The fact is that, when the noise takes its place among the processes composing your consciousness, it brings with it a number of central supplements. If you are eye-minded, these are visual; a picture of the carriage, at a particular place upon the road. If you are ear-minded, they are au- ditory; the sound of the words, "There's a carriage just there, so far behind! " (In this case, the words must have been got from previous visual perceptions; sight has been translated into hearing, into words heard.) If you are touch-minded, they are tactual; perhaps the ^ feel ' of the same words in your throat, perhaps that of the shrinking of the whole body from imagined contact with the carriage. In reality, then, the noise is perceived as coming from a particular thing and place only indirectly, by way of simul- taneous association.
Notice how the formula of association is followed in this instance. Some aspect, b, of the rumbling noise ab has been present in previous perceptions along with c, the look of the carriage. Having ab now, you necessarily have be also: b is so firmly welded to c that when b comes c comes with it.
The commonest and, perhaps, most important of Verbal asso- the inside processes that blend with the outside sen- sation in this form of association are 7£^<9r</-processes. The first idea that a thing suggests to us is generally a word-idea, — the name of the thing. And when the name has been associated to the thing, the asso- ciation generally stops; there is no need of more 134 Idea and the Association of Ideas associates. Words are the common denominator of all perceptions and ideas; so that when we have named an object we have classified it, put it in its place in our stock of knowledge, set it in harmoni- ous relation with our other experiences. When we hear a rumbling noise, upon our country walk, a single word-associate will be enough to *give us our bearings.' * Carriage ' starting up in conscious- ness will suggest one line of action; * thunder ' start- ing up, another. The word stands for so much, symboHses or means so much, that other associates, visual or auditory or tactual, are not required. — Of course, the word-idea will itself take on one of these three forms, according to our memory-type. And, also of course, the word-association is not anything primitive or original, but the final stage of a long process of development.
§ 56. Successive Association. — The mixed or sym- bolic perception is complete in itself. The nervous tendencies of the moment have thrown it up on the crest of the attention-wave: it has been poised there for a little while: now it falls to the lower level, and makes way for another perception or idea. That shares the same fate, in its turn; and so on. Successive But cvcry one of the sensations contained in the first perception has habits of connection. Hence it is natural that the second should not be wholly inde- pendent of the first, but should be built up (again by simultaneous association) on the basis of a sen- sation contained in the first; that the third should not be independent of the second, but built up, in association.
the same way, on some sensation contained in the second; and so forth. And this is the way in which ideas do, as a matter of fact, succeed one another in consciousness. Whenever we Met our minds go,' give ourselves up to day-dreaming or reverie or the influence of our surroundings, — whenever, that is, we are passively attentive', — our consciousness con- sists of a tram of ideas. Each member of the train Train of is suggested by some member that goes before it; and the suggestion is made by a sensation which is common to the two ideas. The train is put together by successive association.
So various are the connections of sensations in the adult mind that one may pass, without a break, from any given idea to any other given idea, — however wide the difference of meaning between the two, — using the sensations that are common to two ideas as stepping-stones. It is easy to pass from the idea of ' water ' to that of * slate '; the sensation * blue ' offers a stepping-stone. And by increasing the num- ber of steps, we can find a way between ideas as different as those of the English civil war of 1642 and the value of a Roman penny.
Thomas Hobbes (i 588-1 679), perhaps the greatest of English Instance, philosophers, has worked out this instance in his Leviathan (ch. iii.). "In a discourse of our present civil war,'' he writes, "what could seem more impertinent \i.e.^ less to the point] than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of delivering up the king to, his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the de- livering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason. And thence easily followed that malicious question: and all this in a moment of A Idea and the Association of Ideas Habit the condition of association.
time, — for thought is quick." So, by finding the common sen- sation, the Unk or stepping-stone between idea and idea, we may (to use Hobbes' words) "perceive the way of this wild ranging of the mind, and the dependence of one thought upon another."
A good instance of the train of ideas, held together by suc- cessive association, is given by Edgar Allan Poe, in the introduc- tion to his story " The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
Notice how iht formula of association is repeated in the train of ideas. We have the series ab-bc-cd-de...; every pair of links in the chain repeating the type ab-bc.
