4. The remainder of this section may be de- voted to the further emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games, especially those which may be best described as " society games." All those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary facility of the child's mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plotting social and dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however, to these casual ob- servers, nor to many really more skilled, that they were observing in these fancy plays the putting together anew of fragments, or larger pieces, of the adult's mental history. Here, in these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the personal " copy " material which they get from you and me. If a man study these games patient- ly in his own children, and analyze them out, he gradually sees emerge from within the inner con- sciousness a picture of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions he seeks to generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than of the good! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not stop with birth; g6 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
it is then only beginning. And the pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is sim- ply left to take its course for the further estab- lishing and confirmation of it. Was there ever a group of school children who did not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for one of their number to sit on and " take off " the teacher? Was there ever a child who did not play "church," and force the impro- vised " papa " into the pulpit? Were there ever children who did not " buy " things from fan- cied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market? The point is this: the child's per- sonality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out; so he grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to perform.
In order to be of more direct service to observ- ers of games of this character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind made some time ago — one of the simplest of many actual situations which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out together. It is a very commonplace case, a game the elements of which are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find the ele- mentary the more instructive.
On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone with the children — the two mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 97 half years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby; that is, Helen became " mamma," and Elizabeth the " baby." The young- er responded by calling her sister " mamma," and the play began.
" You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mamma. Baby rose from the floor — first falling down in order to rise! — was seized upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imagi- nary washstand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing were then named in im- agination, and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this " mamma " kept up a stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling; now your skirt, sweetness — O! no — not yet — your shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the de- tails with more than the docility which real infants usually show. When this was done — " Now we must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said mamma. "Yes, mamma," came the reply; and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator, carefully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of papa, see- ing that he was so much in evidence, would break in upon the imagined situation. But not so. Mamma led her baby directly past me to the end of the piazza., to a column in the corner. " There's papa," said mamma; "now tell him good-morn- ing."— "Good-morning, papa; I am very well," said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's good," said mamma, in a gruff, low voice, which caused in the real papa a thrill of amused self- consciousness most difficult to contain. " Now you must have your breakfast," said mamma. The seat of a chair was made a breakfast table, the 98 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge care- fully administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usually directs their breakfast. " Now " (after the meal, which suddenly became dinner instead of breakfast), " you must take your nap," said mamma. "No, mamma; I don't want to," said baby. " But you must." — " No; you be baby, and take the nap." — " But all the other children have gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says you must" said mamma. This convinced baby, and she lay down on the floor. " But I haven't undressed you." So then came all the detail of undressing; and mamma carefully covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying: " Spring is coming now; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go to sleep." — " But you haven't kissed me, mamma," said the little one. " Oh, of course, my darling!" — so a long siege of kissing! Then baby closed her eyes very tight, while mamma went on tiptoe away to the end of the porch. "Don't go away, mamma," said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't leave her darling," came the reply.
So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, hats put on, etc., the mamma exercising great care and solicitude for her baby. One further incident to show this: when the baby's hat was put on — the real hat — mamma tied the strings rather tight. " Oh! you hurt, mamma," said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mamma kiss it. There, is that better, my darling? " — all comically true to a certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had no difficulty in tracing.
Now in such a case what is to be reported, of course, is the facts. Yet knowledge of more THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 99 than the facts is necessary, as I have said above, in order to get the full psychological lesson. We need just the information which concerns the rest of the family and the social influences of the children's lives. I recognised at once every phrase which the children used in this play, where they got it, what it meant in its original context, and how far its meaning had been modified in this process, called in a figure "social heredity." But as that story is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of the children's social ante- cedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imi- tation and personification do they get from it? And how much the more is this true when we ex- amine those complex games of the nursery which show the brilliant fancy for situation and drama of the wide-awake four-year-old?
Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and how rich the lessons even from such a simple scene as this! As for Helen, what could be a more direct lesson — a lived-out exercise — in sym- pathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the healthy ele- vation of her sense of self to the dignity of kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency, in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of means to ends — and all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is quite lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, when we personate other characters? What could further all this highest mental growth better than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily life are read into the child's little self? Then, in the case of Elizabeth also, certain things ap- pear. She obeys without command or sanction, she takes in from her sister the elements of per- sonal suggestion in their simpler childish forms.
100 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
Certainly such scenes, repeated every day with such variation of detail, must give something of the sense of variety and social equality which real life afterward confirms and proceeds upon; and lessons of the opposite character are learned by the same process.
