3. A different complication is shown in another case cited by Ross,^ in which deep-seated aphasia (dysphasia) is associated with alexia, without agraphia. This patient's speech movements were probably dependent upon the visual word centre for stimulation, while his writing move- ^ Arch, fur Psychiatric, XXII., heft 3.
2 Cited by Ross, PVood's Medical Monographs, Vol. VI., No. I, 1890, p.
ments were not so dependent; consequently alexia (lesion of the visual word centre) carried with it amnesic aphasia, but not agraphia.
4. Case cited by Lichtheim.^ It shows the preserva- tion of a variety of simple imitative or ideo-motor sugges- tive reactions, while the corresponding voluntary functions were lost. The patient could copy handwriting, write to dictation, repeat words heard, and read aloud, but he could not write nor speak spontaneously. It is accordingly a case of amnesic aphasia and agraphia, involving loss of the voluntary functions only. This case is a very fine illustra- tion of my thesis, inasmuch as it shows the action of the principle of Habit, whereby activities at first learned by persistent effort have become ideo-motor, so that it is only their voluntary performance^ and tJie ability to learn more^ which are impaired.
Again there are cases which show a finer application still of the law of Habit, in connection with each of the functions of voluntary movement. It is impossible to say beforehand just how much or how little of what is, as a whole, an action learned by imitative effort remains still under voluntary control at any time. A great part of any one of our habitual actions is regularly under subcortical or ideo-motor control, except for inhibitions or unusual exer- cises of it.
We find that speech, for example, is subject to a great many finer degrees of impairment. Sentence-making may be impossible, while the words taken alone may be spoken. Words again may be impossible, while the simple syllabic sounds may be quite possible. Certain classes of words, as nouns and names, may disappear while other classes of 2E 41 8 The Origin of Volition.
words remain. And finally, all that the patient may be capable of is some single oft-repeated sound.^ In all this we see reversed the child's progress from simple imitation of sounds, to effortful repetition, then to the co-ordination of sounds or syllables into words, then to imitations of short sentences which he hears, and finally to spontaneous combinations of his own to express his meaning.
A similar series of facts is found also in agraphia, or derangements of writing; stages in which there are, in order, certain defects becoming more and more grave. There is trembling handwriting, failure to write sentences, when certain words can still be written; failure to write words, while musical notation, or single letters, or both, may still be written; failure to write letters, while figures ^ may still be written; failure to write anything except to dictation;^ and finally, failure to write at all without copies, although copies may still be traced. Here is retrogres- sion from the highest co-ordination of hand movements, down to the tracery imitation already described; * the final stage being that in which meaningless scrawls show the absence of all central co-ordination.^ So in the case of alexia, or impairment of reading; a function which may be destroyed without impairing either speech or writing.^ It may extend to the reading 1 See Kussmaul, Storiingen der Sprache, pp. 9 and 164, and for illustrative cases, Revue Philos.^ Oct. 1892, p. 157 ff. Also Bateman, On Aphasia, p. 75. Ribot traces this progress, as a phenomenon of memory, Maladies de la Mevioire, pp. 132 ff.; cf. Brazier, Revue Philos., Oct. 1892, p. 364.
2 Case of Dejerine, Mem. Soc. de Biologie, Feb. 27, 1892; cf. Brain, 6 Alexia without agraphia is rare; but see the remarkable case of Dejerine cited in the second note above. Agraphia came on subsequently in conse- quence of a second lesion found at the autopsy.
special Evidaice. 419 of handwriting only (even the patient's own ^ ); or to read- ing of music notation only;^ or to all printing and hand- writing except numerical figures;^ or to all but draw- ings and outlines of objects; or to all signs except music notation; or, finally, to all interpretation of visual signs; in which case only simple sensations of sight remain, and the patient reaches the condition called psychic blindness.^ Recent observations show a corresponding analysis by disease of the faculty of musical expression. The power of playing on instruments, or singing by note, may be lost, while familiar selections may still be executed from memory; and, when the disease has developed further, an air becomes impossible from memory, but may still be exe- cuted by the imitation of another's performance.^ Oppen- heim cites the case of a patient who could not sing until the words of a familiar song were spoken to him,^ although he could not repeat the words; and Franckl cites the case of a patient with right-sided hemiplegia, agraphia, alexia, and aphasia to the extent of echolalia, who yet sang one song, but without the words.'' These last two cases ^ illus- trate purely suggestive or automatic singing.^ 1 Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XVII.