§ 57. The Physiological Conditions of Association. — In spite of the multitudinous connections that exist between sensations, it is always some particidar idea that is suggested by, and always some /^r//a//^r group of central supplements that clusters around the pres- ent perception. How are we to explain this } Why should association work just in this one way, and not in others } Let us put the question more concretely. Why should the idea of the English civil war have suggested the delivering up of the king, rather than the idea of the Roman civil war of B.C. 49-45? Why should the name ' Dickens,' a few pages back, have suggested • Thackeray ' rather than the story of The Wrecker which the authors, Messrs. Stevenson and Osbourne, acknowledge in their Epilogue to be fashioned after the Dickens pattern? Why should blue water suggest blue slate rather than blue sky or the forget-me-not or the bluebird? Why should the perception of an etched portrait be supplementedrin one mind by the name of the person portrayed, Descartes, and in another by the name of the etcher, Edelinck? And so on.
If we are to sum up the physiological conditions of association in a single word, that word will be habit. Habit may be defined as the tendency of a thing to be or do now what it was or did on some previous occasion. The law of habit runs all through nature. Our old coat is comfortable, because it has § 57- PJiysiological Conditions of Association 137 got into the habit of fitting us; its shape has been gradually changed, by wearing, till it fits our body. New tools do not work so well as old; they have not yet got the habit of working upon them: use adapts them to the materials upon which they are employed. The brain, like everything else, is subject to the law. When two or three parts of the brain have been excited together, in perception, a habit of co-excita- tion or joint excitation is set up; so that if, later on, one of the parts is excited alone, the others will be involved also, — and involved the more certainly, the more habitual the connection has been in percep- tion. There is thus an order of association: a hundred ideas have associations with the given per- ception, but that idea comes up whose connection with it is most habitual.
There are different strata or levels of habit, in the brain, Various as there are levels of attention or perception in the mind. Deepest seated are the natural tendencies of the nervous system, the tendencies that we bring into the world with us; and the acquired tendencies, the tendencies that are drilled into us during early education (§ 32). Next in order come the habits that we form in adult life: methods of working, ways of looking at things due to social position and the company of friends, standards of dress and be- haviour, etc. Most superficial of all are the habits set up by recent experience; habits which will disappear as the memory of this experience fades.
Thus water may suggest slate because I am a ^ born geologist ' (natural tendency). The portrait suggests EdeHnck because I have been brought up in an artistic home, and have constantly heard discussions of etchings and engravings in my childhood (acquired tendency). Giant suggests dwarf because I have gradually formed a standard of human height and size in my levels of habit.
Idea and the Association of Ideas Some habits are formed at one stroke.
daily intercourse with other men; and both giant and dwarf depart from this standard. Lastly, Dickens suggests Thackeray because I have just been re-reading Vanity Fair, while I have not read The Wrecker for some three or four years.
Most habits are set up slowly, by long-continued repeti- tion. Indeed, this idea of repetition, of doing something over and over again, seems to be essential to the idea of habit: there can be no habit, we should be apt to say, unless there is repetition. Nevertheless, some brain habits are set up all at once, by a sudden wrench; just as we may give a permanent bend to a fencing-foil by one violent lunge. If a dear friend has been drowned on a pleasure excursion, it is probable that we shall never think of boat- ing parties without thinking also of the chance of drowning: the association has become a permanent brain habit, although the connection of boating and drowning in our perception occurred only once.
Questions and Exercises (i) Work out all the instances of association given in §§ 54-57, showing how they fall under the formula ab-bc, (2) Try to discover your own memory type or types, by the following exercises: a. Open your mouth a little, and imagine the words mother^ bottle^ triunpet. If you can imagine them easily, with- out any inclination to close the mouth, you can think in visual or auditory terms; if you have an irresistible tendency to move lips or tongue, your mind is (partly, at least) of the tactual type. Notice, in the former event, how you do imagine them.
b. Shut your eyes, and form a mental picture of your breakfast table. Can you see all of the table service at once? Can you see the things in their right colours? Does the picture lie out before you, easily compre- hended; or must you move your eyes with an effort from cup to dish, from knife to coffee-pot, in order to get a view of the whole? In the latter case, your visual memory is mixed with tactual.
Questions and Exercises 139 c. Can you recognise your friends directly by the sound of their voices? Or, when you hear the voice, do you have a mental picture of the approaching figure?
d. Can you remember musical airs that you have heard only once? And, if you remember them, do you hear them in your head, or do you ^feel' your throat twitch as they are recalled? Can you imagine the sound of a note that is higher than the highest you can sing? — Determine, from the answers you give, w^hether your type is auditory or mixed auditory and tactual.
e. What is your method of ' learning by heart ^?
f. Can you imagine the tastes of sweet and bitter, without any thought of the sweet or bitter substance, and with- out any inclination to ^lick your lips' or screw your tongue out of the way? — Can you imagine the scent of violets and the smell of asafoetida, without any thought of the flower or the resin? without any ten- dency to sniff or to close your nostrils?
g. Think of Deerslayer in the hands of the Mingoes. Do you simply see the scene, or hear or ^ feel ' the words that describe it, — or do you ^ sicken ' to think of it, and grow ' breathless ' with suspense as hope after hope of deliverance fails?
