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

7. A large amount of sensation is derived from the muscular sense, yet we are not aware of the nice adjustments of the muscles, regulated by this sensibility, when we sit or walk. No sooner are we placed in an exceptional position, as in walking on a narrow ledge, than we become distinctly aware of the effort required to preserve equilibrium. It is not the novelty of the position which has increased our sensibility; that has only caused us to attend to our sensations. In like manner, the various streams of sensation which make up our general sense of existence, separately escape notice until one of them becomes obstructed, or increases in impetuosity. When we are seated at a window, and look out at the trees and sky, we are so occupied with the aspects and the voices of external Nature, that no attention whatever is given to the fact of our own existence; yet all this while there has been a massive and diffusive feeling arising from the organic processes; and of this we become distinctly aware if we close our eyes, shut off all sounds, and abstract the sensations of touch and temperature—it is then perceived as a vast and powerful stream of sensation, belonging to none of the special Senses, but to the System as a whole. It is on this general stream that depend those well-known but indescribable states named “feeling well” and “feeling ill”—the bien être and malaise of every day. Of two men looking from the same window, on the same landscape, one will be moved to unutterable sadness, yearning for the peace of death; the other will feel his soul suffused with serenity and content: the one has a gloomy background, into which the sensations excited by the landscape are merged; the other has a happy background, on which the sensations play like ripples on a sunny lake. The tone of each man’s feeling is determined by the state of his general consciousness. Except in matters of pure demonstration, we are all determined towards certain conclusions as much by this general consciousness as by logic. Our philosophy, when not borrowed, is little more than the expression of our personality.

8. Having thus explained the relation of particular sensations to the general state of Consciousness considered as the function of the whole organism, we may henceforward speak of particular sentient states, as we speak of particular organs and functions, all the while presupposing that the organs and functions necessarily involve the organism, since apart from the organism they have no such significance. The reaction of a sensory organ is therefore always a sentient phenomenon. Apart from the living organism there can be no such vital reaction, but only a physical reaction. It is commonly supposed that sensation is simply the molecular excitation of the cerebrum; yet no one will maintain that if the cerebrum of a corpse be excited, by a galvanic current sent through the optic nerve, for instance, this excitation will be a sensation. Whence we may conclude that it is not the physical reaction or stimulus which constitutes sensation, but the physiological reaction of the living organism.

9. Now this is the point which the advocates of the Reflex Theory, implicitly or explicitly, always deny. Let us trace the origin of the fallacy, if possible. When we remove the eye from a recently killed animal, and let a beam of light fall on it, the pupil contracts. This is a purely mechanical action; no one would suggest that a sensation determined it. When we remove the leg, and irritate its nerve, the leg is jerked out. This is also a purely mechanical action. When we remove the brain from an animal, and pinch its toes, the leg is withdrawn or the pincers are pushed aside. Is this equally a purely mechanical action? And if not, why not?

The Reflex Theory would have us believe that all three cases were mechanical, at least in so far as they were all destitute of sentient co-operation, the ground for this conclusion being the hypothesis that the brain is the exclusive seat of sensation. The Reflex Theory further concludes that since these, and analogous actions, are performed when the brain is removed, they, being thus independent of sentience, may be performed when the brain is present without any co-operation of sentience. The grounds for this conclusion being the facts that in the normal state of the organism there are many actions of which we are sometimes conscious, and at other times unconscious; and some actions—such as the dilatation and contraction of the pupil—of which we are never conscious. This observation of parts detached from the organism seems confirmed by observation of actions passing in our own organisms, both converging to the conclusion that the actions in question are purely mechanical, involving no sentience whatever. We are taught, therefore, that there is besides the sentient mechanism, to which all conscious actions are referred, a reflex mechanism, to which all unconscious actions are referred. The cerebro-spinal axis, acting as a whole, constitutes the first; the spinal axis, acting without the co-operation of the cerebrum, constitutes the second.

