In attempting, however, to reach some kind of formula of dynamogenesis we encounter a certain difificulty. For when we had occasion to inquire in an earlier place what the main character of all suggestion is, that character which constitutes it suggestion, we found definitions very conflicting; and gave as our own definition only the most general description of the reaction called suggestive, i.e.y that it always issues in a movement more or less closely associated in earlier experience with the particular stimulus in question.
This, it is plain, constitutes suggestion as a phenome- non of greater or less habit, taking hypnotic suggestion as Law of Dyuaviogciicsis. 167 type, in which prompt discharges in well-formed pathways is the striking fact. Numerous instances among the facts reported in this chapter come to mind. The statement ordinarily made in the more recent psychologies, to the effect that the idea of a movement is already the begin- ning of that movement, serves to generalize these facts, provided we understand by the 'idea of a movement,' not merely the clear consciousness of a movement, but also the vaguest and most subconscious reminiscences, feelings, intimations of movement, which cluster or hang about or enter into, however meagrely, the state of mind which issues in the movement making up the suggested reaction.
But it is just as evident, when we recall the various instances in detail, that they have another and different aspect. Very many suggestions seem to perform a func- tion which is not exhausted when we say that they issue in movements. They issue in movements, it is true; but not in exactly the movements and those alone which have been associated with these stimuli before. Many of them seem to beget new movements, by a kind of adaptation of the organism — movements which are an evident improve- ment upon those which the organism has formerly accom- plished.
To make this plain we have only to recall some cases from the reports made in this chapter and the earlier ones. The child learns handwriting by acting upon the sugges- tion which the copy set before him affords. How could he control his movements at all, if each suf?o:estion called out only the movements which he had already learned.^ The child adapts himself again to persons, and differently to different persons, from week to week. How does he do this.-* Persons of course suggest action to him, but how 1 68 Suggestion.
1 68 Suggestion.
does he manage to break up, in appropriate ways, the fixed organic tendencies to action in which we have found early bashfuhiess to consist? The child learns to estimate dis- tance and his visual experiences become, as we have seen, suggestions to him of hand movements remarkably adjusted to his reach and to the dimensions and directions, etc., of things. How is this done t And so might more cases be cited.
This aspect of suggestion opens up what is one of the main problems of this book to discuss, the theory of Accommodation. It is only in point here to show that this thing, accommodation, is a fact, and that it consists in some influence in the organism which works directly in the face of habit. Suggestion is the only way to break up habit.
We saw above, also, two views as to the presence and influence of consciousness in this matter of suggestion. Some theorists hold that there is no suggestion without consciousness; others that consciousness is not a necessary element. The dispute seems to turn upon the predomi- nant recognition in reactions of one of the two tendencies, Habit or Accommodation. It is true and universal that consciousness tends to disappear from reactions as they are oftener repeated — as they become, that is, more habitual. The things we have learned to do best, most definitely, most exactly, most unalterably in a word, these things require least thought, direction, feeling, con- sciousness. So with our reflex and semi-automatic ac- tions: they come to go on, as pathological cases show, without the cortex of the brain, in cases when fainting or forgetfulness deprive us of all knowledge that we do them. On the other hand, we find that whenever there is ac- commodation— the breaking up of habit, the effort to Law of Dynamogencsis. 169 learn, the acquirement of new movements, and co-ordina- tions of movement — there consciousness is present, and present in vivid and heightened form according as the habit fought against is fixed, and the road to the new acquisition an uphill road. The things most new, difficult, imperfect, hard to effect, these dwell in the very focus of our personal knowledge and attention.