(3) Perform this experiment in class, or in a company of friends.
Let the experimenter choose a list of words which, as pro- nounced, may mean different things: time (thyme), bow (beau), mind (verb or substantive), sole (of foot, the fish, soul). These he is to read out slowly, each member of the audience writing down what he takes the word to mean, i.e.^ how it is supplemented in his consciousness by centrally aroused sensations. At the end of the reading, comparisons of results may be made; every one referring his association to some one of the three levels of habit, and reducing it to the formula ab-bc.
(4) Perform this experiment in the same way. Let the experimenter write some familiar word on a blackboard, — ^ table' or 'saucer' or 'lion' or what not, — and conceal it with his hand or a cloth. At a preconcerted signal he shows the word for 2 sec, and then covers it again. Each member of the audience writes out the first ten ideas suggested by the word seen.
^\ 140 Idea and the Association of Ideas The written list of ideas must be worked over very care- fully, (a) Write out^ by introspection, the precise mate- rials (visual, auditory, etc.) of which the ideas are made. {U) Show the dependence of each idea on some foregoing idea, using the formula ab-bc. {c) Notice that the words you have written down are merely indications of the ideas you actually had, — signs of, perhaps, very complicated processes. And notice that the part of the real idea that the word stands for is the part that you attended to, while you thought: there was a great mass of idea that you did not attend to, did not try to express in the word. Now fill out the gaps, putting down all the interstitial processes that introspection shows you.
(5) Suppose yourself to have been present at the punishment of Hester Prynne, as Hawthorne describes it in ch. ii. of The Scarlet Letter. In how many different ways could you remember the event? State what the memory would be, in each case. What, do you suppose, was Haw- thorne's memory type? Why?
(6) What is the link or stepping-stone in the following instances of successive association?
abed suggests efg " Baby has swallowed a cent! '' " x-rays (7) Is the difference between simultaneous and successive association a difference of degree or a difference of kind?
(8) What advantages would there be in having a memory which was predominantly verbal? What disadvantages?
References James, Textbook^ ch. xvi. Sully, Human Mindj vol. I., chs. vii., ix. Titchener, Outline^ §§ 52-55, "j^^ y6. Wundt, Lect2ireSy Lects. XIX., XX. Wundt, Outlines, § 16.
CHAPTER IX The Simpler Forms of Action § 67. Movement and Action. — When we were dis- cussing attention and emotion, we found it necessary to describe (§§ 34, 60, 61) certain bodily movements which accompany or ^express/ them. We were in- terested in these movements not for their own sake, but for the sake of what they signified or expressed. We found that, seeing a particular set of movements, we could say: '' That man is attentive! " — and, see- ing another set: ^^That man is afraid!" We were arguing, so to speak, from outside inwards; from movement to the mental processes that movement stands for.
We have now to look at movement from a different Movement point of view, to ask what movement is, on its psy- choi^gkai chological side. We must examine it for its own sake, phenome- working frt)m inside outwards, — that is, trying to find out the psychological conditions under which movement in general takes place. For it is clear that movement is of the very highest importance in mental life. We are constantly ' doing ' something; hoping, fearing, wishing, avoiding, resolving to do something, and feeling glad, sorry, satisfied, relieved that the something is done. What, now, is the prob- lem that ' doing ' things sets to psychology?
Let us take two instances of bodily movement, and see how they help us to answer this question.
non.
Tlie Simpler Forms of Action The move- ments of swimming.
Heart-beat.
Action.
Action.
(i) Suppose that you have recently learned to swim, and that you wish to test your endurance in the water by swimming from one boat or dock to another. You hesitate a little; but finally resolve to make the trial, and dive in. As you swim, you * feel ' the resistance of the water; you exert your- self, and grow tired; the water seems to get thicker and thicker, and your body to become heavier and heavier, as you near the goal. — In this case, the movement has a double claim upon the psychologist. In the first place, it has a mental antecedent; the idea of the distance, the hesitation, the final resolve, — all these complex mental processes precede it: they are the mental circumstances under which it occurs, its 'conscious conditions.' In the second place, it has mental concomitants; the perception of resistance and the tiredness come at the same time with the moving. (2) Now consider, by way of contrast, the movements of your heart. They go on of their own accord, without any antecedent resolve; and they go on for the most part unnoticed, without any con- comitant sensations. You can perceive them by pur- posely attending to them; and you perceive them when you are angry or * out of breath '; but under ordinary circumstances they are not * felt ' at all.
