But we have not yet got all the light we may — and it turns out to be psychological light in the sequel — from the consideration of these processes of compounding in the nervous organism. There is another great way of looking at the facts. The use of a given system of path- ways and muscles for the discharge of certain processes which are different from those for which the pathways and muscles originally arose, — this amounts, it is evident, to a great series of possible substitutions of processes one for s 258 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
anotJicr in the chain of events which a given issue of movement represents. Suppose, in accordance with the principle of * analogous feeling stimuli,' I make a wry face at my physician, because the sight of him makes me feel in a measure as I did when I took his bitter medicines. Here is the substitution of a visual stimulus for one of taste; to an outsider, it would be inexplicable that I should so ' express ' myself in reference to this man. As a fact, emotional attitudes actually found in man and animals show cases of connection between the stimulus and its dis- charge just as remote as this, and equally unintelligible, until we come to see that by the usurpation of old habits of movement, a new experience gets permanently substi- tuted for an old one, in the economy of the organism's growth, and so the conditions of the original rise and form of utility of the attitude in question is hopelessly obscured. The evident outcome of these facts of substitution is, therefore, an exaggerated difficulty in telling how a par- ticular attitude or series of organic changes, found asso- ciated with an emotion, actually arose; for not only may one substitution have been made in the course of race his- tory, but many may have been made. This is shown in the rise of the ' short-cuts ' described in my earlier discus- sion of the theory of Recapitulation.^ The development of one process or function may be so necessary, and its substitution for another, and its usurpation of the discharge processes of that other, so complete, that the other may quite disappear, or be so overlaid with newer superseding functions as to be a mere rudiment, an apparently useless appendage to the organism's life. But the fact that we can thus account for such cases, on the theory of service- Habitual Motor Attitudes. 259 able habits, is itself a sufficient reason for doing so. For it thus brings the whole life of organic reaction under the one principle of development.
This has also a very extraordinary application to the facts of consciousness. I shall show in a later chapter that it is this principle of organic substitution that lies at the basis of memory, and gives us an adequate genetic theory of the function of representation as a whole. And further, and still more surprising, it enables us to see that it is by the 'circular' or imitative form of reaction, that the higher motor functions have had their rise. For in cases where man, animal, or animalcule, acts in a way which does not seem to be imitative, — does not seem to have as its objective point the maintenance or reproduc- tion of a particular kind of stimulation, or ' copy,' — in all these cases, the principle of substitution comes in to remove the difficulty. We find that in these cases the original discharge processes of a reaction which was dis- tinctly imitative, which did arise as a special adaptation to a particular sort of stimulation, have been usurped by a substitute stimulus, image, sensation, etc., and so completely, that the original stimulation, image, sensa- tion, etc., which really effected and accounted for these processes in accordance with the law of utility, has been utterly blotted out. The case is argued later in some detail under the caption * principle of lapsed links,' ^ so I need only say here that this idea of ' analogous feeling stimuli,' tacked on by Darwin, merely, to the end of the formula for associated habit, becomes, in the higher reaches of psychological development, an explaining agent of the widest application.
26o Motor Attitudes and Expressions, One farther point must be noted. We are asked how- it is that there are certain kinds of activities which are not only expressive of mental states, but are actually seized upon and developed by man for just the purpose, and no other, of expressing himself to others, — speech, gesture, song, music, fine art, etc. These certainly seem to make simple expression an end in itself, and their importance is so great that society could not exist without these means of inter-communication between man and man. What, it may be asked, was the original utility of such actions apart from the conveying of a meaning from one being to another?
It is easy to see, however, that true as this is, — and its importance is fundamental to social psychology,^ — it makes no exception to the law of utility. For, of course, the conjoint action, the gregarious life, the conveying of meanings from one individual to another, is an acquire- ment itself profoundly useful to the individual and to the race. So to say that certain movements originally acci- dental, or diffuse, or hedonic — these last mainly, it seems — did convey meanings to other onlookers, is only to say that these movements themselves are adjustments for utility, as truly as are the movements, for example, which secure food. And that these expressive actions are selected, and these expressing beings, is only a result of serviceable associated habit. The evolution of hand- writing, as an engine of expression, from the rude draw- ing of objects, shows that the first tracings were fitted to perform just this use, and did so. They therefore sur- vived, and were refined upon for this very utility.
In short, expression is itself an utility. ' Expression for 1 See my proposed volume of ' Interpretations.'
Habitual Motor Attitudes. 261 expression's sake,' the formula which we so often hear, is nonsense. What is really meant by it is conscious expres- sion, known to be expression, and ratified for the sake of social utilities.
