The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (red queen free ebook txt) 📕

rat starts running down the passages, and is constantly stopped

by blind alleys, but at last, by persistent attempts, it gets

out. You repeat this experiment day after day; you measure the

time taken by the rat in reaching the food; you find that the

time rapidly diminishes, and that after a while the rat ceases to

make any wrong turnings. It is by essentially similar processes

that we learn speaking, writing, mathematics, or the government

of an empire.

* The scientific study of this subject may almost be said to

begin with Thorndike’s “Animal Intelligence” (Macmillan, 1911).

Professor Watson (“Behavior,” pp. 262-3) has an ingenious theory

as to the way in which habit arises out of random movements. I

think there is a reason why his theory cannot be regarded as

alone sufficient, but it seems not unlikely that it is partly

correct. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that there are just

ten random movements which may be made by the animal—say, ten

paths down which it may go—and that only one of these leads to

food, or whatever else represents success in the case in

question. Then the successful movement always occurs during the

animal’s attempts, whereas each of the others, on the average,

occurs in only half the attempts. Thus the tendency to repeat a

previous performance (which is easily explicable without the

intervention of “consciousness”) leads to a greater emphasis on

the successful movement than on any other, and in time causes it

alone to be performed. The objection to this view, if taken as

the sole explanation, is that on improvement ought to set in till

after the SECOND trial, whereas experiment shows that already at

the second attempt the animal does better than the first time.

Something further is, therefore, required to account for the

genesis of habit from random movements; but I see no reason to

suppose that what is further required involves “consciousness.”

Mr. Thorndike (op. cit., p. 244) formulates two “provisional laws

of acquired behaviour or learning,” as follows:

“The Law of Effect is that: Of several responses made to the same

situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by

satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be

more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it

recurs, they will be more likely to recur; those which are

accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will,

other things being equal, have their connections with that

situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be less

likely to occur. The greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the

greater the strengthening or weakening of the bond.

“The Law of Exercise is that: Any response to a situation will,

other things being equal, be more strongly connected with the

situation in proportion to the number of times it has been

connected with that situation and to the average vigour and

duration of the connections.”

With the explanation to be presently given of the meaning of

“satisfaction” and “discomfort,” there seems every reason to

accept these two laws.

What is true of animals, as regards instinct and habit, is

equally true of men. But the higher we rise in the evolutionary

scale, broadly speaking, the greater becomes the power of

learning, and the fewer are the occasions when pure instinct is

exhibited unmodified in adult life. This applies with great force

to man, so much so that some have thought instinct less important

in the life of man than in that of animals. This, however, would

be a mistake. Learning is only possible when instinct supplies

the driving-force. The animals in cages, which gradually learn to

get out, perform random movements at first, which are purely

instinctive. But for these random movements, they would never

acquire the experience which afterwards enables them to produce

the right movement. (This is partly questioned by Hobhouse*—

wrongly, I think.) Similarly, children learning to talk make all

sorts of sounds, until one day the right sound comes by accident.

It is clear that the original making of random sounds, without

which speech would never be learnt, is instinctive. I think we

may say the same of all the habits and aptitudes that we acquire

in all of them there has been present throughout some instinctive

activity, prompting at first rather inefficient movements, but

supplying the driving force while more and more effective methods

are being acquired. A cat which is hungry smells fish, and goes

to the larder. This is a thoroughly efficient method when there

is fish in the larder, and it is often successfully practised by

children. But in later life it is found that merely going to the

larder does not cause fish to be there; after a series of random

movements it is found that this result is to be caused by going

to the City in the morning and coming back in the evening. No one

would have guessed a priori that this movement of a middle-aged

man’s body would cause fish to come out of the sea into his

larder, but experience shows that it does, and the middle-aged

man therefore continues to go to the City, just as the cat in the

cage continues to lift the latch when it has once found it. Of

course, in actual fact, human learning is rendered easier, though

psychologically more complex, through language; but at bottom

language does not alter the essential character of learning, or

of the part played by instinct in promoting learning. Language,

however, is a subject upon which I do not wish to speak until a

later lecture.

* “Mind in Evolution” (Macmillan, 1915), pp. 236-237.

The popular conception of instinct errs by imagining it to be

infallible and preternaturally wise, as well as incapable of

modification. This is a complete delusion. Instinct, as a rule,

is very rough and ready, able to achieve its result under

ordinary circumstances, but easily misled by anything unusual.

