The presence of an idea of result in the motive helps the organism to make its movements precise and accurate, — hastens the work already begun by the idea of own movement. A particular movement- idea is acted out, and a good result follows. The accomplishing of the result directs attention back again to the movement-idea which led to it; and this idea is remembered, becomes a pattern which may be copied later. -Qn the other hand, if a move- ment-idea is acted out and a bad result follows, atten- tion is directed to that movement-idea, which becomes unpleasant; and the result is that, in future, that particular movement will be shunned. So the idea of result acts as a sort of overseer, weeding out the useless movement-ideas, and planting firmly injthe animal's nervous system the physical arrangements for the performance of useful movements, move- ments that take it straight to the desired goal.
Our two instances are now a little more complicated, (i) The inducement to take the food is made up of food-perception, idea of movement and ideas of taste and satiety (the result of taking it); the incentive is made up of the pleasure of food-perception, the pleasure of the idea of movement and the pleasure of the ideas of taste and satiety. (2) The inducement to flee the dan- § "JO. Impulse: the Idea of Result 169 ger is made up of the object-iDerception, the idea of movement away and the idea of escape from bodily injury (the result of running); the incentive is the resultant of the unpleasantness.. of object-perception and idea of injury, and the pleasantness of movement-idea and idea of escape: it is, therefore, a pleasant- ness or an unpleasantness, according to circumstances.
If, then, one were asked to define impulse, one Definition of would say: * Impulse is a motive to action, made up ^"^p^^^- of three sense-processes (perception of object, idea of own movement, idea of result of movement). This complex, held together by simultaneous asso- ciation, is given in the state of passive attention, and is therefore accompanied by affection.'
The complete impulse, the impulse with threefold induce- impulse and ment, is still more like an emotion than is the simpler set of ^"^°^^°"' movement conditions which we discussed in § 69. Hence we can readily understand Professor Wundt's statement that "every impulse is at the same time emotion," and the corresponding statement of Dr. Lehmann, a Danish psychologist who has made a special study of the affective processes, that " every emotion is at the same time impulse." It is not that emotion and impulse are identical (in that case there would be no reason for the use of the two words), but that each of them overlaps the other. We have just had a par- allel instance. At first, as we saw in § 68, attention means action; or, as Professor Sully puts it: " The primitive form of activity is at once, according to the aspect in which w^e view it, both attention and conscious muscular action." Now, however, it is only attention to a particular set of ideas that means action; so that we have to discuss atten- tion and action in separate Chapters. At first, in the same way, there was no difference between impulse and emotion; " the universal animal impulses are indubitably the earliest forms of emotion." Now the two are so far distinct that we have to treat of them separately; but they still have much in common.
I/O The Simpler Forms of Action There are two chief differences between the emotion and the impulse, (i) The impulse has about it more effort than the emotion. The effort comes from the idea of own move- ment {cf. § 34). And (2) the bodily expression of impulse is a particular movement (reaching out the hand, running away); that of emotion is a diffused movement, a disturb- ance of the internal organs and of the whole muscular system.
Degenera- §71- Ideomotor Action. — Just as the impulse was impulse-^ bound to arisc from the bare, primitive form of action, — just as the inducement to action, that is, was bound to grow from simple object-perception to a mixture of this with the ideas of own movement and of result, — so is it bound to degenerate, to fall back again into simpler forms. And the degenera- tion is very useful. Suppose that we were obliged to attend to this threefold group of perception and ideas every time that we^ performed an action, every time that we cut a slice of bread or buttoned our coat! There would be an immense loss of time and energy. And we have now gone far enough into psychology to know that, in the sphere of mind, time and energy are not wasted; wherever a * short cut ' can be taken, it is followed, loss of idea So the impulse degenerates. In the first place, o own move- ^^ j^^^ ^£ ^^^ movement drops out of the motive.
That idea is valuable so long as the movement is being learned, being modelled after the pattern; it ceases to be valuable when the movement has been learned, and can be performed without thought of the copy. The copy, the movement-idea, then dis- appears; it no longer means anything to the organment; ism, — and an idea owes its life to meaning something (§ 38)- Secondly, the idea of result becomes ab- sorbed, so to speak, in the perception of the object: when we see the knife, we see it as a bread-cutter, and when we take hold of a coat-button, we grasp it reduction of as a coat-buttoner. The idea of result comes to be result; merely a sort of tag, stuck on to the perception. And thirdly, while these two changes are taking place, the perception is becoming indifferent; so lossofaffec- far are we from attending to it passively, as we did originally, that we fail to attend to it at all.