A further factor in the ontogenetic acquirement of emo- tional attitudes and expressive functions is at once so im- portant and so obscure that I only mention it here; it has detailed treatment later on. I refer to the fact mentioned also by Darwin, and discussed by Romanes, Mantagazza, and others, that the young of animals, and especially young children, get most of these functions by direct conscious imitation of their elders. The child first really learns what certain emotions are, by imitating the indications of them which it sees in the faces of older persons. We will see later that this tendency to imitate is really the higher conscious form of the very way of getting all useful actions which we have seen in lower organisms, the ' circular pro- cess ' way; and so instead of presenting a new class of facts, it only serves to carry the principle of ' circular reaction ' into the higher reaches of conscious function. In conscious imitation we have an instinct in which the very method of adaptation has been embodied, has be- come a habit. After knowledge arises, and voluntary selection, the first thing necessary to the individual in order to direct his life is to find out about all possible experiences; so the child imitates everything, thus securing in its own feeling, by this its own act of laying hold on experiences, the way of judging of things — and the material of its judgments — as to their relative value for further cultivation, and their relative difficulty in pursuit.^ 1 This is developed below in Chap. XL, § 3 (which, however, cannot well be read without the earlier sections on Imitation); its social and educa- tional ' Interpretation ' is reserved Tor my later volume.
262 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
That great theatre of experience, that splendid natural kindergarten, the spontaneous games of children and ani- mals, plays of all kinds, is a practice ground in imitative semblances of what is afterwards life's serious business; and the young learn how such things feel by these imita- tions of them, and so get prepared for their actual onset in later life.
Looking back now upon all the facts which the various 'principles,' so called, are used to explain, we find a very mixed condition of things covered by the usual phrase 'expression of the emotions.' There are utility elements whose rise by adaptation is plain; utterly refractory convul- sive elements, whose lawlessness to all but mere discharge is evident; partially useful elements which had their origin in uses which they no longer serve; elements whose use- fulness is clearly outlived and which are falling rapidly into decay — 'rudimentary organs,' as the biologists are wont to say, — and various groups of confusions evidently due to the grinding, erosion, rivalry, of developmental processes among themselves. And with all this, we find masses of associated organic movements — in the bowels and vaso- motor system, with bizarre and uncouth sensations, such as flesh-creeping, shivering, back-crawling, fainting, etc. — shifted and shunted from one connection to another, till they seem to have no reason nor measure in their place and function. But the unreason of it all is itself reason- able, as we now see; and we have no right to complain at results which we have reason for expecting from the carry- ing out of our own principles.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
Organic Imitation. § I. The General Question.
We may now proceed to examine more carefully the type of reaction in which we have found both Habit and Accommodation to have their rise.
It will be remembered that we found the life process issuing in a great twofold adaptation, — expansions and contractions, — and we saw that the former represent wax- ing vital processes. Then we went on to say that all special adaptations are secured by the new hold upon beneficial stimulations reached by these expansive, out- reaching, movements. Thus a * circular ' activity is found in operation; life processes issuing in increased move- ments, by which in turn the stimulations to the life pro- cesses are kept in action. It will also be remembered that we found it necessary to postpone to the present chapter the further consideration of this type of activity.
In our consideration of suggestion we discovered an activity of a similar kind also, a * circular ' activity. We found it well to describe the child's hnitations in terms of very similar import, and it has been intimated that, since consciousness, of which imitation is generally considered a characteristic, is probably never absent from living organ- 264 Organic Imitation.
isms, possibly these two cases of ' circular ' activity might turn out to be one and the same thing.
Let us now examine this circular type of reaction some- what more closely, finding our clue w^ithout more ado in the analogy between the kind of nervous reaction which we have already seen to fulfil the conditions required by the preceding theory of development, and the mental function called Imitative Suggestion} This has the added advantage that it throws our fur- ther investigations on the side of psychology, and we have the problem of accounting for mental development^ although we shall consider it throughout as a new stage in the general problem already set for solution in the treatment of biological development.
Imitation is a matter of such familiarity to us all that it goes usually unattended to: so much so that professed psychologists have left it largely undiscussed. Whether it be one of the more ultimate facts or not, we now seem to have some evidence that it has never had its due in psychological theory. If we shall be able to trace its influence in the developed mind, even that will not be without its reward; but it may be possible that the law of the organic processes can be shown to be capable of an interpretation similar to that of the mental.