As I said some time ago, in summing up the two differ- ent principles: " Physiologically, Habit means readiness for function, produced by previous exercise of that func- tion...Psychologically, it means loss of oversight, dif- fusion of attention, subsiding consciousness...Physio- logically and anatomically. Accommodation means the breaking up of a habit, the widening of the organic for the reception or accommodation of a new condition. Psy- chologically, it means reviving consciousness, concentra- tion of attention, voluntary control." ^ So far as we have now gone we have a right to use the principle of suggestion, and its statement in motor terms as a principle of dynamogencsis, whenever we mean to say simply that action follows stimulus. But when we come to ask what kind of action follows, in each case, each special kind of stimulus, we have two possibilities before us. A habit may follow, or an accommodation may follow. Which is it.^ And why is it one rather than the other.? These are the questions of the theory of organic develop- ment, to which our next chapters are devoted.
CHAPTER VII.
The Theory of Development. § I. Orga7iic Adaptation in General.
In the preceding discussions we have traced some phases of the development of consciousness. The two great principles of Habit and Accommodation have been noted, simply, and we have intimated incidentally that by them two great gains are made possible to the organ- ism: first, the repetition of what is worth repeating, with the conserving of this worth: this is Habit; and, second, the adaptation of the organism to new conditions, so that it secures, progressively, further useful reac- tions, which at an earlier stage would have been im- possible: this is Accommodation. It now remains to give these two principles a searching examination.
Further, the fundamental fact of reaction itself, at what- ever stage it be looked at, is expressed by the principle of Dynamogenesis, which, when put broadly, reads: Every organic stimulus tends to express itself in movement, This we have been able to illustrate with some chapters of new observations and experiments.
The psychological bearings of these principles are taken up below. It remains to ask here whether we can go fur- ther in a constructive way on the physiological side.
A little reflection leads us to see that the main question Organic Adaptation in General. 171 of adaptation is still unanswered. It is evident that repe- titions plus accommodations give adaptations; and that adaptations involve, in some way, so-called 'selections.' Where, in the function of the organism, does the remark- able fact of selection come in } How does the organism select the proper things to accommodate itself to, and refuse the improper.'* The real meaning of this question becomes clear when we put it differently. Considering the state of an organ- ism at any moment, with its readiness to act in an appro- priate fashion, — say a child's imitation of a movement, — the appropriateness of its action may be construed in either of two ways: either retrospectively or prospectively. By construing it retrospectively, I mean that an organ- ism performs its appropriate function when it does what it has done before — what it is suited to do, however it may have come to be so suited. The child imitates my movement because his apparatus is ready for this move- ment. This is Habit; it proceeds by repetition. But when we come to ask how it got to be suited to do this function the first time, or how it can come to do a new function from now on, — how the child manages to imitate a new movement, one which he has never made before, — this is the prospective reference, and this question we must now try to answer.
To illustrate from the highest sphere, that of the volun- tary learning of new actions: Suppose I see a man draw a picture, or paint a landscape, and realize that it repre- sents a very useful accommodation of muscular move- ments, and then desire to imitate him. I am not able simply to tell my muscles to do it, or simply to will to do what he does. I find my muscles are chained 172 The Theory of Development.
down to what I have already learned, to what they have done before; my actions, that is, have the retrospective reference. So the child sees me write a letter or cut a toothpick, and he is quite unable to do it. He must learn, we say. But that is just the question of prospec- tive reference: how is he to learn } How is it possible for an organism to acquire any new adaptive movement whatever.''
When we come to look broadly at the biological series and take all the resources of modern evolution doctrine into account, we find several ways in which the reactions of an organism may get such a * prospective reference,' all of which are partial statements of a more fundamental one, and each of which has its peculiar value in its own place in the phylogenetic series. These different ways in which an organism ' learns ' new accommodations may be set forth in order.
I. Natural select io7i as operative directly upon individual organisms. If we suppose, at first, organisms capable of reacting to stimulations by random diffused movement, we may then suppose the stimuli to which they react to be some beneficial and some injurious. If the beneficial ones recur more frequently to some organisms, these would live rather than others to which damaging stimuli came more often. The former, therefore, would be selected; and it amounts to the same thing as if organisms of neutral char- acter had learned, each for itself, to react to certain bene- ficial stimuli only. This is the current biological doctrine.