At this stage we have an action whose conscious ideomotor condition is a perception, which has a mere tag of idea of result associated to it, and which is not felt (not attended to). Movement occurs directly on the occurrence of the perception. Such action is termed ideomotor^ sensorimotor, or conscious reflex action.
Professor James gives the following instance of an ideomotor action: " I sit at table after dinner and find myself from time to time taking nuts or raisins out of the dish and eating them. My dinner properly is over, and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what I do; but the perception of the fruit [object] and the fleeting notion that I may eat it [result of movement] seem fatally to bring the act about."
§ 72. Reflex Movement. — We have only to carry Total dis- the development that leads from impulsive to ideo- offmpuisr motor action one step farther, and we come to reflex ^^ motive to action.
movement. The motive to ideomotor action is a decayed and indifferent impulse. To reflex move- ment there is no motive at all. The impulse has died out altogether; there is no perception of object, no idea of result, however dim and fleeting. The move- ment has become, by long habit, ingrained in the The Simpler Forms of Action From the impulse to the reflex.
The involun- tary bodily movements.
make-up of the nervous system; so that when a stimulus is presented, movement follows, without the arousal of any mental process; the ingoing excitation is turned back, reflected outwards, in the form of movement, — the whole series of events taking place quite automatically and unconsciously.
A good illustration of the passage from impulsive action to reflex movement is given by the closing of the eyelids, winking. You may wink impulsively; perceiving the offen- sive object, having a distinct idea of the movement, and realising the result to be attained (the freeing of the eye from dust, an insect, etc.). Or you may wink inattentively; vaguely perceiving the insect, and still more vaguely ideating the result of the closure of the eye. This is ideomotor action. Or, lastly, the wink may be a reflex; you may wink without seeing the insect, or thinking at all of the movement or its result, — you may wink, that is, without in the least knowing that the eyelids have moved. As one reads a book, one often winks to cleanse the surface of the eyeball: but there is absolutely no knowledge of the movement.
The most reflex reflexes, those that are farthest removed from the impulse, are the internal movements of heart, blood, intestines, etc., that we spoke of in § 67. It is very difficult for us to think of the movement of the blood through the blood-vessels, or of the digestive movements of the alimentary canal, as having once depended upon conscious conditions, upon attention and ideas; and indeed, it would be absurd to think of them in their present form as possibly springing from any motive. But nevertheless they are descendants of the primitive action of § 68; they have been slowly diflerentiated out of the whole-body movements of early organisms; so that their ancestors, if we may so call them, really had conscious conditions and really did spring from motives.
We said in § 67 that these movements come into psychology only indirectly, as the conditions of sensation or the expressions of affective processes. We must here add to this that they come into psychology historically. They are now physiological; but at one period of their history they had psychological conditions.
On reflex movements in general see H.^ 287, 299; F.^ 144 fF., § 73. Instinctive Action. — There are some move- instinctive ments, movements of a complicated sort, which must movement. be made at least once by every member of an animal species in every generation. Caterpillars must spin their cocoon; birds build their nest; flies seek out the fitting place to lay their eggs. These movements, like the reflexes, are touched off mechanically; no motive is necessary. They have sometimes been described as * compound reflexes.'
But instinctive movement differs from reflex move- ment in the fact that the moving is pleasant (attended to). The reflex has neither mental antecedents nor mental concomitants; the instinctive movement has well-marked mental concomitants. To quote Pro- fessor James again: "Every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, and seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. It is done for its own sake exclusively. What voluptuous thrill may not shake a fly, when she at last dis- covers the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor to its discharge? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only fitting thing? And need she care or know anything about the future maggot and its food? " The reasons both for the likenesses and for the Explanation differences between reflex and instinctive movements ^ '!!pi!i!,r^ are not far to seek. The instinctive movements are being continually repeated, whether by the individual animal or by the species; hence, like the reflexes, they become stereotyped by habit in the nervous sys- tem of the species. On the other hand, they are too The Simpler Forms of Action Instinctive action: the instinct as motive.