We may make it a part of our assumption at the start — what I have endeavoured to prove above — that an imita- tion is an ordinary sensori-motor reaction which finds its differentia in the single fact that it imitates: that is, its peculiarity is found in the locus of its muscular discharge. It is what I have called a ' circular activity ' on the bodily 1 See above, Chap. VI., § 4, and Chap. VII., §§ 1-2.
The General Qiiestioji. 265 side — brain-state due to stimulating conditions, muscular reaction which reproduces or retains the stimulating con- ditions, same brain-state again due to same stimulating conditions, and so on. The questions to be asked now are these: Where in our psycho-physical theory do we find place for this peculiar ' circular ' order of reaction; what is its value in consciousness and in mental development, and how does it itself arise and come to occupy the place it does?
It may be well to repeat that we might expect to find imitations — using the word for the present in this broad organic sense — wherever there is any degree of inter- action between a living organism and the external world. The effect of imitation, it is clear, is to make the brain a * repeating organ,' i.e., to secure the repetitions which on all biological theories the organism must have, if it is to develop. The muscular system is, as Eimer and others show, the expression and evidence of this fact. The place of imitation in life development is, therefore, theo- retically solvable in two ways: (i) by an examination of living creatures for actual imitations, and (2) by the deduction of this function from the theory of repetition in neurology and psychology — this latter provided we find that Nature does not herself present an environment sufficiently constant to give enough repetitions to supply the demands of neurology and psychology. If this last condition be unfulfilled — that is, if Nature do actually repeat herself through her stimulating agencies, light, sound, etc., sufficiently often and with sufficient regularity to secure nervous and mental development — then imita- tion may be a side phenomenon, an incident merely. In that case the old biological theory, which uses habit alone ^> with lucky chance, and takes no account of the nervous process of pleasure and pain, or the function of conscious- ness, in securing accommodations, remains available. But I have already criticised that view.
Without taking up these questions again, I wish, while citing incidentally cases of the occurrence of imitation, to show the importance of repetitions and of the imitative way of securing repetitions, in the progress of mind, and thus to supply further support to what I may call the 'psychological theory of development' outlined in the earlier pages.
If it be true, at the outset, that organic development proceeds by reactions, and if there be the two kinds of reaction usually distinguished, i.e., those which involve consciousness as a necessary factor and those which do not, then the first question comes: In which of these categories do imitative reactions fall.? Evidently in large measure in the category of consciousness; the child is usually conscious of what he imitates. If we further dis- tinguish this category in as far as it marks the area of conscious life which is ' plum up,' so to speak, against the environment — directly amenable to external stimulation — by the word 'suggestion,' we have thus marked off the most evident surface features of imitation. Imitation is then, so far, an instance of 'suggestive reaction' — another phrase now sufficiently well defined.^ And this is the most evident meaning of the term ' imitation ' in popular and strictly psychological usage. We shall therefore proceed out from this more popular conception.
Now let us look more closely at this kind of conscious- ness, and find its analogies. A mocking-bird, we say, 1 See above, Chap. VI.
The General Question. 267 imitates a sparrow, a beaver imitates an architect, a child imitates his nurse, a man imitates his rector. CaUing the idea of the result which the imitator is supposed to have some dim or clear consciousness of, the 'copy,' we find that we are forced to consider this ' consciousness of the copy ' very different in these several cases. The copy is clearly defined, certainly, in the child's mind when he imitates a movement; and also in the man's mind, although it is very much more complex and associative, when he imitates his rector. But we have a very different state of consciousness in the parrot or mocking-bird, and this is true even more strikingly in the case of the beaver. In- deed, these four cases are typical divisions in the psychology of action, i.e., volition (the man), suggestion (the infant), reflex action (the mocking-bird), instinct (the beaver). Yet suppose I make any one of four remarks to an ordi- nary man on the street: 'the beaver's dam is a good imi- tation,' or 'the mocking-bird's song is a good imitation,' or 'the child's movement is a good imitation,' or 'the man's conduct is a good imitation ' — this working man would understand me and accept the opinion with no further explanation on my part and no further questioning on his part.
We see, therefore, that even in popular language, these so-called kinds of action have something in common, and that the word ' imitation ' is not greatly strained in ex- pressing this common element. There is in all the in- stances some kind of constructive idea, a ' copy,' in more or less conscious clearness, which calls the action out, and which it is the business of the imitator to reinstate or bring about somehow for himself. Now, this is just what I wish to inquire into: the nature and significance of this 268 Organic Imitation.
* copy; ' aiming, if possible, to show how all the forms of action which show this common element could have arisen, and what principles of development they imply.
§ 2. The Neurological Que s Hon.