But we may go a step further. Among the variations in organic forms, it is easy to see that some of them might react in a way to keep in contact with the stimulus, to lay hold on it, and so keep on reacting to it again and again — Organic Adaptation in General. 173 just as our rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organ- ism in vital contact with the oxygen of the air. These organisms would get all the benefit or damage of the repetition or persistence of the stimulation and of their own reactions, again and again; and it is self-evident that the beneficial stimulations are the ones which should be maintained in this way, and that the organisms which did this would live. The organisms which reacted in such a way as to retain the damaging stimulations, on the other hand, by this same process, would aid nature in killing themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimu- lations in what I have called in speaking of imitation elsewhere a ' circular way ' of reacting. Thus unicellular creatures of this particular kind were selected, we may suppose, as a matter of fact, from absolutely random- moving creatures, if any such existed — a point discussed below. And as all others died out in competition with them, it became a universal property of vital organisms of any degree of development that they should react to retain their own vital stimulations. Now this again is exactly the same 7'esiitt as if originally neutral organisms had each learned for itself to make this particular kind of reactions. The life principle has learned it, but with the help of the stimulating environment and natural selection.^ But the question remains: what kind of reaction would it be that such a creature would possess to accomplish this result.? What would be the nature of the variation.? Evidently the easiest answer to this question is, that con- 1 This is one of the essential modifications which I suggest to the current theory of biological development. More is said of it below in >; 2 of this chapter, and in Chap. IX., where particular evidence is cited.
sciousness with its selective property arises here, and by it new actions are selected. But I do not see how consciousness could accomplish the fact of selection, even though it arose as a variation, until after it had itself experienced the reaction to be selected. This would mean that it had some property of selecting out during the organism's life-history certain kinds of reaction already possible to this particular organism. But since it is possible for an organism to have the stimulus-retaining reactions which I have described, simply by its own responses, this may be considered sufficient for its survival anyhow, whether it were conscious or not. So I see no argument one way or the other as to the origin of con- sciousness at this first stage of natural selection. The case is different, however, when we come to consider further development during the life-history of tJie particular organism.
2. Natural selection as ope^'ative npon differe7it reactio?is of the same organism. The fact of ' life-history ' is just what distinguishes an organism from what is a ' mechanical arrangement,' and not an organism. A steam engine has no life-history because it makes no progress, it simply repeats a constant function. That engine survives which is best adapted, in its construction, to the function of an engine. That is the principle already cited. It is neces- sary to consider further how certain reactions of one single organism can be selected so as to adapt the organ- ism better and give it a life-history. Let us at the outset call this process * organic selection,' in contrast with the ' natural selection ' of whole organisms.
Our first principle would do no more than effect the survival of organisms which repeated or retained useful Organic Adaptation in General. 175 stimulations. If this worked alone, every ehange in the environment would weed out all life except those organ- isms which by accidental variation reacted already in the way demanded by the changed conditions — in every case new organisms showing variations, not in any case new elements of life-history in the old organisms. In order to the latter, we would have to conceive one of two things: either, first, an innate capacity of the organism to antici- pate and be ready for new conditions; or second, some modification of the old reactions in an organism through the influence of new conditions, in such a way that this modified reaction serves to retain the desirable stimula- tions of the new environment, while the old ways of reacting do not. The first of these two conceptions might be realized in turn by either of two alternatives: first, by heredity; and second, by the special creation of each organism for its peculiar environment. But the first of these, heredity, is excluded by our hypothesis that we are at the beginning of the phylogenetic series. The ques- tion would remain: How did the ancestors come to be adapted } And the second calls upon us to give up the conception of phylogeny altogether. We are, accordingly, left to the view that the new stimulations wrought by changes in the environment, themselves modify the reac- tions of an organism in such a way that these modified reactions serve to hold or repeat the new stimulations as far as they are good, and further, negatively, in such a way that the former reactions become under the new con- ditions less useful or positively damaging.