2 Ballet, quoted by Wallaschek.
* Cf. the analysis into five stages of defect in reading, by Weissenberg, Arch.fiir Psychiatric, XXII., 1891, p. 442.
^ See Brazier, loc. cit., and Case 3 of Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XIII., 1888, p. 354, quoted by Wallaschek, Zeitschrift fiir Psychologic, Vol. VI., p. 8.
^ Loc. cit., XIII., p. 358; cf. also Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 12.
8 See also another of Oppcnheim's (a man who could not read, but yet sang off correctly a printed musical score), loc. cit., p. 364; and yet another, of a boy who sang a song in his eleventh month, before he learned to speak (Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 13).
® See my own case above, Chap. VI., § 3 (* Sense Exaltation''').
420 The Origin of Volition.
The connection between speech and music which has been spoken of above,^ may also be serviceable in another way. Patients have been reported who could speak only by singing the words. In such cases they may be able thus to understand the words,^ or even yet not to understand them.^ The latter illustrates the reflex or suggestive movements of speech, which may be stimulated through the centre of the understanding of music, whether it be visual or auditory. Gowers accounts for this latter case by the observation that the text, in musical execution, is simply a convenience, not an essential, and the meaning of the words is, in learning, entirely subordinated to the correct music. ^ It is again essential to remark here, — in order to keep our argument clearly in view, — that there may be aboulia for musical execution, leaving reflex or imitative execution intact; and that in such cases no new musical acquisitions can be made.* V. Still another class of facts may be cited as affording evidence in favour of my view of the rise of volition; the facts of brain development, as comparative embryology 2 Case referred to by Starr, Psycholog. Revietv^ I., 1894, p. 92. ^ Diseases of the Brain, 1885, p. 122.
* The final loss of the imitative function as involved in gesture, general move- ment, etc. (so-called amif?tia; see Kussmaul, loc. cit., p. 159 ff., and Ballet, loc. cit., p. 75), and its amnesic phase need not be dwelt upon. Amimia reduces the patient to the stage of pre-imitative suggestion, again confirming the reverse parallel between order of acquisition and order of loss. A case recently re- ported by Mills in Philada. Hasp. Reports, 1893, brings out the facts clearly. A patient, having right hemiplegia and motor aphasia, without word-deafness, lost all expression by vioveiiients of any kind, except that he uttered ' la-la ' over and over, and could still laugh when pleased. The expressive move- ments which he retained longest — apart from those mentioned — were the ' nod ' and * shake ' of head to signify ' yes ' and ' no.' As we would expect, facial expression usually remains intact, even in cases of amimia which in- volves all voluntary pantomine, gesture, etc.
special Evidence. 421 and early brain anatomy supply them. Two very general questions arise in view of our present topic: we are interested to know, first, what kind of motor apparatus the child is born with; and, second, in what order he adds to his motor equipment in the way of activities which may be described as voluntary. In answer to the first question, we may say without hesitation that the child begins life without the necessary apparatus for any voluntary action whatever. He lacks two very important, indeed, essential things: associative connections between the lower central organs and the cortex, with all traces of medulated nerve fibre; and, second, his cerebrum has not developed the different local centres and their connections with one another. So far there is no dispute.^ In regard to the second inquiry, — the time and order of development of complete activities, — experimental evi- dence is largely lacking and anatomical evidence is notoriously uncertain. Putting the anatomical evidence, however, with that of comparative physiology, we see ground to justify us in the position that volition is a matter of cortical co-ordination, occurring possibly about the sixth to eighth month, after simple imitation has become common and varied. It should be borne in mind, however, — lest this seem like special pleading, in view of the very scanty evidence at hand, — that it is not a ques- tion here of what is the true hypothesis, but of what alter- natives may be true.
The main facts now known may be thrown together very briefly. Soltmann^ found that young dogs did not respond to stimulation of the cortical motor centres until 1 Foster, Preyer, Bastian, Soltmann, Meyncrt.
42 2 The Origin of Voliiion.
nine days old, i.e., until two days after the eyes were open; then the reaction came first only from the fore paw. The same results were shown by looking for laming in the dog's movements after extirpation of the motor centres. Further, Soltmann, in considering the analogies of struct- ure, finds voluntary action in the child beginning from the middle to the end of the first quarter-year, and that it develops first for the arm, then hand, and last for the leg (the dog's hind paw was quite lawless — regellos — in its responses to stimulation as late as the sixth month). These deductions are accepted by Vierordt.^ Further, Soltmann finds that the child does not get the eyelid- touch reflex, which is a cortical reflex, till its seventh or eighth week.
