Here it is easy to see that the course of a continued sug- gestive reaction — walking regularly forward — is brought into conflict with the new copy for imitation, supplied by her sister's action. There arises a balance of motor pro- cesses, attention is divided, and the final course is the out- come of a co-ordination of these rival processes in the attention. So she wills — and it is a real act of will — to go on ^ around the table alone, but only after the great hesitation or embarrassment which is a true indication of deliberation.
Coming to look at the place of volition in the race devel- opment of consciousness, we find that the determination of the method of its rise in the individual is instructive. Viewed objectively, a mental organism is subject, at any stage, to the two principles. Habit and Accommodation, already formulated above. Habit represents what it in- herits and what it tends most naturally to do, under the guidance of all experiences up to date. Accommodation represents its degree of openness or adaptability, in giving the new reactions, which new stimulations or arrange- 1 This 'game,' which became very popular with the children, was really an experiment on my part, suggested, in my meditation on this topic, by contrast to an earlier experiment which I tried with H., when she was in her second and third years. This latter was an attempt to bring out the regularity of the operation of suggestion, by arranging attractive things about a room, so that only after reaching one could she see the next, etc. I found her the victim, of course, to this device. She rushed from one of the objects to another with great avidity.
386 The Origin of Volition.
ments of stimulations call upon it to make. Now just as in the child the phenomena of suggestion became more and more complex, from the physiological reflex type up to the ideo-motor, deliberative, and, finally, the jDcrsistent type, which is volition; so, in the animal series, there is a corresponding development. Volition is found only in animals having ideation, memory, desires. Who can doubt that the dog desires the morsel which he holds upon his nose, awaiting his master's permission to eat it t All the conditions of desire are there; complex representation, incipient action, and inhibition. And who can doubt that there is volition when he gets permission and eats the morsel } But lower in the scale, such cases shade down into the sphere of suggestion, as the animal becomes less ideational, less social, more organic, and more dependent upon a small circle of stimulations.
In volition, therefore, we find the point of meeting of the two principles. Habit and Accommodation, and their common function. It is through volition that the levelling effects of habit are counteracted in the higher orders of life, since it brings possibilities of adjustment to absent and distant conditions, and so wages conflict with the dictates of present sensation. Yet it is through volition on the other hand, that new habits are formed. Only by the continued inhibitions and controls of volition is a new action which is still hard to perform preserved amid the pressing urgencies of what is old and easy. So volition ministers to both kinds of development, and sums them up; and so justifies both its survival and its splendid eminence among all the survivals in the mental series.
To put the same thought from the point of view of any given stage of evolution, we may say that two factors are Phylogenetic.
potent in the manifestations of the character of the or- ganism at whatever stage: endowment and environment. All habits add to endowment, and all accommodations are concessions of endowment to environment. Now, as is seen in Fig. XVI., the environment (i), working as sugges- tion (2), brings about a new volition (3), this is repeated Endowmentt i Habit Bin if Environment Fig. XVI. — Illustrating Phylogenetic Development.
by persistent reaction, and so forms habit (4), this is added to endowment (5), by heredity or natural selection, and so constitutes an element of instinctive character (6), in the next generation, and this character or instinct, in the new individual, again confronts the suggestions of the physical and moral environment (i). So we have in the 3^8 The Origin of Volition.
highest exhibition of reflective voHtion no departure in type — however v^ide a departure it be in meaning and impUcations for philosophy — from the first adaptive reac- tions of organic Hfe. Habit is formed, in the face of sug- gestion, through persistent imitation and volition, and habit, made organic in character, is modified in turn by changed environment which is reacted to by imitation and volition. What is this but a phylogenetic exhibition of the * circular activity ' seen in all development? — just what we would expect, if volition is really a new more complex form of the interaction of Habit and Accommodation in the growth of the individual.
§ 4. Special Evidence.
Besides the very high presumption that volition, con- sidered as a departure in the mental life, arises in the way of a new adaptation of the living creature to its sur- roundings, and that it also follows the law of accommoda- tion by imitation which is the agent of all the earlier adaptations; and besides the presumption afforded by the great reasonableness of the view as based upon an adequate analysis of desire and volition — besides all this, there are several lines of objective evidence which connect early volition directly with reactions of the imitative type.
