(c) ACTIVE ELEMENTS: PRIMITIVE MOVEMENTS.

§ 33. Primitive Conalive Phenomena. In addition to sensations and the feelings which are so closely conjoined with these, we have as primordial psychical phenomena certain active tendencies. The structure of the nervous system, as already set forth, prepares us for the fact that movement is proper to the child, and that it is from the first excited reflexly, that is, in response to sensory stimulation. We may instance the movements of the limbs, head, etc., in response to tactual, auditory, and other stimuli. These movements, as we shall see later, include those by help of which attention to sense-impressions, e.g., turning the eyes or head in the direction of an object, is effected. Other primitive movements probably take their rise through a process of central "automatic" excitation.

In speaking of these primordial movements as active phenomena, we must carefully distinguish between the presentative aspect of movement considered above and the conative aspect. A movement, say of the right arm, is presentative in so far as it supplies me with certain sense-data by which I come to know something, e.g., the distance traversed, the weight lifted. On the other hand, it is active or conative since it is a conscious exertion or is characterised by the feature marked off above as active consciousness. Now, these primordial experiences of movement, although they are not volitional processes in the full sense, that is, consciously purposive, are accompanied by the active consciousness, and they constitute, as we shall see, an important stage in the first development of voluntary or conative power.

(D) PRIMITIVE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL COMPLICATIONS.

While

$34. Primitive Conjunctions of Psychical Elements. in order to trace the development of the child's mind we have to assume under each of its three phases a group of elements, or simple original phenomena organically connected with primitive and predetermined modes of nervous action, we have

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further to take note of certain primordial connexions between these elements. The nervous system is, as we saw above, an organic whole, with its parts variously and closely interconnected, and these connexions predetermine corresponding connexions in the child's mental life. A glance at some of the more important of these original psycho-physical arrangements must suffice.

To begin with, the formation of our various intellectual products, our perceptions and ideas of things, are determined not merely by the connexions of the individual's experience, but to some extent by the original configuration of his brain. Thus it is presumable that that complexity of sensation which we everywhere find when we begin to analyse it (e.g., in our gustatory and auditory sensations) is determined not merely by the habitual co-excitation of different sensory elements, but by primitive cortical connexions between these. One of the most important and universal of these sensation-complexes, the complication of passive with muscular sensation, which will be more fully illustrated hereafter, is clearly based on the original organic continuity of the sensory and motor tracts. There is some reason to suppose, further, that the conjunction of sensations belonging to disparate senses, e.g., those of touch and sight in the perception of objects, is favoured to some extent by primitive nervous connexions or original dispositions in the corresponding cortical centres to act conjointly.

Still more plainly are such original psycho-physical complications seen in the domain of feeling. Owing to the preformation of the nervous system, sense-feelings are from the first rarely, if ever, perfectly simple. The agreeable or disagreeable stimulation of a nerve of special sense, when of sufficient intensity, gives rise to a secondary excitation of other nerves, and more particularly the motor fibres which run to the so-called voluntary muscles and to the viscera or vital organs. This radiation or diffusion of the nervous current gives rise to a number of secondary sense-feelings. In this way feeling is by the very structure of our nervous system a complicated phenomenon. The effects of this complication will appear more plainly by. and-by, when we come to consider the structure of the more complicated feelings or emotions.

Lastly, we have the complications involving a conative factor. These include, first of all, all the original organic connexions of feeling and movement already spoken of. The tendency in all sensory stimuli, in the degree in which they excite feeling to call forth motor reactions, will be found to have important psychological consequences. As we shall see by-and-by, we require as our starting-point in the development of conation an instinctive connexion between feeling and action. In addition to this fundamental connexion, there are other arrangements favouring particular combinations of movement. Thus the uniformities in the movements of the limbs among normal children, the alternations of forward and backward swing, the alternative movements of the legs, the corresponding or symmetrical movements of the eyes (and probably the arms), show pretty plainly that a certain rhythmic succession and co-ordination of simultaneous factors in movement is predetermined by the original constitution of the neuro-muscular mechanism.

