us when they are successively performed. Such sensations will usually be of the muscles, skin, or joints of the parts moved, but they may also be effects of the movement upon the eye or the ear. Through them, and through them alone, we are made aware whether the contraction has or has not occurred. When the series, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, is being learned, each of these sensations becomes the object of a separate perception by the mind. By it we test each movement, to see if it be right before advancing to the next. We hesitate, compare, choose, revoke, reject, etc., by intel' lectual means ; and the order by which the next movement is discharged is an express order from the ideational centres after this deliberation has been gone through.

In habitual action, on the contrary, the only impulse which the centres of idea or perception need send down is the initial impulse, the command to start. This is repre sented in the diagram by V\ it may be a thought of the first movement or of the last result, or a mere perception of some of the habitual conditions of the chain, the presence, e.g., of the keyboard near the hand. In the present case, no sooner has the conscious thought or volition instigated movement A, than A, through the sensation a of its own occurrence, awakens B reflexly ; B then excites C through by and so on till the chain is ended, when the intellect gen erally takes cognizance of the final result. The process, in fact, resembles the passage of a wave of ' peristaltic ' motion

down the bowels. The intellectual perception at the end is indicated in the diagram by the effect of G being repre sented, at G', in the ideational centres above the merely sensational line. The sensational impressions, a, 6, c, d, e,f, are all supposed to have their seat below the ideational lines. That our ideational centres, if involved at all by a, I, c, d, e,f, are involved in a minimal degree, is shown by the fact that the attention may be wholly absorbed else where. "We may say our prayers, or repeat the alphabet, with our attention far away.

" A musical performer will play a piece which has become familiar by repetition while carrying on an animated conversation, or while con tinuously engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought; the accustomed sequence of movements being directly prompted by the sight of the notes, or by the remembered succession of the sounds (if the piece is played from memory), aided in both cases by the guiding sensations derived from the muscles themselves. But, further, a higher degree of the same ' training ' (acting on an organism specially fitted to profit by it) enables an accomplished pianist to play a difficult piece of music at sight; the movements of the hands and fingers following so immediately upon the sight of the notes that it seems impossible to believe that any but the very shortest and most direct track can be the channel of the nervous communication through which they are called forth. The following curious example of the same class of acquired aptitudes, which differ from instincts only in being prompted to action by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin :

" ' With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and tactile per ception, and the precision of respondent movements, which are neces sary for success in every kind of prestidigitation, Houdin early practised the art of juggling with balls in the air; and having, after a month's practice, become thorough master of the art of keeping up four balls at once, he placed a book before him, and, while the balls were in the air, accustomed himself to read without hesitation. ' This,' he says, ' will probably seem to my readers very extraordinary; but I shall surprise them still more when I say that I have just amused myself with repeat ing this curious experiment. Though thirty years have elapsed since the time I was writing, and though I have scarcely once touched the balls during that period, I can still manage to read with ease while keeping three balls up.' " (Autobiography, p. 26.)*

We have called a, 1), c, d, e, /, the antecedents of the suc cessive muscular attractions, by the name of sensations. Some authors seem to deny that they are even this. If not even this, they can only be centripetal nerve-currents, not sufficient to arouse feeling, but sufficient to arouse motor response.* It may be at once admitted that they are not distinct volitions. The will, if any will be present, limits itself to a permission that they exert their motor effects. Dr. Carpenter writes :

"There may still be metaphysicians who maintain that actions which were originally prompted by the will with a distinct intention, and which are still entirely under its control, can never cease to be volitional; and that either an infinitesimally small amount of will is required to sustain them when they have been once set going, or that the will is in a sort of pendulum-like oscillation between the two actions — the maintenance of the train of thought, and the maintenance of the train of movement. But if only an infinitesimally small amount of will is necessary to sustain them, is not this tantamount to saying that they go on by a force of their own ? And does not the experience of the perfect continuity of our train of thought during the performance of movements that have become habitual, entirely negative the hypothesis of oscillation ? Besides, if such an oscillation existed, there must be intervals in which each action goes on of itself; so that its essentially automatic character is virtually admitted. The physiological explana tion, that the mechanism of locomotion, as of other habitual move ments, grows to the mode in which it is early exercised, and that it then works automatically under the general control and direction of the will, can scarcely be put down by any assumption of an hypothetical neces sity, which rests only on the basis of ignorance of one side of our com posite nature."!

But if not distinct acts of will, these immediate ante cedents of each movement of the chain are at any rate accompanied by consciousness of some kind. They are sensations to which we are usually inattentive, but which im mediately call our attention if they go ivrong. Schneider's account of these sensations deserves to be quoted. In the act of walking, he says, even when our attention is entirely off, "we are continuously aware of certain muscular feelings; and we have, moreover, a feeling of certain impulses to keep our equilibrium and to set down one leg after another. It is doubtful whether we could preserve equilibrium if no sensation of our body's attitude were there,