It may be said that the earlier application of natural selection directly to the salvation of organisms meets this case also, provided organic forms arise by variations 1 76 The Theory of Development.
which are suited to react to the new environment. And it is possible to hold, I think, that phylogenetic progress from father to son is secured in that way: a point which has further discussion below. But the facts show, at any rate, that individual organisms do acquire new adaptations in their lifetime,^ and that is our first problem. If, in solving it, we find a principle which may also serve as a principle of race development, then we may possibly use it against the 'all-sufficiency of natural selection,' or in its support.
The one kind of organic process which would accom- plish the selection of reactions in an organism's life-history is the one which we actually find — which is to say that our theory waits as it should upon facts. There is a process by which the theatre of the application of natural selection is transferred from the outside relations of the organism, its relations to its environment, to the inside relations of the organism. It takes the form of the fiuic- tional adjitstinciit of the life processes to variations in its own motor respojises, so that beneficial reactions are se- lected from the entire mass of responses.
This process is — to state my point before discussing it — the neurological analogue of the hedonic eonscionsness; and the two aspects in which the happy variation shows itself in the consciousness of the higher organisms are pleasiu'e and pain. These points may be summed up 1 I know a further ol)jcction may be made, and it may be as well to state it here, while reserving its discussion for a later place (§ 3 of this chapter). It may be said that even in the life of the individual new actions are not acquired; they simply serve in the individual to show the details of the varia- tion which the individual has got by inheritance. On that view the new functions do not secure gains for the following generation, hut only put in evidence the variations already secured over the earlier generation.
Organic Adaptation in General. 177 for discussion in the general proposition: tJie lifc-Jiistory of organisms involves from the start the presence of the organic analogue of the Jiedonie consciousness.
From what has been said it is clear that, in order to life-history in an organism, it must have in its central processes not only the facile function required by habit- ual discharge, but also some means of anticipating new- stimulations, and so of utilizing them to its own advantage. The empirical analysis of pleasure and pain states requires the recognition of these two facts, on any theory of the hedonic consciousness, i.e., first, pleasure accompanies normal psycho-physical process, or its advancement by new stimulations which are vitally good; and second, pain accompanies abnormal psycho-physical process, or the an- ticipation of its being brought about by new stimulations which are vitally bad.^ This is generalized in the princi- ples, current since Bain insisted upon them, that pain is indicative of a physiological process which is inhibitory of the function which occasions the pain, and pleasure, on the other hand, advances its corresponding function; although, as I aim to show in the following pages, the formula- tion of Bain requires important modifications. In a later place I speak further of the rise of consciousness as this view seems to implicate it.'-^ Advantage has now been seen to lie in reactions by which certain stimulations are retained or repeated and certain others avoided. Now the former are the reac- tions to stimulations which give pleasure, the latter reac- tions to those which give pain. The general scheme of Meynert, which identifies the pleasure-giving process in 1 Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, II., Chaps. V., XI. (in substance).
2 Cf. § 4 of this chapter.
N 1 78 The Theory of Development.
some way with that of outreaching movements, and the pain-giving process in some way with that of withdrawing movements, — expansions on the one hand, and contractions on the other, — affords, disregarding details which I need not now dwell upon, support to this requirement.^ Richet expresses the general facts very clearly; beginning with pain, he says, " there takes place a series of general move- ments of flexion, as if the animal wished to make itself smaller and to offer less surface to the pain...With man, as with all other animals, we find the same general movements of flexion and extension, corresponding to feel- ings of pain and pleasure. Pleasure corresponds to a movement of spreading out, dilatation, extension; on the contrary, in pain we draw back, shut ourselves up, by general movements of flexion." ^ It may be objected, however, that this does not meet the need of anticipating adjustment; and such an objection to Meynert's own view is, I think, well taken. Admitting the truth of the theory of Meynert, however, as far as it goes, and its essential conformity to the requirements of a true theory of motor development, we may further find from the two correspondences mentioned the element which is still lacking, and which can only be supplied by an ade- quate theory of the physical basis of pleasure and pain.