All this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imaginative faculty also. The prolonged situa- tions, maintained sometimes whole days, or pos- sibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and train the attention. I think, also, that the sense of essential reality, and its distinction from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this sort of symbolic representation. Play has its dangers also — very serious ones. The adults sometimes set bad examples. The game gives practise in cunning no less than in forbearance. Possibly the best service of observation just now is to gather the facts with a view to the proper recog- nition and avoidance of the dangers.
Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested parents. You can be of no use whatever to psy- chologists— to say nothing of the actual damage you may be to the children — unless you know your babies through and through. Especially the fathers! They are willing to study everything else. They know every corner of the house famil- iarly, and what is done in it, except the nursery. A man labours for his children ten hours a day, gets his life insured for their support after his death, and yet he lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, the evolution of their personality, go on by absorption — if no worse — from common, vulgar, imported and changing, often immoral attendants! Plato said the state should train the children; and added THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 101 'that the wisest man should rule the state. This is to say that the wisest man should tend his children! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and Cosette, a picture of the true paternal relation- ship. We hear a certain group of studies called the humanities, and it is right. But the best school in the humanities for every man is in his own house.
With this goes, finally, the highest lesson of sport, drama, make-believe, even when we trace it up into the art-impulse — the lesson of personal freedom. The child himself sets the limitations of the game, makes the rules, and subjects himself to them, and then in time pierces the bubble for himself, saying, " I will play no more." All this is the germ of self-regulation, of the control of the impulses, of the voluntary adoption of the ideal, which becomes in later life — if so be that he cling to it — the pearl of great price.
CHAPTER V.
THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND — PHYSIO- LOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY — MENTAL DISEASES.
IN the foregoing pages we have had intima- tions of some of the important questions which arise about the connection of mind with body. The avenues of the senses are the normal ap- proaches to the mind through the body; and, taking advantage of this, experiments are made upon the senses. This gives rise to Experimental Psychology, to which the chapter after this is de- voted. Besides this, however, we find the general 102 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
fact that a normal body must in all cases be present with a normal mind, and this makes it possible to arrange so to manipulate the body that changes may be produced in the mind in other ways than through the regular channels of sense. For ex- ample, we influence the mind when we drink too much tea or coffee, not to mention the greater changes of the same kind which are produced in the mind of the drinker of too much alcohol or other poisonous substances. All the methodical means of procedure by which the psychologist produces effects of this kind by changing the condition or functions of the body within itself belong to Physiological Psychology. So he modifies the respiration, changes the heart beat, stimulates or slows the circulation of the blood, paralyzes the muscles, etc. The ways of pro- cedure may be classified under a few heads, each called a method.
i. Method of Extirpation. — This means simply the cutting away of a part of the body, so that any effect which the loss of the part makes upon the mind may be noted. It is used especially upon the brain. Pieces of the brain, great or small — indeed, practically the whole brain mass — may be removed in many animals without destroy- ing life. Either of the cerebral hemispheres en- tire, together with large portions of the other, maybe taken from the human brain without much effect upon the vital processes, considered as a whole; the actual results being the loss of certain mental functions, such as sight, hearing, power of movement of particular limbs, etc., according to the location of the part which is removed. Many of the facts given below under the heading of Localization were discovered in this way, the THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 103 guiding principle being that if the loss of a func- tion follows the removal of a certain piece of the brain, then that portion of the brain is directly concerned in the healthy performance of that function.
2. Method of Artificial Stimulation. — As the term indicates, this method proceeds by finding some sort of agent by which the physiological processes may be started artificially; that is, without the usual normal starting of these pro- cesses. For example, the physician who stimu- lates the heart by giving digitalis pursues this method. For psychological purposes this method has also been fruitful in studying the brain, and electricity is the agent customarily used. The brain is laid bare by removing part of the skull of the animal, and the two electrodes of a battery are placed upon a particular point of the brain whose function it is wished to determine. The current passes out along the nerves which are normally set in action from this particular region, and movements of the muscles follow in certain defi- nite parts and directions. This is an indication of the normal function of the part of the brain which is stimulated.
Besides this method of procedure a new one, also by brain stimulation, has recently been em- ployed. It consists in stimulating a spot of the brain as before, but instead of observing the character of the movement which follows, the observer places galvanometers in connection with various members of the body and observes in which of the galvanometers the current comes out of the animal's body (the galvanometer be- ing a very delicate instrument for indicating the presence of an electric current). In this way it 104 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
is determined along what pathways and to what organs the ordinary vital stimulation passes from the brain, provided it be granted that the electric current takes the same course.
3. Method of Intoxication, called the " Toxic Method." — The remarks above may suffice for a description of this method. The results of the administration of toxic or poisonous agents upon the mind a/e so general and serious in their char- acter, as readers of De Quincy know, that very little precise knowledge has been acquired by their use.