Again, authorities have shown that the composition of the brain is not favourable to cortical action until the f seventh month. The nerve sheath is absent in the brain, the quantity of water is very large as compared with j the later brain condition,^ the necessary fibres have not ' developed between the motor cortex and the striate bodies (Vierordt), and certain cells then undergo changes making them comparable to the voluntary cells.^ Meynert^ has found further lack of preparation in the nerve courses of voluntary action in the human infant of four months. As to the difference between the young dog and the human infant, Ferrier says, in discussing Soltmann's results: '' The degree of development and control over move- | ments which a puppy reaches in ten days or a fortnight, 2 Wiesbach, Arch, filr Psych., II., III.
3 Jastrowicz, Parrot {Arch, de Physiologic, I., 530 ff.), Virchow.
■* Cited by Soltmann, loc. cit. 'mtB\ special Evideiice. 423 are not attained by the human infant under a year or more,"^ Further, if we suppose that in the child, as in the dog, the sight function is the first to develop its con- nections sufificiently to stimulate to voluntary action, we may fall back upon the researches of Flechsig, showing that fibres from the sight centres in the occipital cortex do not begin to appear in the child until the second or third month. Bernheim quotes Parrot to the effect that the nervous apparatus is not entirely ready for voluntary action until toward the end of the ninth month.
However uncertain some of these detailed observations and deductions may be, it is nevertheless easy to strike fair limits inside of which we may say conclusions are safe. Let us say, therefore, all allowances being made for differ- ences between man and dog, and for errors of observation, that voluntary action in the child arises and develops to perfection gradually, in connection with single functions separately, between about the fifth and ninth months; that the hand becomes first capable of voluntary use, and that its use occurs first in connection with stimulation through the eye.
Even with this very modest outcome, we find several interesting side-lights upon our results already arrived at in earlier connections.
1. Volition seems to come about the time of advent of suggestive reactions of the direct imitative kind.
2. It arises first in connection with the sight-hand- movement reaction, a result which we have already had reason to anticipate. This seems to give some justifica- tion both to the use of the hand in connection with eye stimulations of colour, etc., in the * dynamogenic method ' 1 Functions of the Brain, 2d edition, p. 364.
424 The Origin of Volition.
of study which we have been pursuing, and also to the view that sight (with hearing) go ahead of the other senses in stimulating to the higher co-ordinating processes of the organism. This means, in my jargon, that they are the avenues of greatest progress and attainment in the ' circular ' form of reaction, the ' organic imitation,' by which accommodation comes about. So it is no accident that they are the most imitative of the senses, when imita- tion becomes conscious.
3. It is interesting to note that we found that the ten- dency to use the right hand more than the left began (allowing for the differences in children) about the sixth to the eighth month. Comparing this with the result given above, that the arm gets ready for voluntary use before any other member, and about the seventh month, it seems possible to surmise that one motor arm centre gets started before the other, and more vigorously, in its prep- aration for voluntary action; and that the use of the right hand in preference to the left is evidence, at this first stage, of just this preparation going on in the left hemi- sphere. As the speech function follows this up pretty closely, beginning to be slightly voluntary in the shape of verbal imitations about the eighth or ninth months, the idea we had earlier, that voluntary speech proceeds upon an earlier predominant dextral function, gets, at any rate, no contradiction.^ 1 It is interesting to find that both Soltmann found with young dogs and V. Gudden with a young rabbit, that the motor centre of one hemisphere may control both the right and the left limb in the first two months or more. Soltmann kept a young dog alive a number of weeks after its left fore leg centre had been removed, and succeeded in getting movements of both the fore paws by stimulating the proper centre in the right hemisphere. Such double contraction from stimulating one side failed, with a grown dog, as it commonly does in other instances. Soltmann, loc. cit.^ pp. 1 28-1 31.
« special Evidence. 425 VI. I need not take much space to point out, as a final piece of evidence, that the hypnotic condition shows a Kne drawn, in a most unmistakable way, just between imitation which is suggestion under the reign of habit, and imitation which involves accommodation and volition. The theory of hypnotism now most widely current, under the name of the ' suggestive theory,' amounts to a direct recognition of the fact that the somnambule is an abnor- mally good imitator. Spontaneity, synthesis, self-direc- tion, these are gone; but these are volition. The somnambule never learns anything new. He is always satisfied with what he imitates. His critical attitudes, his criteria of belief, are all taken from him. The careful examination of the facts of hypnosis, with the view of volition now advanced, in mind, will convince any one, I think, that the line of division between suggestion and volition is where I have placed it.