I. In the first place, the instances of so-called pre- imitativc volition in infants, reported by various observers, can generally be explained in much simpler terms. The categories of suggestion which I have marked out in an earlier chapter, shading off into one another as they do by imperceptible degrees, seem to afford plenty of latitude for these cases. They differ greatly from the well-defined special Evidence. 389 classes of movements called reflex, impulsive, automatic, etc., inasmuch as normal suggestion represents a side of mental growth which has heretofore gone largely unformu- lated. Reflex, impulse, instinct, etc., all represent habit, but they all presuppose accommodation, and it is only as we get some kind of a unifying principle of accommoda- tion, that the partial statements of the law of habit get any common significance. Suggestion is the accommodation side of growth, all the way up to the most vivid forms of consciousness, and imitation is certainly — in its conscious form — the most direct form of suggestion. And even after volition ushers in a higher type of accommodation, suggestion still supplies most of its impetus. So when it seems impossible to assign a given reaction to any one of the categories of habit, that is no reason for leaping at once to volition, the most advanced form of accommoda- tion; rather ought we to attempt to find its place under suggestion, which is the simpler form of accommodation.
Accordingly, we may, as the result shows, place all of the infant's so-called 'efforts,' in its early months, under the category of suggestion, only having to recognize cer- tain cases which are, more evidently than others, germi- nal to volition. My child E., early in her second month, strained to lift her head at the sound of any one entering the room, and in her fourth month, after the child had been frequently lifted to a sitting posture by the clasping of her hands around her mother's fingers, the mere sight of fingers extended before her made her grasp at them and 'attempt' to raise herself. Now, as it happens, it is just this case of so-called * effort ' that is appealed to as show- ing very early volition. Preyer says:^ "We may, therefore, 1 Mind of the Child, Vol. I., p. 265.
390 The Origin of Volition.
without hesitation, refer the period of the first distinct manifestation of the activity of will in the infant in this field, to that week in which the head, while he is awake, no longer bobs hither and thither — in general, the fourth to the fifth month." That is, Preyer holds that the successful holding up of the head is voluntary, while the various un- successful attempts of the child to do so were possibly not. These earlier ' efforts ' are reactions brought about by association between the advantageous sensations secured through sight, taste, etc., while the child is held erect, and the muscular sensations of erectness. So Preyer holds, and this explanation is, I think, quite correct as far as it goes. But as to this particular act, I find these 'efforts' suggested by noises, sights, especially by personal sugges- tions, at such an early age that the reaction for erect posture is probably to be considered a matter of native inherited tendency, just as the walking reflex is. So that the whole thing becomes a case of physiological and sen- sori-motor suggestion. And even when acquired com- pletely— when there is no 'bobbing hither and thither' — there is no need whatever to find in it, as Preyer does, evidence of will. We adults hold our heads up because our normal sensational series, especially of the visual and muscular sensations, and their correspondences, have been acquired since we have been holding our heads up, and so they all conspire by their associative influence to stimulate the contractions necessary for this head position. There is no need to bring in volition, or even attention. And it is probable that these associations only reinforce the native tendency I have spoken of. Such efforts, therefore, on the part of the child, lack deliberation, and all but, per- haps, the faintest glimmerings of desire.
I special Evidence, 391 A similar account may be given of 'simple imitation.' It does not involve volition; it is, rather, simple ideo-motor suggestion made possible by associations between visual and auditory stimulations, on one hand, and muscle sen- sations on the other. Here, again, I differ from Preyer, instead of having the advantage of agreeing with him, which the following quotation seems to give me.^ He says: 2 ''The first imitations are the first distinct, repre- sented, and willed movements." This makes all imita- tions voluntary: both the simple and the persistent forms. Now Preyer recognizes such a distinction, — 'spontaneous' and ' deliberative ' imitation are his terms, — but does nothing with the distinction. To me it is as fundamental in the child's development as the distinction between suggestion and volition, between reaction and conduct. Simple imitation falls easily under suggestion, because it involves no memory, necessarily, no selection, no variation, no desire, no deliberation, no effort; only a sensation and a movement in organic connection. This is mere habit. How many of the essentials of volition does the parrot have, or the young bird that imitates the old one's flight } Why should these acts be thought voluntary.? But persistent imitation, as we have seen, presents new problems: the breaking up of habit; vivid selection on the part of con- sciousness; the new, strenuous experience called effort; and the actual accomplishment of the new, which wc call the process of learning. Indeed, so great is the differ- ence, that whenever a natural history view of consciousness, which involves continuous development, is desired, it is 1 Professor Sully called my attention to this apparent agreement. See his remarks, Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psych., London meeting, 1892, p. 55.