A movement that has mental antecedents (con- scious conditions) and mental concomitants is termed an action; and the problem which * doing things ' sets to psychology is that of tracing out the various sets of processes which can serve as the conscious condition of the various forms of action. Movements of the second kind (of heart, lungs, blood, intestines.
§ 68. Co7tsciotis Condition of Primitive Action 163 etc.) are termed ' movements ' simply. They have no place in psychology as movements, for their own sake: we have to take account of them only when (i) they are the bodily conditions of organic sensa- tions (§ 21), or when (2) they * express' particular mental processes (feeling, emotion). Looked at as movements, there is nothing about them for psy- chology to lay hold of; we either do not perceive them at all, or merely perceive the sensations aroused by them while they are actually performed.
§ 68. The Conscious Condition of Primitive Action. — Attention the The one thmg necessary tor action, m the mmd or J-q^ of the primitive organism, was attentioit. When the ani- action. mal's attention was caught by an object, no matter what the object might be, it moved: moved towards^ if the object affected it pleasantly; moved from, if the object were unpleasant. In other words: every time that a complete consciousness was formed, — a consciousness, that is, consisting of (i) an idea (2) attended to and therefore (3) felt, — there was corresponding movement of the whole body.
We call this consciousness a ^ complete consciousness * because it contains both of the mental elements, sensation and affection, and contains them in the form of concrete processes (idea and feeling) running their course in the state of attention. All the requirements of a full conscious- ness are thus met. In the interval between two attentions, the primitive consciousness was composed of a vague blur of what we must term organic sensations, with no reference to the world outside of the body.
There are three points to observe here.
Notice (i) that action affords a good illustration of the state- Mind and ment made in § 38 that " mind developes in close interaction with nature.
TJie Simpler Forms of Action The function of a nervous system.
Why psy- chology came late to the study of attention.
nature. *•' There is a physical or natural side to the phenomenon that we are considering from the psychological side. When a full consciousness is formed (psychology), then the animal moves (physics or biology). And the movement is practically useful, being tov^ards what is good and away from what is bad for the organism.
organism.
(2) We can now understand how it is that all nervous systems are constructed on the same plan. The function of a primitive nervous system is simply to take in and send out: what comes in as impression goes out into movement. The function of a more highly developed nervous system is to take in, to work over, and then to se/id out: what comes in as impression still goes out into movement, but does not go out immediately; the incoming excita- tion is worked over at the centre of the system, and sent out per- haps into movement of the whole body, perhaps into movement of a limb or part of a limb, perhaps into movement of the internal bodily organs, of heart and blood, etc. The principle of the nervous system is the same, but its working has grown more complicated. A famous neurologist, Dr. Hughlings Jackson, sums up the functions of the brain by saying: " All nervous centres, from the lowest to the very highest, are made up of nothing else than nervous arrangements representing impressions and movements. I do not see of what other materials the brain can be made."
(3) We can understand, also, how it comes about that in the older works upon psychology attention is not discussed, as a state of consciousness that has special features and special con- ditions, but is simply taken for granted. We may be sure that no object of the world outside the body would be perceived by the primitive organism that was not at the same time felt (at- tended to). The natural or normal perception is the perception given in the state of attention; indifferent perceptions, percep- tions of objects not attended to, are a later growth, the result of the multiplication of sense-organs and of the consequent com- plexity of consciousness. So we ourselves, when we think of a sensation — '- blue ' or ^ sweet ' — naturally think of it as it is when we attend to it. The older school of psychology had not passed beyond this ' natural ' attitude to sensations and perceptions, and therefore took attention for granted.
Do not suppose that the primitive consciousness was split up, as clearly and sharply as ours is, into a sensation-side and an § 6g. Impulse: the Idea of Ozvn Movement 165 affection-side. We, looking back over the history of mind, can see that sensation and affection were both represented in the very earliest mind; but none the less that mind was a one-tissue mind (§ 48), a mind whose processes were neither sensations nor affections, but rudimentary sensation-affections.