Composition of instinct.
important to be left entirely without control. The motive, the impulse, has been lost, and with it the controlling ideas of own movement and of result: this loss is inevitable, if the movements are to be stereo- typed. The motive is replaced, however, by the mental concomitants, the organic sensations aroused by moving. Their pleasantness keeps the movement going, and holds it in the right channels.
So far, the development has been downhill: from impulsive action, with its elaborate motive and con- comitant sensations, to instinctive movement, which has lost its motive and whose concomitant sensations are therefore made a great deal of. Now the devel- opment takes an upward turn. Suppose that an animal that has once performed an instinctive move- ment (say, nest-building) has to repeat it at some future time. Plainly, the second movement will have a motive; there will be an idea of own movement, an idea of result and an idea (if not a perception) of object. Instinctive rriovement has grown into in- stinctive action, an action whose conscious conditions differ but very little from those of impulsive action. And the instinct itself, the conscious condition of the action, will become clearer and more definite with every repetition.
If we divide the instinct into inducement and incentive, we get the following list of processes: Inducement, — Idea of object, idea of own movement, idea of result, idea of organic sensations which will be aroused by moving.
Incentive. — Pleasantness of all these ideas, the pleasant- ness of the anticipated organic sensations being much the strongest.
§74- Physiology and Psychology of Moveme7it 175 Instinct, like impulse, evidently bears a marked resem- instinct and blance to emotion. The ideas in it are held together by ^"^o^^o"- simultaneous association; the complex is passively attended to; and the organic sensations are prominent in the whole. Hence we find Dr. Lehmann saying: "" Every emotion is at the same time instinct " \ and Professor James declaring that '' every instinct is an impulse," and that '^ every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well." Again, of course, the processes are not identical, but run into and cut across each other in actual experience.
§ 74. The Physiology and the Psychology of Move- The simplest ment. — When the physiologist sets to work to explain gariiy the the mechanism of movement, to find out what sort ^^^^^^^^ ^^^"^ of moveof bodily disturbance is necessary to make a muscle ment. contract, he naturally begins by examining the sim- plest form of movement, the reflex. Having found the conditions of this, he seeks to account for more complex movements, — the conscious reflex (ideo- motor action), impulsive action, etc. Working in this way, from the reflex upwards, he is very apt to think that the reflex, the shnplest form of move- ment, is therefore the earliest form; and that ideo- motor and impulsive action have grown out of it, one complication being added after another. Nor have the physiologists stood alone in this opinion. Not a few psychologists, studying movement from the same point of view, have fallen into the same error.
But how do we know that it is an error } Have we not been taking things for granted, in this Chap- ter, — asserting that the earliest movements have conscious conditions, and that unmotived movements are later growths, rather than proving our assertions } The Simpler Forms of Action Yes: and we must, therefore, now that our survey is ended for the time being, pause to set down the arguments which justify our position. They are as follows: • Reflex move- (i) Those who have studied the movements of the lowest ment is later animals agree that these movements have all the appearsive action. ^^^^ of ruduTientary mipulsive actions, and do not resemble reflexes. The impulse thus appears to precede the reflex in mental evolution.
• Thus M. Binet {La vie psychique des micro-organism es) ex- plicitly rejects the theory that the movements of single-celled organisms can be explained as due to ' irritability,' i.e.^ as reflex movements of the cell-tissue in response to stimulus. The fundamental fact about these movements, he says, is that they are selective: the creature singles out its food from the rest of its surroundings, etc. In our own terminology, then, the move- ments are simple impulsive actions; they are selective in the sense that passive attention is selective.
(2) Reflex and instinctive movements are purposive in character; that is, are adapted to some particular purpose, cut to fit certain circumstances {H., 288). Think of the appropriateness of the winking reflex for the removal of impurities from the surface of the eyeball! Primitive move- ment, on the contrary, would be vague, indefinite, inappro- priate. Hence the reflex must be a late development, not a primitive movement-form.
(3) Impulsive action may be reduced to reflex movement in the course of the individual life. (This fact, of which we have all had experience, will be discussed in § 106). On the other hand, we never find in individual experience that a reflex movement passes into impulsive action.