Chicks follow their mother by instinct, but when they are quite

young they will follow with equal readiness any moving object

remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James,

“Psychology,” ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play

with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp

Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject

I will quote from Drever’s “Instinct in Man,” p. 92:

“According to Fabre’s observations, which Bergson accepts, the

Ammophila stings its prey EXACTLY and UNERRINGLY in EACH of the

nervous centres. The result is that the caterpillar is paralyzed,

but not immediately killed, the advantage of this being that the

larva cannot be injured by any movement of the caterpillar, upon

which the egg is deposited, and is provided with fresh meat when

the time comes.

“Now Dr. and Mrs. Peckham have shown that the sting of the wasp

is NOT UNERRING, as Fabre alleges, that the number of stings is

NOT CONSTANT, that sometimes the caterpillar is NOT PARALYZED,

and sometimes it is KILLED OUTRIGHT, and that THE DIFFERENT

CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT APPARENTLY MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO THE LARVA,

which is not injured by slight movements of the caterpillar, nor

by consuming food decomposed rather than fresh caterpillar.”

This illustrates how love of the marvellous may mislead even so

careful an observer as Fabre and so eminent a philosopher as

Bergson.

In the same chapter of Dr. Drever’s book there are some

interesting examples of the mistakes made by instinct. I will

quote one as a sample:

“The larva of the Lomechusa beetle eats the young of the ants, in

whose nest it is reared. Nevertheless, the ants tend the

Lomechusa larvae with the same care they bestow on their own

young. Not only so, but they apparently discover that the methods

of feeding, which suit their own larvae, would prove fatal to the

guests, and accordingly they change their whole system of

nursing” (loc. cit., p. 106).

Semon (“Die Mneme,” pp. 207-9) gives a good illustration of an

instinct growing wiser through experience. He relates how hunters

attract stags by imitating the sounds of other members of their

species, male or female, but find that the older a stag becomes

the more difficult it is to deceive him, and the more accurate

the imitation has to be. The literature of instinct is vast, and

illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely. The main points

as regards instinct, which need to be emphasized as against the

popular conceptions of it, are:

(1) That instinct requires no prevision of the biological end

which it serves;

(2) That instinct is only adapted to achieve this end in the

usual circumstances of the animal in question, and has no more

precision than is necessary for success AS A RULE;

(3) That processes initiated by instinct often come to be

performed better after experience;

(4) That instinct supplies the impulses to experimental movements

which are required for the process of learning;

(5) That instincts in their nascent stages are easily modifiable,

and capable of being attached to various sorts of objects.

All the above characteristics of instinct can be established by

purely external observation, except the fact that instinct does

not require prevision. This, though not strictly capable of being

PROVED by observation, is irresistibly suggested by the most

obvious phenomena. Who can believe, for example, that a new-born

baby is aware of the necessity of food for preserving life? Or

that insects, in laying eggs, are concerned for the preservation

of their species? The essence of instinct, one might say, is that

it provides a mechanism for acting without foresight in a manner

which is usually advantageous biologically. It is partly for this

reason that it is so important to understand the fundamental

position of instinct in prompting both animal and human

behaviour.

LECTURE III. DESIRE AND FEELING

Desire is a subject upon which, if I am not mistaken, true views

can only be arrived at by an almost complete reversal of the

ordinary unreflecting opinion. It is natural to regard desire as

in its essence an attitude towards something which is imagined,

not actual; this something is called the END or OBJECT of the

desire, and is said to be the PURPOSE of any action resulting

from the desire. We think of the content of the desire as being

just like the content of a belief, while the attitude taken up

towards the content is different. According to this theory, when

we say: “I hope it will rain,” or “I expect it will rain,” we

express, in the first case, a desire, and in the second, a

belief, with an identical content, namely, the image of rain. It

would be easy to say that, just as belief is one kind of feeling

in relation to this content, so desire is another kind. According

to this view, what comes first in desire is something imagined,

with a specific feeling related to it, namely, that specific

feeling which we call “desiring” it. The discomfort associated

with unsatisfied desire, and the actions which aim at satisfying

desire, are, in this view, both of them effects of the desire. I

think it is fair to say that this is a view against which common

sense would not rebel; nevertheless, I believe it to be radically

mistaken. It cannot be refuted logically, but various facts can

be adduced which make it gradually less simple and plausible,

until at last it turns out to be easier to abandon it wholly and

look at the matter in a totally different way.

The first set of facts to be adduced against the common sense

view of desire are those studied by psychoanalysis. In all human

beings, but most markedly in those suffering from hysteria and

certain forms of insanity, we find what are called “unconscious”

desires, which are commonly regarded as