2 Preyer, Mind of the Child, I., 340.
392 The Origin of Volition.
just this magnificent appearance of discontinuity which is the point of greatest difficulty; and it may be as well to remind the disciples of Maine de Biran, Reid, and William James, that the act of the infant's ' try-try-again ' gives them their golden opportunity.
These instances may serve to show the way in which, as I think, the category of suggestion, on the accommo- dation side of mental development, has been neglected, with the result that the 'psychologist's fallacy' has been committed regularly by those who have read volition into the infant's consciousness at such early stages of its growth.
As far, therefore, as cases of so-called effort shade downwards into suggestions, they are properly classified as pre-volitional. But there is a distinct class of phe- nomena in which the shading is the reverse, — cases in which the rudiments of volition must be recos-nized even in the absence of ' external copies ' for imitation. This brings us, in a later section,^ to the child's imitation of its own memories and imaginations, and to those cases which illustrate the relation of 'organic' and 'plastic' imitation to volition.
11. The results of a research on students, which I re- port elsewhere^ under the title, 'Persistent Imitation Experiments.' The subject is told to imitate a simple figure, called the 'copy,' set before him, drawing in pencil or chalk, at a single stroke. Then he compares his per- formance with the copy and tries again; and so on, until 1 Below, § 5 of this chapter.
2 See Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psychology, London, August, 1892, p. 51, for first statement, and details with discussion in The Psychological Review, II., special Evidence, satisfied with the result. This clone, the number of his efforts is noted. This I may call in the tables (VIII., IX.) the case 'with comparison.' Then he is instructed to go through the same experiment again, except that his eyes are now bandaged, so that he is not able to compare his TABLE VIII.
Copy.
Will Stimulus (Av. No. of Efforts in Each Experi- ment).
No. of Experiments.
No. of Persons.
a. External visual, with comparison b. External visual, without comparison c. Memory image after ten minutes, with comparison d. Memory image after ten minutes, without comparison e. Memory image after fifteen minutes, with comparison / Memory image after fifteen min- utes, without comparison...I ratio 1.60 51 6 6 4 I Persistent Imitation Experiments: A. Influence of comparison = increase of will stimulus from about 75% to 50% according to lapse of time.
own results with the copy. The number of efforts is noted as before. This is the case 'without comparison.'
Now it is evident that the relative number of 'efforts' in each case may be taken to indicate the amount of tendency the subject has to continue the imitation, — a quantity technically known as 'will stimulus.' The results given in the tables show that in the case ' without com- The Origin of Volition.
parison ' the subject is liable to be satisfied with a smaller number of efforts; this would indicate that when the new visual picture is not reported, there is not the same will stimulus. But in the other case, 'with comparison,' effort after effort is made, until success is attained, or until the subject gives it up; so the inference is that there is then continued will stimulus until either the motor plu- rality is overcome, or the stimulus effect is itself inhibited TABLE IX.
Copy.
Will Stimulus (Av. No. of Efforts in Each Experi- ment.)
No. of Experiments.
No. of Persons.
a. External visual, with comparison b. Memory image after ten minutes, with comparison c. Memory image after one minute, without comparison d. Memory image after ten minutes, without comparison -ratio 1.65 51 30 51 30 6 4 6 4 Persistent Imitation Experiments: B. Diminution of motor force of memory after ten minutes = from about 60% to 80%, according as com- parison is made, or not, of results with memory image.
by discouragement. The figures (Table VIII., A) show that in the case of comparison there is an increase of from 75 per cent, down to 50 per cent, in the will stimulus for memory durations from one down to ten minutes.
Table IX., B. shows the further interesting result that if the external 'copy' be removed and the subject rely upon his memory, the number of efforts tends to decrease in some ratio with the length of time elapsed. This is what special Evidence. 395 we should expect from other experiments on the faithful- ness of memory ^ which show that the memory process loses its definite character with time. The figures show a diminution of the motor force of a memory after ten minutes from about 60 per cent, to 80 per cent., accord- ing as comparison of results with the memory image is made or not.
This investigation gives evidence of the necessity for motor co-ordination — what is called 'comparison' — in the antecedents to voluntary movement. This is the essential contention of the doctrine of the genesis of volition stated above; and it is interesting to find that in our adult life our choices are still backed in a regular way by that dynamogenic agency which I call ' will stimulus.'