(4) Many of the reflex movements that express emotion can be understood only on the hypothesis that they are degenerate descendants of impulsive (or even more com- plicated) actions. Think, e.g., of the jump and wince of §75- Classification of Impidses and Instincts lyy These are the chief reasons for making motived movement the first kind of movement that appeared in the world of Kfe; and the only reason for a con- trary opinion seems to be the belief that what is physiologically simplest in the human body (the reflex) must be the earliest type of movement in general. That belief can hardly be adhered to, in face of the opposing arguments.
The physiological difference between motived action and reflex movement is shown, after a greatly simplified fashion, in Fig. 15. In motived action, the excitation travels from the sensory cell s (a cell, say, in the retina or the skin) straight up to c^ the brain-cortex. Here it is worked over, and passes out in the direction of the arrows to;;/, the ending of the nerve-fibre in a muscle. The motive corresponds to the commotion at c, the cortical excitation. In reflex movement, the excitation travels from s across r to 7?i; the whole process has been delegated by the cortex to lower nerve-centres; there is no mental antecedent or concomitant of 11 movement.
The cortical arc sc7n represents an arrange- ment that is older, in the history of the race, than the short cut, the reflex arc srm. Fig. 15 § 75. The Classification of Impulses and Instincts. — ciassifica- The attempts to classify human impulses and instincts impulses and have met with even less success than the attempts instincts is neither to classify emotions. There is oftentimes no clear possible line of division, in actual experience, between im- pulsive, ideomotor and instinctive action. And the kinship of instinct, impulse and emotion is so close that one and the same process may be interpreted * as any of the three, according to the point of view of the psychologist who is writing about it. It is N 178 The Simpler Forms of Action no wonder, then, that one author says: '* Instinctive acts in man are few in number," and another: *' No other mammal, not even the monkey, shows so large a list." Everything depends on the point of view, and on the use of terms to which the point of view leads.
Let us take some illustrations. Fear is an emotion; yet there are instinctive fears (fear of the dark, of strange things and people, etc.). Almost all the names for objec- tive emotions — like, dislike, sympathy, antipathy, attraction, repulsion — are also used to denote fundamental impulses. Who can say precisely at what time bread-cutting and coat- buttoning passed from the impulsive to the idfeomotor stage? Or take this case: I am out for a walk with a friend; see something glittering by the roadside, — a pin, it may be; stoop, and pick it up. Is this ideomotor action, or the outcropping of the acquisitive instinct?
norimpor- Fortunately, the enumeration of impulses and instincts is not a very important matter. The key to the psychology of action lies not in the making out of a complete list of motives, but in the right under- standing of the composition of motives, and more especially of the impulse. Impulse is the cardinal process in the action-consciousness. If the reader has a thorough grasp of the principles upon which it is formed, and can trace the development of the three degenerate forms from it, he will easily steer his way through the conflicting statements of the dif- ferent psychologies. And — what is more important — the shif tings and changings that the processes undergo in practical experience will cease to be puzzling. Here, as everywhere, a sound theory simplifies the facts.
tant.
§ ^6. The Simple Reaction 179 § 76. The Simple Reaction. — The psychology of action can be investigated in the laboratory: indeed, 'reaction experiments,' as they are called, are in many ways of great psychological importance. They are performed as follows.
It is agreed between the experimenter and the Reaction- ' reactor ' that at a signal given by the former a definite movement shall be made by the latter. To get action at its lowest terms, i.e,^ to keep all the conditions of the experiment as simple as possible, the signal chosen is of such a kind as to arouse a single sensation (of noise, light, etc.), and the move- ment is that, e.g., of a single finger. The instru- ments used are so constructed that the time elapsing between the signal and the movement can be meas- ured: it is called the 'reaction-time.'
We saw in § 1 5 that attention to the matter in Direction of hand is essential to successful introspection. If, ^he^reaction then, the reaction experiment is to give us intro- experiment. ^ spective knowledge about action, the reactor must be attentive. But here a difficulty arises. What shall he attend to } Shall he attend predominantly to the signal (the stimulus), or to the movement, or shall he try to attend to both at once, to grasp the whole experiment t Each of the three directions of attention is possible; and to each of them there cor- responds a special form of reaction.