If development is by repetition, and if repetition can be secured only by a variation which brings about what I have designated above a 'circular reaction,' or one which 1 Popiil'dr-wissenschaflliche Vortr'dge^ pp. 41 ff. Meynert's theory has recently been given some experimental support by Miinsterberg, Beitrdge ziir exper. Psych.^ heft 4. For the detailed treatment of such so-called * Organic Imitations,' see below, Chap. IX.
2 V Homme et V Intelligence, p. 9, quoted by Ward.
Organic Adaptation in General. i 79 repeats or retains its own stimulation, then a new stimulus can be accommodated to only within the limits inside of which the organ can prepare itself, on the basis of former processes, to bring about such a reaction as will tend to retain this kind of stimulus for itself. This is accom- plished, /;/ tJic ivJiole range of motor acconnnodations frovi tJic protozoa zv/iich swarm to the ligJit to tJie most difficult feat of the acrobat, by what I may generalize under the phrase 'law of excess'; it is an application within the organism of the principle upon which the natural selection of particu- lar organisms is secured — the principle commonly known as 'over-production.' But, generally, the law of 'excess' may be stated somewhat as follows: the accommodation of an organism to a new stimulation is secured, apart from happy accidents, by the continued or repeated action of that stimulation, and this repetition is secured, not by the selec- tion beforeJiand of this stimidation nor by its fortuitous occurrence, alone, but by the pivximate reiiistatement of it by a discharge of the energies of the organism, concentrated as far as may be for the excessive stimulation of the organs most nearly fitted by foimer habit to get this stimulation again} Assuming that such a supplement to the current psy- cho-physical theories of pleasure-pain is necessary, and that the details are left open of what the actual cellu- lar processes are by which this ' excess discharge ' is secured, our task is to explain and justify this law of Ex- cess. This I shall endeavour to do, dividing the cases of Accommodation or Adaptation into three heads, — 1 The negative of concentration or its reverse supplies the conditions of re- treat from a damaging stimulation — I suppose some form of draining, with Darwin's ' antithetic ' motor action and Meynert's Ahuehrbezvegutigen. I shall develop only the positive side.
i8o The Theory of Development.
the word * adaptation ' being used as in biology for the process by which accommodation is secured. We will have to show that the three certain stages of adaptation are brought under the formula of * organic selection ' by means of the auxiliary principle of ' Excess.' To make these three spheres plain to psychologists we may desig- nate them as, first, * biological adaptations ' (the sensitive plant, the curling tendril of the vine, heliotropism, the behaviour of the brainless frog); second, the reactions of consciousness when so-called * reflex attention ' dominates (animals without their hemispheres, the learning of in- fants and idiots short of voluntary effort); third, the con- scious selection of ends and their pursuit by volition (voluntary attention, cortical action, ' conduct '). These three forms of adaptation are treated in the course of this work under the headings, respectively, of * Organic Imi- tation,' 'Conscious Imitation,' and 'Volition.' If suc- cessfully made out, this will present to us a theory of unity in the motor life, and an addition to the evolution theory acceptible to psychologists.
Before proceeding further, however, it may be well to state the theory hitherto propounded and advocated by other psychologists, as well as by biologists, and to exam- ine it in view of the requirements now indicated; this comparison will also serve to bring out my own positions more clearly.
§ 2. Current Biological Theory of Adaptation.
It is clear that we are led to two relatively distinct questions: questions which are now familiar to us when put in the terms covered by the words * phylogenesis ' and 'ontogenesis.' First, how has the development of organic Current Biolo-^ical Theory nf A dap tat