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

these phenomena that is unfamiliar to students of mental disease. The case is chiefly remarkable from the periodicity of the recurrence of the abnormal state. I have collected other cases of the kind, and may hereafter find a fitting occasion to quote them.224 The anæsthesia and “unconsciousness” noted, no more prove the actions performed by this soldier to have been purely mechanical, i. e. undetermined by sensation, than anæsthesia and unconsciousness prove somnambulists and madmen to be machines. In the pathological state called “ecstasy” there is a considerable diminution of sensibility to external stimuli; with a concentration on certain feelings, images, trains of thought, exhibiting itself in expressions of emotion. “Les malades,” says a master, “paraissent entièrement absorbés par leurs mouvements intérieurs, ils refusent généralement de manger, et spécialement la volonté de l’âme semble complètement enchainée.”225

86. Observe that while this soldier exhibits such insensibility to certain stimuli, he unequivocally exhibits sensibility to other stimuli. All his acts show sense-guidance. Sight and Touch obviously regulate his movements. And when he feels objects placed in his way, and then passes beside them, wherein does this differ from the normal procedure of sensitive organisms? wherein does it resemble automata? Dr. Mesmet—from whose narrative the case is cited—remarks that the sense of Touch seems to persist “and indeed to be more acute and delicate than in the normal state”; upon which Professor Huxley has this comment:—“Here a difficulty arises. It is clear from the facts detailed that the nervous apparatus by which in the normal state sensations of touch are excited is that by which external influences determine the movements of the body in the abnormal state. But does the state of consciousness, which we term a tactile sensation, accompany the operation of this nervous apparatus in the abnormal state? or is consciousness utterly absent, the man being reduced to a pure mechanism? It is impossible to obtain direct evidence in favor of the one conclusion or the other; all that can be said is that the case of the frog shows that the man may be devoid of any kind of consciousness.”

87. It is here we are made vividly aware of the absolute need there is to disengage the terms employed from their common ambiguities. All the evidence of a tactile sensation which can possibly be furnished, on the objective side, is furnished by the actions of this soldier; to doubt it would be to throw a doubt on the sensibility of any animal unable to tell us what it felt; nay, even a man if he were dumb, or spoke a language we could not understand, could give us no other proof. We conclude that the soldier had tactile sensations, because we see him guided by them as we ourselves are guided by tactile sensations; we know that he is an organism, not a machine, and therefore reject the inference that he has become reduced to a “pure mechanism” because it is inferred that his consciousness is absent. And on what is this inference grounded? 1°, The belief that the brain is the sole organ of consciousness (Sentience)—a belief flatly disproved by the facts, which show Sentience when the brain has been removed; and 2°, the belief that the decapitated frog, because it avoids obstacles and redirects its leaps to avoid them, does so without Sentience. According to the definition we adopt, we may either say that the decapitated frog, and the soldier in his abnormal state, act without consciousness, or with it. But what does not seem permissible is to deny that their actions exhibit the clearest evidence of sense-guidance, and the kind of volition which this sense-guidance implies; and this is quite enough to separate them from actions of automata. When a man ducks his head to avoid a stone which he sees falling towards him, he assuredly has a sensation, i. e. there is a grouping of neural elements, which subjectively is a sensation, and this originates a grouping of other neural elements, the outcome of which is a muscular movement, which subjectively is a motor sensation: this grouping would not have been originated unless the particular grouping had preceded it; nor would the simple retinal stimulus have excited this sensation unless the nerve-centres had been attuned to such response by many previous experiences: the ignorant child would not duck its head on seeing the stone approach. In our familiar use of the word Consciousness it would be correct to say that the man ducks his head “unconsciously”; and yet expressing the fact in psychological language, we also say: He ducks his head because remembering the pain of former similar experiences, he knows that if the stone strikes him he will again be hurt as before, therefore he wills to avoid it; expressing it in physiological language we may say: The man acts thus because he is so organized that a particular neural process is the stimulus of a particular central discharge; and he became thus organized through a long series of anterior adjustments responding to stimuli, each adjustment being the activity of the vital organism.