On the physiological side, the simple imitations of child- hood present the purest type. And the law of repetition in neurology must be brought in, in some way, to supply its nervous basis. No one probably will be disposed to deny this. We find it possible, also, just as soon as we bring to mind the action of accommodation and habit, no matter what theory we adopt of their mechanism, to show that the element common to the child's imitations, and all the other instances mentioned, is very plain. Current theories agree that voluntary reactions repeated tend to become organic as direct suggestions; that the nervous process becomes smooth through habit; that suggestions repeated tend to become still more independent of con- sciousness as secondary automatic and reflex reactions, by the same principle; that reflex reactions, when repeated, co-ordinated, and inherited, or selected from congenital variations, become instincts. All this is simply and plainly habit; and habit is due to repetition, no matter, again, how it is secured.
But it is just as clear to current thought that the whole process works also the other way. Instincts are con- stantly being snubbed, contradicted, disused, modified, until all that is left is an instinctive torso, a fragment, a tendency merely, and this we call, in psychology, impulse; and these impulses, when recognized, ratified, indulged, work up into volitions again. Now, all this reverse process The Ncicrological Qucstioi. 269 is due to the principle and fact of accommodation, so familiar to us in view of our earlier discussions. And here, again, we may speak only of the facts, leaving out of account all the theory of how it is done.
All this so far is so evident to current thought, that only details are now discussed in the books. It only remains, therefore, to ask whether the self-sustaining type of ner- vous action, that which is actually present in the child's conscious imitation, — i.e., eye-stimulus, then central pro- cess, then movement of the child's own member, which itself reinstates the same eye-stimulus — whether this is present from the first stages of evolution. If so, then habit and accommodation as depicted in the earlier chap- ter will do the work by its aid; and psychological develop- ment can be read as a chapter of biological evolution. But if not, then when in the organic series did conscious imita- tion arise, and why } For as sure as it is that conscious- ness gives us imitation at all, so sure is it that the nervous system performs, without any violation of its ordinary meth- ods, the circular process by which the imitation goes on.
This question, I insist again, as I have above, is an urgent one, and admits of only two possible answers: either the neurological analogue of imitation was present from the first, and in conscious imitation becomes explicit as mental accommodation, or it has come in somewhere in the biological series. I have already said that the second alternative might be true, allowing a certain amount of development under constant conditions before the rise of special differentiated movements of expansion and contrac- tion — as much development as is represented by simple habit in very low organisms whose life is a round of recur- ring stimulations and reactions.
270 Organic Imitation.
But it is difficult to see how reactions which represent habit merely could get much complexity. In a constant environment they would soon exhaust the compounding of results due to variety of stimulations. And if the environ- ment changed, this compounding of habits would only make the organism more rigid and less able to adapt itself. The only solution of this point — simply slurred or not seen by most biologists — is that adopted by Spencer in his law of heightened nervous discharge; but this only gave a new factor, which served historically to bring in the nervous process of pleasure and pain, and so to lead to the other alternative given above. We have instances of what mere habit will do, in higher organisms, in the endless repetitions of the same sounds by the weak-minded, by children, and by parrots — continued muscular tension kept up by circular discharge until nervous exhaustion ensues. This is characteristic of the cataleptic condition also, as I shall have occasion to remark below in speaking of aboidia. Such persons do not develop or grow. They are like wound-up mechanical devices, as far as a living organism can in any case be compared with such a self- repeating mechanical device (say a swinging pendulum), which never gets exhausted nor grows.
We should expect accordingly to find evidence of the imitative, i.e., self-sustaining, type of reaction in very early organisms.
There is, in fact, a distinct trend in recent biological thought directly toward a construction of this kind. In- deed, this view of nervous adaptation is in line, I think, with the most important and thorough contributions lately made to the theory of organic movement. Two recent investigators have summed up evidence which supplies.
The N^ euro logical Qticstioii. 271 in great part, the basis long desiderated for a theory of muscular action and development. Eimer^ has stated the facts which make it probable that all the '* morpho- logical properties of muscle are the result of functional activity." On his view contraction waves leave markings which account for both muscle-fibres and striation. The series of stages in the development of voluntary muscle which biological science is now cognizant of is very strik- ing. That there are no anatomical divisions corresponding to the striation of muscle is shown by recent observations. It remains, then, only to find a physiological conception of contraction which, while applicable primarily to unicellular creatures, provides for the development of the organism and the differentiation of its parts by repetition of function with progressive adaptation. Natural history requires, in the words of Engelmann, that " every attempt to explain the mechanism of protoplasmic movement must extend to all the other phenomena of contractility." ^