The conscious conditions of a particular action are usually summed up in one word, — the word motive. Motive \^ Thus the motive to the primitive action that we have ^^ ^ up o just been considering would be the felt (attended to) perception of an object. It is evident, from this single illustration, that every motive may be looked at from two different points of view: stress may be laid upon its sense-side (the perception) or upon its affective side. When we are thinking of the former, we speak of the inducement to act; when we are thinking of inducement the latter, the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the inducement, we speak of the incentive to act. The incentive, whole motive, the sum of conscious conditions, is made up of an inducement and an incentive, present in consciousness together. Thus a thief is induced S to steal by the sight of a loaf; the incentive to the theft is the unpleasant feeling of hunger.
The typical motive to human action, the motive from which all others may be derived, is called ifupulse. We Impulse, proceed now to discuss the impulse in detail, and shall then treat of three degenerate forms of impulsive action, — instinctive action, ideomotor action and reflex movement.
§ 69. Impulse: The Idea of Own Movement. — Sup- Formation of pose that an organism has moved, under the condi- ^^^^^ ^^^^^ tion described in the foregoing Section, the condition movement. of atte7ttion or (for we saw that the two expressions were in this case identical) of a full consciousness. When the movement is over, the animal will have 1 66 The Simpler Forms of Action had a new perception, and so have laid the founda- tions of a new idea, — the perception or idea of its own movew^ent. When next it attends, this idea of own movement will be simultaneously associated to the perception of the object attended to: the animal will attend not merely to the object, but to the object plus the idea of own movement. And as the asso- ciation of perception-of-object and idea-of-movement is strengthened by every instance of actual move- ment, — every time that the animal moves, it experi- ences anew the perception of own movement, — this idea comes to play a very important part in the mass of idea and feeling that makes up the conscious con- dition of movement in general. Function of For remember what the very earliest movement was: just a rough, unregulated movement towards or away from an object. It is a far cry from move- ments of this sort to the precise, definite, accurate movements that we make; such movements as those of picking up a pin, or counting out money, or writ- ing, or using knife and fork. Now the idea of pre- vious movement gives the organism a pattern or copy of movement, — a copy to be closely followed, if it be the idea of a satisfactory movement, and a pattern^to be avoided, if the original movement proved unsatisfactory. We may say, then, that when the idea of past movement comes to be contained in the con- scious conditions of action, action is on its way to be precise and accurate.
Composition If we sum up the conscious conditions of action at this of motive. stage of mental development, we have: (a) Perception of object; § 70. Impulse: the Idea of Result 167 (li) Idea of own movement, connected with the percep- tion by way of simultaneous association; (/) Affection accompanying the perception and idea. Since the complex which the affection colours is a group of processes held together by simultaneous association, the whole sum of conditions will be of the nature of an emotion (§ 58). • This means that there will be a fourth factor in the Hst: (^) Organic sensations, set up by the bodily expression of the affection.
We will work out these condition^, in two actual cases. The Instances of one shall be a case of impulse towards^ the other a case of im- motives, pulse away from.
(i) Suppose that an animal perceives, by sight or smell, the near presence oi food. It moves impulsively towards the food, and takes it. What is inducement here, and what incentive?
The inducement is made up of {a) the food-perception, which is at once reinforced by (f) the idea of own movement towards the food-stuff and (d) the organic sensations accompanying the pleasant incentive. This incentive is made up of {c) the pleas- antness of the food-perception plus the pleasantness of the move- ment-idea.
(2) Suppose that the animal perceives, by sight or hearing, the near presence of an enemy. It moves impulsively away from the source of danger.
The inducement is made up of {a) the enemy-perception, which is at once supplemented by {p) the idea of own movement away from the danger and (<^) the organic sensations accompanying the unpleasant incentive. This unpleasantness is that of the danger-perception, mimes the pleasantness of the idea of move- ment. The latter is, however, so far outweighed by the un- pleasantness as to be for all practical purposes non-existent.
§ 70. Impulse: The Idea of Result. — We spoke Formation of just now of ^satisfactory' and 'unsatisfactory' move- result?f° ments. A movement is satisfactory when it leads to movement. a satisfactory result^ and unsatisfactory when it ends unsatisfactorily. No action can be performed without TJie Simpler Forms of Action Function of this idea.
Instances.
accomplishing or failing to accomplish something; and no result can follow an action without leaving an idea of itself in the agent's mind, which may come up again when the next occasion for action arises. So we have a further complication of the impulse- motive: the perception-side of it (the inducement) is enriched by the idea of the result of movement, and the affective side (the incentive) by the pleasure which this idea brings.