III. Another kind of evidence is found in the behaviour of the attention. In a great class of pathological cases of anaesthesia which involves paralysis when the eyes or ears are closed, but not when they are open — we find evidence that disturbances of attention bring about derangements of voluntary movement. This may occur even when the pa- tient keeps intact all the apparatus of movement, and all the memories of the movements which he desires to make.
1 Experiments on memory faithfulness have been made by Wolfe, by Ebbinghaus, by Miiller, and by Warren and myself (^Proceedings of the Avier. Psych. Assoc, 1893, P- ^S; see also The Psychological Revieiv, 1895, where the results of these ' Persistent Imitation Experiments ' are to be reported and discussed). The method of testing memory by measuring the amount of motor force or 'will stimulus' possessed by memories of various duration, was first proposed by me in connection with these experiments (see Proceedings of Cong, of Exp. Psychol, 2d Session, London, 1892, p. 51). In the paper referred to as soon to be published, this method is called the * dynamogenic method,' and a correlation is suggested between the relative motor force of a memory, after a certain interval, and its degree of faithfulness to its original perception, after the same interval.
39^ The Origin of Volitio7i.
And the result is sometimes reversed, a patient may be able to move a member except when he sees it. Here the visual images inhibit the movement.^ In the former case, the attention has become dependent for certain voluntary functions, upon immediate visual or auditory stimulation, and in its absence, these voluntary functions are impos- sible.^ This shows that a degree of correlation of optical, kinsesthetic, auditory, etc., impressions is necessary for voluntary movement, and that this correlation is here, as everywhere else, a function of the attention. In normal voluntary movement, attention need not be given neces- sarily to the muscular movement itself, — although that is one type of voluntary attention, — but it may be given to some other kind of sensation, auditory, visual, etc., which has come to play the leading part in this particular move- ment, and under the lead of which the correlation which issues in movement is effected.
More is said of this below in the general theory of volun- tary movement;^ but here it may be noted how clearly this accords with what we found above to be the behaviour of the child's attention in performing its first voluntary drawings. His attention has to be fastened upon the thing or * copy ' imitated, not on his hand, nor on his memories of movement. Passy finds that a young child copies a new thing or copy by giving attention to his visual memory pictures. This is shown, as I have said above, by the fact that he puts into his drawing, certain 1 Janet, Un cas d^Aboulie, Revue Philos., March, 1891.
2 See Binet and Fere, who report a patient who could thrust out his tongue only when he saw it in a mirror, Arch, de Physiologie, 1887, II., p. 371; Pick, Zeitsch, fiir Physiologic, IV., 1892, 161 ff., and Baldwin, Philos. Review, IL, special Evidence. 397 features such as ears, arms, and minor details, which are not in the actual thing or copy, but only in his own earlier visual pictures. So I find that in imitating new words, there is a constant tendency on the part of the child, to reproduce terms he already knows in place of the words of the new lesson. In imitating speech also, the child does not learn by paying attention to the hps of the speaker. He often learns the guttural letters, which are not spoken with the lips, sooner than many of the others.^ Much less does he pay attention to his own lips; from all appearances he does not know that he is using his lips. The most that lip sensations or memories do is to supply to him the series of associations which follow upon the auditory stimulations. It is these last to which he pays attention.
Cases are abundant not only in which aphasia follows lesions of the auditory centre, but in which it follows le- sions located in the connections between the auditory and the word-seeing and word-hearing centres. Such a lesion interferes with the correlative or associative function. And it is extraordinarily suggestive of the new function found in persistent imitation, that while this latter often becomes impossible, in these cases, yet the simple imitative copying of sounds heard or movements seen, may still take place. Simple ideo-motor suggestion, as typified in simple imita- tion, remains intact; but persistent imitation effort, the correlation involved in voluntary attention and movement, all this is lost.
Janet thinks ^ the incapacity to touch and handle objects in certain cases, is inversely as the degree of recognition or familiarity with the objects, their uses, etc.; which is to say, — when we come to understand that recognition may 1 See Tracy, Psychology of Childhood. - Loc. cit.
398 The Origin of Volition, itself be simply a motor attitude or tendency of attention, — that the patient's ability depends largely upon the degree of involuntariness of attention, that is, of the degree of simple habit of attending.