But the limits of the somnambule's suggestibility show the way out of his dilemma very plainly; the way nature has actually taken in the development of the child and in the series of animal forms. Whenever the suggested course comes into hard collision with the root-habits, sentiments, realities, of his nature, — his modesty, his veracity, his self-interests, — then he gets aroused to a kind of hesitation. He delays, avoids, perhaps refuses to act upon the suggestion. This reproduces exactly the condition in the child's consciousness which I have called * deliberative suggestion.' ^ The child has to reconcile seeming irrcconcilablcs, to violate his nature sometimes. And it is just in the stress of such issues among the suggestive influences that move him, that he gets the 1 Above, Cliap. VI., § 3.
426 The Origin of Volition, higher form of conscious pluraUty of motives which his volition goes out to unite in one.
§ 5. Variations in the Rise of Volition, dne to Phylogenesis.
It is now time to ask whether the requisites to volition in the child may arise in another way than by the imitation of external movements, sounds, etc.
We find present, indeed, in the child certain hereditary tendencies which have arisen in the process of develop- ment — tendencies to act in certain ways, to pursue certain classes of objects, to be satisfied with certain gratifications, and to urge himself toward them. The case of volition is not narrowed down, as would seem to be the case in the typical instance figured above,^ which seems in effect to make the child ready for all suggestions which come, and equally ready for all. On the contrary, he has appetites, instincts, impulses; and it would not be surprising if we should find that these may precipitate him before the time into a certain unready choice or a certain conflict of choices.
Moreover, the principle of 'organic imitation ' has shown us that the rise of memory and imagination is the direct outcome of the need which confronts the organism of meeting its stimulations half-way: the organism comes to reinstate within consciousness, on occasion, through the development of its central cortical processes, certain ele- ments which we call memories, pictures, thoughts, without waiting for the stimulations outside. If it be true that memories and imaginations differ from perceptions only in the fact that they are 'away' from external nature and I Variations in tJic Rise of Volition. 427 not dependent upon its present objects, then why may not all the motor consequences which were at first associated with the objects follow from the images simply?
If we put these two things together, namely, organized habits of action in particular ways, and the motor force of memories as prompting, by their dynamogenic influence, to the repetition of the reactions with which they themselves are joined — then we have the possibility of volition with- out overt imitation of external events, and possibly earlier than the time of the first such imitations.
In certain instances clearly present in children, the facts are simple, and show three cases: either, first, the child simply remembers something and aims to imitate it; or, second, the synthesis or co-ordination demanded for volition is really present, as our scheme in Fig. XIV. demands, but one of the motor tendencies involved is a special native tendency. Its stimulus is organic. And when, therefore, a new stimulus comes to excite a movement in conflict with the one prescribed by nature, then comes all the com- plexity of volition. A subtle inner controversy arises and the child has to settle it, quite subconsciously perhaps, by a choice which is voluntary. Or third, both, all, the ten- dencies may be native, but one of them modified by experience, reflection, etc., in a partial conflict with oth- ers, so that effort arises in the solution of the case for action.
The first case may be illustrated by any volition aimed at a memory, and bringing out the movement which reinstates the sensations which the memory stands for. My child persistently reaching for a colour and then moving nearer to get it, illustrates this case; or H. dragging a table-cloth in her seventh month to bring my bunch of keys within 428 The Origin of Volition.
reach. She remembers the movements necessary and makes them voluntarily for an end — movements she had before found out by accident, or had seen some one else make. She strives to reproduce the sensations of move- ment and with them the touch of the keys by just the cir- cular process of imitation, except that it starts in the memory centre instead of in eye or ear.
The second case has interesting illustrations too: a conflict brought about between a native impelling instinct on one hand, and a suggested course on the other. Many direct modifications of instinct arise in this way, the inhi- bition of sobbing and crying, the self-denial of not reaching for attractive things, all responses, to parent or companion, which conflict with spontaneous tendency, and then con- sciously master it. These are voluntary, in the transition sense, just in as far as there is motor duality, or contrast, resolved into a motor unity, which effects a repetition of the one reaction or the other.
