OF THE INSTINCTIVE GERM OF VOLITION. 26. In a former chapter I endeavoured to establish, as an important fact of the human system, that our various organs are liable to be moved by a stimulus flowing out from the nervous centres, in the absence of any impressions from without, or any antecedent state of feeling whatsoever. This fact of spontaneous activity, I look upon as an essential prelude to voluntary power, making indeed one of the terms or elements of Volition; in other words, Volition is a compound, made up of this and something else. Neither the existence of spontaneous actions, nor the essential connexion of these with voluntary actions, has been, so far as I am aware, advanced as a doctrine by any writer on the human mind; but the following interesting extracts from Professor Müller will show that he has been forcibly impressed with both the one and the other of these views. It is evident that the ultimate source of voluntary motion cannot depend on any conscious conception of its object; for voluntary* motions are performed by the fœtus before any object can occur to the mind, before an idea can be possibly conceived of what the voluntary motion effects; we must therefore view the question in a much simpler manner. On what do the first voluntary movements in the fœtus depend? All the complex conditions which give rise to voluntary motions, in the adult, are here absent. Its own body is the sole world from which the obscure conceptions of the foetus that excite its actions can be derived. The fœtus moves its limbs at first, not for the attainment of any object, but solely because it can move them. Since, however, on this supposition, there can be no particular reason for the movement of any one part, and the foetus would have equal cause to move all its muscles at the same time, there must be something which determines this or that voluntary motion to * I should say 'spontaneous.' U be performed,-which incites the retraction, first of this foot or arm, and then of the other.'-MÜLLER, p. 935. This last supposition, as to the equal tendency of all the muscles to come into action through the spontaneous activity of the centres, is, I think, too absolutely stated. There can hardly exist such a perfectly balanced charge of the centres, as to make all of them equally ready to commence a stimulus of the muscles under their control. It will always happen that some one will be more prone to act than another, from the mere state of constitutional or nutritive vigour belonging to it: and when that one has exhausted itself the discharge of some other may be expected. Then, as to the tendency to move first one foot and then the other, we have already seen that this alternation is provided for by a distinct arrangement referable, in all probability, to the cerebellum; so that when by any means a motion of the legs is commenced, that motion. is guided in an alternating cycle. I continue the quotation from Müller. 'The knowledge of the changes of position, which are produced by given movements, is gained gradually, and only by means of the movements themselves; the first play of the will on single groups of the radicle motor fibres of the nerves in the medulla oblongata, must therefore be independent of any aim towards change of position; it is a mere play of volition, without any conception of the effects thereby produced in the limbs. This voluntary [say rather spontaneous] excitation of the origins of the nervous fibres, without objects in view, gives rise to motions, changes of posture, and consequent sensations. Thus a connexion is established in the yet void mind between certain sensations and certain motions. When subsequently a sensation is excited from without, in any one part of the body, the mind will be already aware that the voluntary motion, which is in consequence executed, will manifest itself in the limb which was the seat of sensation; the fœtus in utero will move the limb that is pressed upon, and not all the limbs simultaneously. The voluntary * Like the ass of Buridan between two bundles of hay. SPONTANEITY OF THE NERVOUS DISCHARGE. 291 movements of animals must be developed in the same manner. The bird which begins to sing, is necessitated by an instinct to incite the nerves of its laryngeal muscles to action; tones are thus produced. By the repetition of this blind exertion of volition, the bird at length learns to connect the kind of cause with the character of the effect produced. 'We have already learned from many other facts, that the nervous principle in the medulla oblongata is in a state of extraordinary tension, or proneness to action; that the slightest change in its condition excites a discharge of nervous influence, as manifested in laughing, sneezing, sobbing, &c. While the tension of the nervous principle is not disturbed, we are equally ready to excite voluntary movements in any part of the body, and such is the state of rest or inaction. Every mental impulse to motion disturbs the balance of this tension, and causes a discharge of nervous influence in a determinate direction,—that is, excites to action a certain number of the fibres of the nervous motor apparatus.'p. 936-7. This last view I conceive to be an accurate statement of the nature of nervous energy. The nervous system may be compared to an organ with bellows constantly charged, and ready to be let off in any direction, according to the particular keys that are touched. The stimulus of our sensations and feelings, instead of supplying the inward power, merely determines the manner and place of the discharge. The centres of speech and song, for example, when fresh and healthy, may either overflow so as to commence action in a purely spontaneous way, or they remain undischarged till irritated by some external influence, as, for example, the sound of another voice. The bird whose morning song has lain dormant for a time, flows out at the stimulus of another songster just begun. 