In view of what has now been said, the real difference between what is voluntary and what is not becomes very emphatic, and we have the key, I think, to the under- standing of total aboulia, or lack of will, in cases of dis- ease; and partial aboulia, seen in the loss of particular voluntary functions, such as speech, writing, etc.^ These matters furnish a further line of evidence which I shall now put forward.
IV. Evidence from aboulia, partial or total, may now be brought. The general principle of mental pathology that the dissolution of complex functions follows the inverse order of their acquisition, applies to the voluntary activi- ties in two ways.
First, we should find stages of degeneration correspond- ing to the great epochs of mental development seen in the phylogenetic or race series; this would seem to require 1 While not able to speak as an expert in Mental Pathology, I yet venture to express the opinion that there is only a difference of degree between the com- plete loss of will, the inability to make effort or to inhibit impulse, called aboulia, and some cases of the loss of particular voluntary functions only, — giving aphasia, agraphia, etc., — despite the apparent difference that, in these latter cases, mental determination or effort to do the act in question remains unim- paired. The patient in agraphia, it might be said, makes effort to write, but fails; his will is healthy, only his handwriting fails. On the contrary, the function called will really gets its right to be from the co-ordination of simpler functions, its stability and force must depend upon the support it gets from these simpler co-ordinations or functions; and the derangement of any one of them, such as handwriting, — unless of course the lesion be peripheral, — must withdraw support from the whole, and so weaken the function of will generally. We are all aboulic just to the degree in which our attentive co- ordinations are unstable and independent of one another. This seems to be required on any psycho-physical conception of will. Cf. Chap. XV.
special Evidence, 399 that voluntary action should be impaired by a less serious derangement than simple suggestive reactions; and that the derangement of the ideo-motor should precede that of the sensori-motor. Also that these last, which involve clear consciousness, might be damaged or absent while reflex functions still remain, and that, last of all, the rhythmic, so-called automatic processes, which are necessary to life in general, should remain alone upon the field. All of these propositions, except the first, which concerns volun- tary action, are such commonplaces in psychology as well as in physiology, that I need mention them only to give new confirmation to the great features of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic parallelism on the side of mind.
But, second, this progressive impairment of mental fac- ulty in the individual repeats inversely the process by which the individual himself learns his lessons in action. The man retrogrades literally into second childhood, both in regard to his power of mind as a whole, and in regard to the particular elements of any distinct functions which happen to be affected by disease or accident.
These two cases illustrate the two very distinct and in- structive phases of voluntary failure, already characterized as total and partial aboulia. In the former case, the im- pairment is general, extending to the co-ordinating function as a whole, and so involving each particular activity equally. The old man writes tremblingly, speaks falteringly, recog- nizes faces and things badly, walks haltingly, — all of which follow from the fact that he is able to attend only par- tially and fitfully. In partial aboulia, on the other hand, one special function is impaired, or more; the rest remain intact. Here belong sensory aphasia, agraphia, arising from arterial obstructions, central lesion, etc. Some par- 400 The Origin of Volition, ticular prop to the attention gets knocked away, and so one line of voluntary activity is seriously injured or de- stroyed; but the co-ordination of the other brain seats is still intact, and their functions are weakened only to the degree in which their structure of attention also rested upon this prop.
Both these cases of loss or impairment of will may be put in evidence as showing the place of volition in mental development, provided only the law be true that mind degenerates in the same order as it grows, only back- wards; that is, that the function which it acquires latest, it loses first and most easily. We then have to ask what the actual facts of mental pathology are which show con- ditions of the impairment of will.
Considering total aboulia first, the condition of general levelling down or decay of the mental faculties, gives us our instances. There are three recognized cases of such general mental break-down, all involving total or progres- sive aboulia; first, destruction of the cerebral hemispheres, corresponding to their removal from animals by the experi- mental physiologists; second, temporary subsidence of con- sciousness under the influence of drugs, or in derangement of the vaso-motor mechanism, as in faintness, trance, fits, etc.; and third, diseases distinctly recognized as mental, such as hysteria, of which the universal symptoms are certain derangements of consciousness, enfeebled attention, remarkable perversions of movement, etc. To these must be added idiocy or congenital mental defect.^ Looking at 1 I omit the phenomena of old age, since neither physiologists nor psy- chologists have given them any very fruitful study. The appearance of what seems to be increased power of will — self-will — in old persons, is perhaps due to the great strengthening of habit, together with the general narrowness of consciousness.
special Evidciice. 401 each of these four cases, we find very evident confirmation of the view of volition explained in the foregoing pages.