88. There can be no doubt that the soldier had perceptions, and that these perceptions guided his movements; whether these shall be called “states of consciousness” or not, is a question of terms. Now since we know that certain actions are uniformly consequent on certain perceptions, we are justified in inferring that whenever the actions are performed, the perceptions preceded them: this inference may be erroneous, but in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary it is that which claims our first assent. Is it evidence to the contrary that the perception may have stimulated the action, yet been unaccompanied by the special mode named consciousness? Not in the least. We learn to read with conscious effort; each letter has to be apprehended separately, its form distinguished from all other forms, its value as a sign definitely fixed, yet how very rarely are we “conscious” of the letters when we read a book? Each letter is perceived; and yet this process passes so rapidly and smoothly, that unless there be some defect in a letter, or the word be misspelled, we are not “conscious” of the perceptions. Are we therefore reading automata?226

We are said to walk unconsciously at times; and the continuance of the movement is said to be due to reflex action. But it is demonstrable that the cutaneous sensibility of the soles of the feet is a primary condition. If the skin be insensible, the walking becomes a stumble. In learning to walk, or dance, the child fixes his eyes on his feet, as he fixes them on his fingers in learning to play the piano. After a while these registered sensations connected with the muscular sense suffice to guide his feet or his fingers; but not if feet or fingers lose their sensibility.

89. With these explanations let us follow the further details of this soldier’s abnormal actions:—

“The man is insensible to sensory impressions made through the ear, the nose, the tongue, and, to a great extent, the eye; nor is he susceptible to pain from causes operating during his abnormal state. Nevertheless it is possible so to act upon his tactile apparatus as to give rise to those molecular changes in his sensorium which are ordinarily the causes of associated trains of ideas. I give a striking example of this process in Dr. Mesmet’s words: ‘Il se promenait dans le jardin, on lui remet sa canne qu’il avait laissé tomber. Il la palpe, promène à plusieurs reprises la main sur la poignée coudée de sa canne—devient attentif—semble prêter l’oreille—et tout à coup appelle, “Henri! les voilà!” Et alors portant la main derrière son dos comme pour prendre une cartouche, il fait le mouvement de charger son arme, se couche dans l’herbe à plat ventre dans la position d’un tirailleur, et suit avec l’arme épaulée tous les mouvements de l’ennemi qu’il croit voir à courte distance.’ In a subsequent abnormal period Dr. Mesmet caused the patient to repeat this scene by placing him in the same conditions. Now in this case the question arises whether the series of actions constituting this singular pantomime was accompanied by the ordinary states of consciousness, the appropriate trains of ideas, or not? Did the man dream that he was skirmishing? or was he in the condition of one of Vaucanson’s automata—a mechanism worked by molecular changes in the nervous system? The analogy of the frog shows that the latter assumption is perfectly justifiable.”

90. Before criticising this conclusion let me adduce other illustrations of this dreamlike activity. “A gentleman whom I attended in a state of perfect apoplexy,” says Abercrombie, “was frequently observed to adjust his nightcap with the utmost care when it got into an uncomfortable state: first pulling it down over his eyes, and then turning up the front of it in the most exact manner.” According to the current teaching, these actions, which seem like evidence of sensation, are nothing of the kind, because—the patient was “unconscious”; that is to say, because he did not exhibit one complex kind of Sensibility, it is denied that he exhibited another kind! he did not feel discomfort, nor feel the movements by which it was rectified—because he could not speak, discuss impersonal questions, nor attend to what was said to him! Abercrombie cites other cases: “A gentleman who was lying in a state of perfect insensibility from disease of the brain” (note the phrase, which really only expresses the fact that external stimuli did not create their normal reactions) “was frequently observed even the day before his death to take down a repeating watch from a little bag at the head of his bed, put it close to his ear and make it strike the hour, and then replace it in the bag with the greatest precision. Another whom I saw in a state of profound apoplexy, from which he recovered, had a perfect recollection of what took place during the attack, and mentioned many things which had been said in his hearing when he was supposed to be in a state of perfect unconsciousness.” Dr. Wigan also tells of a lady whom he knew, and who was actually put in a coffin, under the belief that she was dead when in a trance. Her sense of hearing was then preternaturally acute. In her second-floor bedroom she heard what the servants said in her kitchen. When her brother came to see her and he declared she should not be buried until putrefaction set in, she felt intense gratitude and a gush of tenderness, but was unable to move even an eyelid as a manifestation of her feeling. Suddenly all her faculties returned. Dr. Wigan adds that he visited the Countess Escalante, one of the Spanish refugees, who remained in a similar state for a short period, during which she saw her husband and children, and was quite conscious of all they did and said—but did not recognize them as her own. She was absolutely without the power of moving a finger or of opening her mouth. Dr. Neil Arnott told me of a similar case in his practice. In these last cases we learn that consciousness—in its ordinary acceptation—was present, though bystanders could see no trace of it. And very often in cases where Consciousness, or at any rate Sensibility, is clearly manifested, its presence is denied, because the patient on recovering his normal condition is quite unable to remember anything that he felt and did. Under anæsthetics patients manifest sensation, but on awaking they declare that they felt nothing—of what value is their declaration? M. Despine tells us of a patient who under chloroform struggled, swore, and cried out, “Mon Dieu! que je souffre!” yet when the operation was over, and he