4. Method of Degeneration. — This consists in observing the progress of natural or artificially produced disease or damage to the tissues, mainly the nervous tissues, with a view to discovering the directions of pathways and the locations of con- nected functions. The degeneration or decay following disease or injury follows the path of normal physiological action, and so discloses it to the observer. This method is of importance to psychology as affording a means of locating and following up the course of a brain injury which accompanies this or that mental disease or defect.
Results — Localization of Brain Functions. — The more detailed results of this sort of study, when considered on the side of the nervous organism, may be thrown together under the general head of Localization. The greatest result of all is just the discovery that there is such a thing as localization in the nervous system of the differ- ent mental functions of sensation and movement. We find particular parts of the nervous organism contributing each its share, in a more or less inde- pendent way, to the whole flow of the mental life; and in cases of injury or removal of this part or THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 105 that, there is a corresponding impairment of the mind.
First of all, it is found that the nervous sys- tem has a certain up-and-down arrangement from the segments of the spinal cord up to the gray matter of the rind or " cortex " of the large masses or hemispheres in the skull, to which the word brain is popularly applied. This up-and-down arrangement shows three so-called " levels " of function. Beginning with the spinal cord, we find the simplest processes, and they grow more complex as we go up toward the brain.
The lowest, or " third level," includes all the functions which the spinal cord, and its upper termination, called the " medulla," are able to per- form alone — that is, without involving necessarily the activity of the nervous centres and brain areas which lie above them. Such " third-level " functions are those of the life-sustaining processes generally: breathing, heart-beat, vasomotor ac- tion (securing the circulation of the blood), etc. These are all called Automatic processes. They go regularly on from day to day, being constantly stimulated by the normal changes in the physio- logical system itself, and having no need of inter- ference from the mind of the individual.
In addition to the automatic functions, there is a second great class of processes which are also managed from the third level; that is, by the dis- charge of nervous energy from particular parts of the spinal cord. These are the so-called Reflex functions. They include all those responses which the nervous system makes to stimulations from the outside, in which the mind has no alternative or control. They happen whether or no. For example, when an object comes near the eye the 106 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
lid flies to reflexly. If a tap be made upon the knee while one sits with the legs crossed the foot flies up reflexly. Various reflexes may be brought out in a sleeper by slight stimulations to this or that region of his body. Furthermore, each of the senses has its own set of reflex adjustments to the stimulations which come to it. The eye accommodates itself in the most delicate way to the intensity of the light, the distance of the ob- ject, the degree of elevation, and the angular dis- placement of what one looks at. The taking of food into the mouth sets up all sorts of reflex movements which do not cease until the food is safely lodged in the stomach, and so on through a series of physiological adaptations which are simply marvellous in their variety and extent. These processes belong to the third level; and it may surprise the uninitiated to know that not only is the mind quite " out of it " so far as these functions are concerned, but that the brain proper is "out of it " also. Most of these reflexes not only go on when the brain is removed from the skull, but it is an interesting detail that they are generally exaggerated under these conditions. This shows that while the third or lowest level does its own work, it is yet in a sense under the weight — what physiologists call the inhibiting action — of the higher brain masses. It is not allowed to magnify its part too much, nor to work out of its proper time and measure. The nervous apparatus involved in these " third-level " func- tions may be called the "reflex circuit" (see Fig. 2), the path being from the sense organ up to the centre by a " sensory " nerve, and then out by a " motor " nerve to the muscle.
Going upward in the nervous system, we next THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 107 find a certain group of bodies within the gross mass of the brain, certain centres lying between the hemispheres above and the medulla and spinal cord below, and in direct connection by nervous tracts with both of these. The technical names of the more important of these organs are these: the " corpora striata," or striped bodies, of which there are two, the "optic thalami," also two in number, and the "cerebellum" or little brain, situated behind. These make up what is called the "second level " in the system. They seem to be especial- ly concerned with the life of sensation. When the centres lying above them, the hemispheres, are removed, the animal is still able to see, hear, etc., and still able to carry out his well-knit habits of action in response to what he sees and hears. But that is about all. A bird treated thus, for example, these second-level cen- tres being still intact while the hemispheres are removed, retains his normal appearance, being quite able to stand upon his feet, to fly, walk, etc. His reflexes are also unimpaired and his inner physiological processes; but it soon becomes noticeable that his mental operations are limited very largely to sensations. He sees his food as sense organ muscle FIG. 2. — s c mt — reflex circuit; s c sp mp c mt — voluntary circuit.