10. Before proceeding with our exposition of the theory it may be well to state two considerations which must be constantly in view. If it should appear that there is any reasonable evidence for refusing to limit Sensibility to the cerebrum—and this evidence I shall adduce—the Reflex Theory must obviously be remodelled. Nor is this all. We might see overwhelming evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the cerebrum is the exclusive seat of Sensibility, and still reject as a fallacy the conclusion that because certain actions can be performed in the absence of the cerebrum, therefore those actions in the normal organism are likewise performed without cerebral co-operation. I mean that it is a fallacy to conclude from the contractions of the pupil, and the jerking of the leg, when eye and leg are detached from the organism, that therefore when eye and leg form integral parts of the organism, such contractions and jerkings are mechanical reflexes without sentient conditions. And the fallacy is analogous to that which would conclude from the observations of a mechanical automaton, that similar appearances in a vital organism were equally automatic and mechanical. So long as both sets of phenomena are apprehended simply as they appear to the sense of sight, they may be indistinguishable; but no sooner do we apprehend them through other modes, and examine the modes of production of the phenomena, than we come upon cardinal differences. A limb detached from the organism is like a phrase detached from a sentence: it has lost its vital significance, its functional value, in losing its connection with the other parts. The whole sentence is necessary for the slightest meaning of its constituent words, and each word is a language-element only when ideally or verbally connected with the other words required to form a sentence; without subject, predicate, and copula, no sentence can be formed. So the organic connexus of parts with a living whole is necessary for the simplest function of each organ; and a limb, or any other part, is a physiological element only when (ideally or really) an integral of a vital whole. The organism may be truncated by the removal of certain parts, as the sentence may be abbreviated by the removal of certain phrases; but so long as subject, predicate, and copula remain, there is a meaning in the sentence; and so long as the organic connexus needful for vitality remains, there will be vital function. The eye detached from the organism is no longer a part of the living whole, it no longer lives, its phenomena cease to be vital, its movements cease to have sentient conditions. The movements of the pupil may seem to be the same as those of the living eye; but when we come to examine their modes of production, we learn that they are not the same. The stimulus of light falling on the eye in the two cases necessarily has a different effect, because the effect is the result of the co-operating causes, and the co-operation in the one case is that of a lifeless organ, in the other that of a living organism. So long as the eye forms an integral part of the organism, every stimulus acting on the eye necessarily acts on the organism, and every reaction of the organ is necessarily conditioned by the state of the organism. Further, every stimulation of a sensory nerve necessarily affects the general sensorium, since the whole nervous system is structurally continuous and functionally co-operant. (See Prob. II. § 16.) Therefore, the stimulation of the eye, although too faint to be discriminated as a conscious sensation, must enter as a sentient tremor into the general stream of Sentience; and although we have no test delicate enough to reveal this operation, we know the obverse operation of conscious sensation on the movements of the pupil—in surprise, for example, the pupil is dilated.

11. There are still stronger reasons for asserting that the spinal reflexes are necessarily conditioned by the general state of the sensorium, so that in the normal organism we cannot legitimately exclude them from Sentience; and the Reflex Theory is therefore unphysiological, even on the hypothesis that the cerebrum is the exclusive seat of Sensibility. This hypothesis, however, seems to me untenable; and all the observed facts which it is invented to explain admit of a far more consistent explanation. It is irrational to suppose that a limb, detached from the body, felt the stimulus which caused its muscles to contract. The limb is not a living organism, having a sentient mechanism in its nervous mechanism. Not less irrational is it to suppose that when the limb forms an integral part of a living organism, with a sentient mechanism of nerves and nerve-centres, this organism does not react on the stimulus which excites the muscles of the limb to contract; nor, pursuing the same train of reasoning, is it irrational to suppose that when this living organism has been mutilated, and certain parts destroyed, which do not in their destruction prevent the connexus of the rest, but leave intact a sentient mechanism of nerves and nerve-centres, then also this truncated organism still reacts as a whole, still feels the stimulus which causes the muscles of the limb to contract. Hypothesis for hypothesis, we may at least say that the one is as reasonable as the other. And I shall be disappointed if, when the reader has gone through all the evidence hereafter to be adduced, he does not conclude that the hypothesis which assigns Sensibility to the nervous mechanism as a whole is not the more acceptable of the two.

12. Let us now pursue our exposition of the Reflex Theory. All that we have endeavoured to establish respecting the essential identity of the processes in conscious and unconscious states, and voluntary and involuntary actions,—an identity which does not exclude differences of degree corresponding with these different terms,—is ignored or denied in the Reflex Theory. Whereas I suppose all processes to be reflex processes, some of them having the voluntary, others the involuntary character, physiologists generally distinguish the involuntary as reflex, and invent for this class a special mechanism. According to Marshall Hall, who originated the modern form of this theory, actions are divisible into four distinct classes: the voluntary, dependent on the brain; the involuntary, dependent on the irritability of the muscular fibre; the respiratory, wherein “the motive influence passes in a direct line from one point of the nervous system to certain muscles”; and the reflex, dependent on the “true spinal system” of incident-excitor nerves, and of reflex-motor nerves. These last-named actions are produced when an impression on the sensitive surface is conveyed, by an excitor-nerve, to the spinal cord, and is there