27. We must now therefore specifically consider what there is in volition over and beyond the spontaneous discharge of active impulses upon our various moving organs,— limbs, body, voice, tongue, eyes, &c. If we look at this kind of impulse closely, we shall see wherein its defect or insufficiency lies, namely, in the random nature of it. Being dependent on the condition of the various nervous centres, the discharge is regulated by physical circumstances, and not by the ends, purposes, or uses of the animal. When the centres of locomotion are fresh and exuberant, as in the dog unchained of a morning, the animal sets off at the top of his speed; the force once exhausted, the creature comes to a stand-still in the same spontaneous way, like a watch run down. But this moment of exhausted energy is the very moment when an animal ought properly to be active in procuring food and replenishment to the system; and there ought to be in the state of exhaustion itself a stimulus to act, just as a watch run down would require, in order to be self-sustaining, to touch some chord that would set a-going a power to wind it up, or as a dying fire ought to act on a spring for putting on fresh coals. Mere spontaneity, therefore, stops far short of what our volition does for us in the way of self-preservation; a power that dies out when action is most needed cannot be the appropriate support of our existence. Müller's application of the term 'voluntary' to the initial movements prompted solely by the state of tension of the nerve centres is not strictly correct; these movements are but one term of the couple that makes up an act of volition; both a feeling and a movement are necessary parts of every such act. A morsel of food on the tongue sets a-going the movements of mastication; this is a voluntary effort, an effort prompted and controlled by a feeling, namely, the sensation of taste or relish. Acts performed without any stimulus of feeling are usually described as involuntary; such are the spasms of disease and the reflex movements already noticed. There is a power in certain feelings or emotions to originate movements of the various active organs. A connexion is formed either by instinct or by acquisition, or by both together, between our emotional states and our active states, sufficient to constitute a link of cause and effect between the one and the other. And the question arises whether this link is original or acquired. Dr. Reid has no hesitation in classing the voluntary command of our organs, that is, the sequence of feeling and action VOLITION INVOLVES SOMETHING ACQUIRED. 293 implied in all acts of will among instincts. (See his chapter on Instincts, Essays on the Active Powers.) The power of lifting a morsel of food to the mouth is, according to him, an instinctive or pre-established conjunction of the wish and the deed; that is to say, the emotional state of hunger coupled with the sight of a piece of bread, is associated through a primitive link of the mental constitution with the several movements of the hand, arm, and mouth, concerned in the act of eating. This assertion of Dr. Reid's may be simply met by appealing to the facts. It is not true that human beings possess at birth any voluntary command of their limbs whatsoever. A babe of two months old cannot use its hands in obedience to its desires. The infant can grasp nothing, hold nothing, can scarcely fix its eyes on anything. Dr. Reid might just as easily assert that the movements of a ballet-dancer are instinctive, or that we are born with an already established link of causation in our minds between the wish to paint a landscape and the movements of a painter's arm. If the more perfect command of our voluntary movements implied in every art be an acquisition, so is the less perfect command of these movements that grows upon a child during the first year of life. of life. At the moment of birth, voluntary action is all but a nonentity. 28. According to this view, therefore, there is a process of acquirement in the establishing of those links of feeling and action that volition implies: this process will be traced and exemplified in the following Book, and also, at some future time, in a detailed discussion of the whole subject of volition. But the acquisition must needs repose upon some fundamental property of our nature that may properly be styled an Instinct. It is this initial germ or rudiment that I am now anxious to fasten upon and make apparent. There certainly does exist in the depths of our constitution a property, whereby certain of our feelings, especially the painful class, impel to action of some kind or other. This, which I have termed the volitional property of feeling, is not an acquired property. From the earliest infancy a pain has a tendency to excite the active |