In addition to these constant and important primitive connexions there are others of a more exceptional and variable character. It has been pointed out that owing to the principle of irradiation or diffusion of nerve-currents the stimulation of any particular cortical area tends to pass over into other areas. It is probable that from the first special lines of discharge (or lines of least resistance) favour particular directions of the radiative process. Thus in the curious phenomenon known as concomitant sensation (Mitempfindung), such as the excitation of an organic sensation of nausea by certain olfactory and other stimuli, of "setting the teeth on edge" by certain scratching sounds, we may suppose the effect to be predetermined by the special structure of the nervous centres. It is probable further that the phenomenon known as "coloured hearing," that is, the co-excitation with a particular sensation of sound of a definite (subjective) sensation of colour, a phenomenon observed in a number of persons and traceable back to early life, is dependent on a peculiar preformation of the nerve-centres,

$35. The Range of Instinct in Man. The precise range of such primitive psycho-physical arrangements in the case of man is very uncertain. It is a commonplace in biology that the higher we go in the zoological scale the less is the individual's life mechanically predetermined and the more subject

1 On the effect of irradiation in giving rise to concomitant sensation, see Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 3rd series (ii.), p. 280 ("Double Sensation"). On coloured hearing, consult Lewes, ibid.; Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, p. 145 ff.; and Bleuler and Lehmann, Zwangmässige Lichtempfindungen durch Schall.

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to the educative agencies of his experience. Thus, in man the range of instinct is far narrower that in the lower animals. He cannot walk just after birth, as the calf can do; still less can he adjust movements to definite modifications of visual impression, as the newly-hatched chick is able to do.1 The human nervous system is eminently plastic, and the large bulk of its arrangements or connexions have to be formed in the course, and by the help, of individual experience and education.

At the same time the careful psychological analysis of recent years, aided by a more extended and more exact observation of the infant mind, has led to the conclusion that in man too the range of instinctive disposition is much more considerable than is commonly supposed. Thus even in the case of actions which have to be acquired and rendered perfect by a process of learning, the presence of a co-operant instinctive factor is now recognised. It is commonly held that the child's use of his limbs, and of his vocal organ, is predetermined in a measure by such an instinctive or connate factor. Examples of these instinctive predispositions blending with the action of experience will meet us when we come to trace the early development of the feelings and of conation.2

All such instinctive or connate tendencies must be regarded as given in organic connexion with the primitive constitution of the nervous centres. Here the psychologist has been wont to pause. To trace back a psychical phenomenon to a primordial instinct is, according to this view, to have reached the goal of psychological analysis. The modern doctrine of evolution, however, enables us to go further, and to trace out to some extent the antecedents of such a connate endowment.

$ 36. Origin of Instincts: Heredity. Connate endowments are either specific, that is, common to all members of the

1 For an account of Mr. Spalding's observations on the pecking of chicken just released from their shell, and of other perfect instincts among animals, see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 161 ff.

2 The reader must be careful to note that the terms connate and instinctive (unlike innate in its first crude meaning) do not mean that a power is fully formed and realised at birth. It may require some time and some addition of (individual) experience to bring the instinctive endowment into efficient action.

human species, or variable and individual. Our various normal sensibilities are examples of the former; native individual character is an example of the latter.1

All connate or congenital endowments arise in one of two ways: either as the result of those unknown influences which cause an individual to vary and differ from his ancestors, and which we call accidental variation; or as the result of the conservative force of heredity. All specific endowments are of course due to the latter agency. The normal human brain, with its correlated psychical capacities, is, like the human organism as a whole, the result of the hereditary transmission of specific or typical characters from progenitor to offspring. Individual endowments, e.g., a trick of manner, though in many cases referrible in the present state of our knowledge only to the causes which produce individual variation, are in numerous instances traceable also to the action of heredity. It has long been observed that peculiar physical and mental traits are apt to reappear in the successive generations of a family.

Going back a step further, we may ask how the ancestor first came by the trait which he is thus able to transmit. If it was not always existent it must at some moment have been come by. There are two supposable ways in which it could have been attained: either it was acquired by the ancestor as the result of his experience and the use of certain native powers, or was an 'accidental' congenital variation of his organism. An example of the first would be the transmission from progenitor to offspring of a special degree of muscular agility or skill acquired by long and exceptional training; an illustration of the latter would be the reappearance of a congenital eccentricity of bodily carriage or gesture.

Without going more fully into this difficult and muchdebated subject, it must suffice to say that, according to Mr. Spencer and other evolutionists, the transmission of an improvement of natural capacity, mental as well as bodily, by exercise and training is not only a reality but a chief determining factor

1 Individual natural endowments may, of course, be common to certain varieties of the species, as the varying impulses entering into differences of racial and national temperament.