(i) Attention on the Stimulus: the ^ SensoriaP Reac- Sensorial, tion. — The reactor enters upon the experiment with two ideas in mind: the idea of the result of his action (getting the experiment over, or learning something about the psy- chology of action, or doing something that comes in the i8o The Simpler Forms of Action muscular and central reactions.
day's work) and the idea of the stimulus. The stimulus is given; the idea of it is replaced by its perception (per- ception of object); the two processes are at once supple- mented by the idea of own movement: movement follows.
This, the ^sensorial' reaction, is plainly an artificial impulsive action. Moreover, it cannot degenerate to any appreciable extent. In course of practice, the idea of result and the idea of own movement are much reduced, tending to become mere tags attached to the perception of object. But this complex must, by the terms of the experiment, be attended to; the action can never pass over into the ideomotor form.
The average duration of the sensorial reaction is.270 sec, when the stimulus is a flash of light;.225 sec, when it is a noise; and.210 sec, when it is a sharp pressure. The differences are due to physiological differences in the organ stimulated.
(2) Attention on the Movement: ' Micscular'' Reaction. — The reactor has two ideas in mind: the idea of the result of his action and the idea of own movement. The stimulus is given; the perception of object associates to these two ideas: movement follows.
This, the * muscular ' reaction, seems also, at first sight, to be an artificial impulsive action. There is a difference, however. Attention to the coming movement means bodily preparation for the making of that movement; the hand tingles to move. For the time being, there is a sort of reflex connection between the sense-organ to which ^he stimulus will appeal and the reacting finger. Hence the action is not impulsive; it approaches the reflex type. On the other hand, it is not a reflex or an ideomotor action, because attention to the movement-idea is pre- supposed.
The average duration of the muscular reaction is.180 sec to light,.120 sec. to sound, and.110 sec to sharp pressure.
(3) Attention Difftcsed: the 'Central^ Reactioii. — The reactor has three ideas in mind: those of result, of own § 76. TJie Simple Reaction i8i movement and of object. The giving of the signal changes the idea of object into its perception: movement follows.
This, thQ ' central ' reaction, evidently stands, for psychol- ogy, midway between the other two. And its duration lies midway between their durations.
The three forms of reaction are all important. Psychoiogi- The sensorial form, an unchangmg impulsive action, tanceofthe allows the reactor to examine the impulse introspec- reaction experiment.
experiment.
tively, under standard conditions. It also serves as the point of departure for the investigation of motives to action that are more complex than the impulse (see Ch. XIII. ). The muscular form, taken alter- nately with the sensorial, gives practice in the con- trol of attention: the experimenter, noting the duration of the reactions, can tell whether the re- actor is able to shift from the idea of signal to the idea of movement, and vice versa, or whether in each experiment he vacillates between the two: i.e., can determine how much practice is needed for the attention to travel from the active to the sec- ondarily passive stage. Again: if the attention is permitted to lapse from the movement-idea, the reaction comes to be very like a true reflex move- ment; so that the passage from impulse to reflex can be traced by the experimenter. The central form is interesting as the normal, obvious form of reaction; the reactor, if left to himself, reacts as a rule with diffused attention. Moreover, if the diffused atten- tion is permitted to lapse, the central reaction passes over into an artificial ideomotor action; so that the passage can be traced to this from the impulse, — and traced under more natural conditions than would s 1 82 The Simplei' Fo7'ms of Action be the case if attention were permitted to lapse from the object-perception of the sensorial form.
The associa- The sensorial reaction has been employed in the study of tion reaction, successive association, of the putting together of the train of ideas (§ 56). The reactor is told that he is to move his finger, not when he has perceived the signal, but when some idea (or series of two or more ideas) has followed that perception by way of successive association. The experimenter, knowing the associated ideas, and knowing the length of time that each association took, obtains an insight into the reactor's mental constitution: sees whether his mind is addicted to abstract thoughts, or moves most easily among concrete things; whether it is a mind that generalises, rises to more general ideas than that conveyed by the stimulus, or a mind that particularises, descends from the given perception to ideas that come under it as instances, etc., etc. Reaction and The central reaction, again, has been employed in the ^^r°^^' study of memory- type (§ 50), on the theory that its dura- tion will approach that oT the sensorial or muscular form, according as the reactor belongs to one type or another. When he reacts to light, e.g.^ his reaction-time will approach the sensorial, it is said, if his ideas are visual, and the mus- cular, if they are tactual. So far, however, the results