And still more deep-going is the third class of these so-called, in our developmental phraseology, ' phylogenetic imitations,' which show the clash of nature against itself. We have seen the lower form of it in * deliberative sugges- tion';i suggestion locking horns with suggestion, and then — the outcome, to tell us which is victorious. A corre- sponding state of things occurs on a higher scale, at the cortical level, when we feel so strongly two ideal courses, and consent to one of them, by seeming to ourselves not to choose it at all. It simply chooses itself, and we stand and wonder. So the child often acts voluntarily when it is practically blind to pros and cons, when the whole complex condition is made up of elements so characterf Variations in the Rise of Volition. 429 istic and strenuous for utterance, that allowance or recog- nition is all he has to do. The child's early moral decisions are of this kind, I think. The ought, the right, simply represent a growing habit, his nature coming to feel what it ought to be by what it is getting to be, in the midst of crying imperative appetites and sugges- tions. He acts voluntarily for the right, let us say; but who can say that his choice is in any intimate sense his own } It is interesting to note, further, under this head, an instance of what is to be spoken of again as the 'inter- action of habit and accommodation.* We find volition brought out on occasion of imitation, a higher kind of imitation called ' persistent,' in which the child does not rest content with the degree of success his old reactions provide, but aims ' to try again ' for better things. Now the imitative instinct itself is thus, in this transition, brought to the bar, and violated by its own passage into volition. In volition, the agency of the actor comes to instruct him. He learns his power to resist and to con- quer, as well as his weakness and subjection to a copy. And the child comes, just in this conflict between imita- tion, an instinct, and suggestion, an innovation, to break through and make himself an inventor, and a free agent. In fact, we have found a type of action realized in the phrase 'contrary' or 'wayward' suggestion, in which just this revolt becomes a way of action. The boy woiit imi- tate. This simply means that he won't imitate what other people ask him to, but prefers to imitate what he asks him- self to. He imitates just the same, of course. But the difference is world wide. A ' contrary ' boy has learned the lesson of volition, has passed from suggestion to con- 430 The Origin of Volition.
duct, has mounted from the second to the third level, and is available for genius-material.^ I have said enough now to show that the rise of volition is but another illustration of the one law of motor develop- ment. It is the form which the process of accommodation takes on when the central processes become complex.
•^ The great question of invention vs. imitation — how can any one be original if even volition and thought be imitative functions? — this comes up in my later volume.
f CHAPTER XIV.
The Mechanism of Revival: Internal Speech AND Song.
The facts of memory and imagination now broadly dis- cussed, are capable of closer description, when we come to the analysis of consciousness itself. Each function which has its external habit-aspect in the action of the person, has also its internal habit-aspect in the movements among the elements of contact in the mind, which go to make up our * stream of thought.' A * cross-section ' of the stream at any moment will contain the elements in consciousness which stand for the activities going on, or tending to go on, in the bodily mechanism. And each such element must have its reason for being in the laws of assimilation, association, and thought, already briefly put in evidence.
I shall attempt to show this in more detail by analyzing two so-called 'expressive' functions, both of which are most interesting in themselves, and both of which have had great light thrown upon them in later years: speech and song. The aim shall be, not to give detailed descriptions of the execution of speech and music, but to show what is actually in consciousness at the time of any such execution, and how just this came to be in consciousness.
432 The Mechanism of Revival.
§ I. Internal Speech.
An important advance has been made in late years in the purely psychological doctrine of memory and imagina- tion. The old psychology held that all individuals were alike as regards the brain centres for the memory of par- ticular things and for the performance of particular actions. It has been shown, however, by pathological cases and by analysis as well, that we are not alike. Several distinct so-called 'types' have been discovered — persons who de- pend mainly on one sense for their memories, and on the memories of this sense mainly for the necessary release of voluntary energy into the muscular combinations used in performing particular actions. The analysis of the speech function has been so brilliant, that I may explain it more in detail, as illustrating the general principle of 'types,' upon which, as I think, the true theory of the rise and develop- ment of attention must be based.
The doctrine of brain function in speech is now pretty clear — thanks to the teaching, principally, of pathological cases. Normal speech is a function which probably in- volves several so-called ' brain centres,' all in dynamic con- nection with one another. Given a man with the physical apparatus of the act of speaking intact — vocal organs, nerve connections, and brain seat of discharge (Broca's gyre) — and ask why such a man speaks, the answer may take several forms. He may name a word sign which he has seen, or repeat a word sound which he has heard, or tell the words he has wi'itten, or finally, he may speak a word simply from the habit of speaking it — from the tendency of his speech apparatus to operate as it has operated before. Now we ordinarily generalize this diversity in the Internal Speech. 433 case in which the man ' thinks ' the word merely, without speaking it, by saying that the word is ' in his mind,' internal, i)iteyic7ir; but the question is: What is in his mind? — the printed word (visual image), the spoken word (auditory), the written word (hand-motor), the articulate word (speech-motor) — is it all of these? Is it any of them?