Problems of Life and Mind. Second series by George Henry Lewes (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

religious teachings redirect, or even suppress, many primary tendencies; so that “moral habits” become organized, and replace the original tendencies of the organism. These, when organized, become the inevitable modes of reaction, and are sometimes called secondarily automatic. It is important to recognize this organization of experiences, this acquisition of a secondary or modified constitution, if we would explain psychological processes by physiological processes. Thus the processes of Logic are automatic, they belong to the connate primary mechanism, and their action is inevitable, invariable. The elements of a judgment, like the elements of a perception, may vary, and we therefore say that one judgment is false, and one perception incomplete; but the judging process is always the same, and the perceiving process is always the same. We may breathe pure air or impure air, but the breathing process is in each case the same; and judgment is as automatic as breathing, not to be altered, not to be suppressed. Again, the moral terror at wickedness of any recognized kind is as automatic as the instinctive terror at danger. The one has its roots in the primary disposition called love of approbation and its correlative dread of disapprobation: the social instinct. The other has its root in the primary disposition called “instinct of self-preservation,” which is really the reflex shrinking from pain: the physiological instinct.

23. Besides the connate and acquired mechanism, we have now to consider the temporary and fluctuating adjustments which represent the statical condition of the organism at each moment. The automatism of the primary constitution is such that previous experience and conscious effort are not needed; nor will any experience or any effort alter the mode of reaction. If a strong light falls on the eye, the iris contracts; if the eyeball is dry, the eyelid drops; if sound-waves beat upon the tympanum, the stapedius muscle contracts; if the lining of the throat be tickled, the muscles involved in coughing or in vomiting contract. No experience is necessary for these actions, some of which are so complicated that if we had to learn them, as we learn far simpler actions, the organism would perish before the power was attained. Yet all of these presuppose a certain normal state of the mechanism, any considerable variation in which will modify or suppress them.

24. Secondarily automatic actions are those which have been acquired through experiences that have modified the organism, and produced a new adjustment of parts. We learn to shield the eyes against a strong glare of light by raising the hand; by winking we learn to shield the eye against an approaching body; we also learn to turn the head in the direction of a sound, and to thrust away with our hands the object that is irritating our skin. Experience has been necessary for all these actions, and has finally organized the tendencies to perform them, so that the reaction is invariable, inevitable, unless controlled by the will. If you tickle my throat, I may, or may not, push aside your hand; but if the inside of my throat be tickled, I must cough. Here we see the difference between the automatic and secondarily automatic actions. The second being due to individual experience, are more or less controllable; and whether they are or are not controlled depends on the condition of the nerve-centres at the moment. You may tickle my throat, or irritate my skin, without causing any movement of my hands to thwart you, either because my nerve-centres are preoccupied by other stimulations, and I am not conscious of the irritation, or because I do not choose to thwart you.

25. It should be added that some secondarily automatic actions have become so firmly organized that we can only with great difficulty interfere with them. Others never enter into consciousness, and are therefore often supposed to be purely mechanical. The movement of the eye towards the brightest light, and the convergence of the axes of both eyes, are reflexes which, although involuntary and unconscious, are the products of education. They do not belong to the connate constitution, although they are so inevitably acquired by experience that they belong to every normal child. At first the infant stares with a blank gaze, and its eyes, though moving under the stimulus of light, move incoherently; the axes never converge except by accident. Very early, however, the infant’s eyes are observed to follow the movements of a bright light; and at last they acquire so certain and rapid a power of adjustment that the eyes shift from spot to spot, always “fixing” the object by bringing the most sensitive part of the retina to bear on it. The incoherent movements have become precisely regulated movements. It is the same with speech. The vocal organs are exercised in an incoherent babble. By degrees these movements become regulated so as to respond definitely to definite stimuli, and words are formed, then sentences, till finally fluent speech becomes in a great degree automatic. The vocal muscles respond to an auditory stimulus, and the child repeats the word it has heard, just as the eye-muscles respond to a retinal stimulus. That we acquire the power of converging the axes, and accommodating the lens to near objects, is not only proved by observation of infants, but also by cases of disease. After the reflex mechanism has been long established, so that it acts with inevitable precision, a slight paralysis of one of the muscles has the effect of making all objects appear in a different position; the patient trying to touch an object, then always moves his hand on one side of it. Von Graefe relates the case of a stonebreaker who always struck his hand with the hammer when he tried to strike the stone. Yet this very man learned to accommodate his movements to the new impressions; so that if his paralysis had been cured, his modified mechanism would have been ill adapted to the new conditions, and he would once more have struck his hand instead of the stone.

26. This digression on the native and acquired dispositions of the organism, while it has brought into strong light all that can be cited in favor of regarding animal bodies as mechanisms, and their actions as the direct consequences of mechanical adjustments, has also made conspicuous the radical difference between an organism and a machine. We cannot too emphatically insist on this radical difference. Between the group of conditions involved in the structure and action of a machine, and the group of conditions involved in the structure and action of an organism, there are contrasts as broad as any that can be named. To overlook these in taking account solely of the conditions common to both groups is a serious error. On such grounds we might insist that a tiger is a violet, because both are organisms.

The biologist will admit that an organism is a mechanism, and (in so far as its bodily structure is concerned) a material mechanism. All the actions of this structure are therefore mechanical, in the two senses of the term: first, as being the actions of material adjustments; secondly, as being movements, and thereby included under the general laws of motion represented in Mechanics; the abstract laws of movement for an organic body are not different from the abstract laws of movement for an inorganic body. So far we have been considering the abstract relations only. No sooner do we consider the phenomena as concrete wholes, than we find great diversity in the modes of production of the movements in organisms and machines. Now it is precisely the modes of production which have interest for us. We never understand a phenomenon so as to gain any practical control over it, or any theoretical illumination from it, unless we have mastered some of its conditions; our knowledge of these conditions is the measure of our power.