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usual, but does not remember its use, and makes no attempt to eat it. He sees other birds, but does not respond to their advances. He seems to have forgotten all his education, to have lost all the meanings of things, to have practically no intelligence. A dog in this condition no longer fears the whip, no longer responds to his name, no longer steals food. On the side of his conduct we find that all the actions which he had learned by training now disappear; the trick dog loses all his tricks. What was called Apperception in the earlier chapter seems to have been taken away with the hemispheres.
Coming to the " first level," the highest of all, both in anatomical position and in the character of the functions over which it presides, we see at once what extraordinary importance it has. It comprises the cortex of the hemispheres, which taken together are called the cerebrum. It con- sists of the parts which we supposed cut out of the pigeon and dog just mentioned; and when we re- member what these animals lose by its removal, we see what the normal animal or man owes to the integrity of this organ. It is above all the organ of mind. If we had to say that the mind as such is located anywhere, we should say in the gray matter of the cortex of the hemispheres of the brain. For although, as we saw, animals with- out this organ can still see and hear and feel, yet we also saw that they could do little else and could learn to do nothing more. All the higher operations of mind come back only when we think of the animal as having normal brain hemispheres.
Further, we find this organ in some degree duplicating the function of the second-level cen- THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 109 tres, for fibres go out from these intermediate masses to certain areas of the hemispheres, which reproduce locally the senses of hearing, sight, etc. By these fibres the functions of the senses are "projected" out to the surface of the brain, and the term " projection fibres " is applied to the nerves which make these connections. The hemi- spheres are not content even with the most im- portant of all functions — the strictly intelligent — but they are jealous, so to speak, of the simple sensations which the central brain masses are ca- pable of awaking. And in the very highest ani- mals, probably only monkeys and man, we find that the hemispheres have gone so far with their jealousy as to usurp the function of sensation. This is seen in the singular fact that with a monkey or man the removal of the cortical cen- tres makes the animal permanently blind or deaf, as the case may be, while in the lower animals such removal does not have this result, so long as the " second-level " organs are unimpaired. The brain paths of the functions of the second and first levels taken together constitute the so-called " voluntary circuit " (see Fig. 2).
In addition to this general demarcation of functions as higher and lower — first, second, and third level — in their anatomical seat, many in- teresting discoveries have been made in the locali- zation of the simpler functions in the cortex itself. The accompanying figures (Figs. 3 and 4) will show the principle centres which have been deter- mined; and it is not necessary to dwell upon ad- ditional details which are still under discussion. The areas marked out are in general the same on both hemispheres, and that is to say that most of the centres are duplicated. The speech centres, 110 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
however, are on one side only. And in certain cases the nervous fibres which connect the cortex with the body-organs cross below the brain to the opposite side of the body. This is always true in cases of muscular movement; the movements of the right side of the body are controlled by the left hemisphere, and vice -versa. The stimulations coming in from the body to the brain generally FIG. 3. — Outer surface of left hemisphere of the brain (modified from Exner): a, fissure of Rolando; 6, fissure of Sylvius.
travel on the same side, although in certain cases parallel impulses are also sent over to the other hemisphere as well. For example, the very im- portant optic nerve, which is necessary to vision, comes from each eye separately in a large bunch of fibres, and divides at the base of the brain, so that each eye sends impulses directly to the visual centres of both hemispheres.
THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. Ill Of all the special questions which have arisen about the localization of functions in the nervous system, that of the function of certain areas known as "motor centres" has been eagerly discussed. The region on both sides of the fissure of Ro- lando in Fig. 3 contains a number of areas which give, when stimulated with electricity, very defi- nite and regular movements of certain muscles FIG. 4. — Inner (mesial) surface of the right hemisphere of the brain (modified from Schafer and Horsley). In both figures the shaded area is the motor zone.
on the opposite side of the body. By careful ex- ploration of these areas the principal muscular combinations — those for facial movements, neck movements, movements of the arm, trunk, legs, tail, etc. — have been very precisely ascertained. It was concluded from these facts that these areas were respectively the centres for the discharge of the nervous impulses running in each case to the muscles which were moved. The evidence re- 9 112 THE STORY OF THE MIND.
cently forthcoming, however, is leading investi- gators to think that there is no cortical centre for the " motor " or outgoing processes properly so called, and that these Rolandic areas, although called " motor," are really centres for the incom- ing reports of the movements of the respective muscles after the movements take place, and also for the preservation of the memories of movement which the mind must have before a particular movement can be brought about (the mental images of movement which we called on an earlier page Kinaesthetic Equivalents). These centres being aroused in the thought of the movement desired, which is the necessary mental preparation for the movement, they in turn stimulate the real motor centres which lie below the cortex at the second level. This is in the present writer's judg- ment the preferable interpretation of the evidence which we now have.