The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-01-22 00:00:00

HUMAN AUTOMATISM.

On Monday night, at the London Institution, Dr. Car-
penter delivered the second of two lectures on " hursan
automathm," and ended by drawing a practical moral con-
clusion from the series of physiological facts which he
detailtd.— The Dim 8 thus reports the lecture :
Dr. Carpenter, in his first lecture, illustrated reflex
action, that unconscious repetition of an habitual pro-
cess on the recurrence of the it:apses-dons which once
caused the action to be consciously made. An im-
pression is conveyed from the surface to the nervous
centre, and thence without other intervention a message
passes along the motor nerves and calls the muscles
into contraction. He showed on Monday how respi-
ration and all but the beginning of taking food are as
a rule unconsciously performed, but, nevertheless,
are more or less under the control of the will
when it -wills to direct them. The mind he
likened to a rider, which guides but does not
supply the motor force of the body bestridden;
and he quoted Xavier de Maistre's division of a man
into animal (bete) and soul (cime)—a distinction which,
it may be remembered, has been felicitously adopted
by Mr. Tennyson in his welLknown line about the
brute's soul within the man's. Dr. Carpenter con-
tinued that a child digging up the common centipede
in a garden finds its body, divided by the spade, still
moving in both morsels. Instead of the vertebral con-
tinuity of man, a diagram of the centipede shows
many little knots, or ganglia, each of which is a nerve
centre. Each may thus become a centre of activity,
and the creature may be split up into as many moving
morsels as it has ganglia. There is no reason to
believe that when the head is off the other morsels
have sensation, but they continue to move by
reflex or unconscious action. The mantis, which
from its. suppliant arms has gained the epithets of
religiose , prie-dieu, and a corresponding name
in Arabic, hclds out these limbs till it clutches
the insect which is its prey. Cut off the body
below the arms, it still clutches its food by reflex
action, though there is no reason to believe it has any
feeling whatever. Touch the lower part of the divided
body it flutters violently, although we have every
reason to believe, from the analogy Of ourselves,
that when the head is off there is no sense left.
A man falls from a mast and injures his back. He is
brought into hospital with complete paralysis of the
lower limbs. He cannot move them by any effort of
the will. Tickle the soles of his feet, he will draw
'them up violently, but know nothing about it. There
is every reason to think that the spinal marrow may
act in almost any habitual mode without any con-
sciousness whatever. A man was recently brought
into a London hospital for apoplexy, and died in
thirty-six hours, without any sign of returning con-
sciousness; hut during the whole of that time he was
continually carrying his hand towards his moustache
and giving it a pull and a twirl. It was found on inquiry
that he was a retired military man, who took a pride
in his moustache, and was often lauehed at for his
habit of twirling it. He usually did so unconsciously,
and the action continued when only those portions of
the spinal cord remained in activity which are in ac-
tion during a profound sleep. The movements of a
frog are almost entirely of this reflex character, and
though his brain (cerebrum) be taken out, if the cere-
bellum be left, he will climb up and over the ridge of
your hand to avoid falling off if you place him in the
hand and begin to incline it. It has occurred to most
on going up to dress for an evening party to take off
the watch and wind it up as if they were going to bed.
A friend of the lecturer's actually got into bed under
such circumstances, and a young man who went up to
dress had been known to kneel down and say
his prayers. We travel a known road like a well-
trained horse, and in these latter cases high faculties
are employed, for you must see your watch to in-
sert the key. The closing of the eyes upon the flash of
light is a well-known instance of unconscious action.
Sir Benjamin Brodie, after an explosion of chy-
.micals held in his hand at Oxford, thought he
had lost his eyesight for ever, but he found that he
had immediately, and without knowing it, closed the
ids, which were sown with fragments of glass ,while
the eyes were safe. We know that the cerebrum
furnishes the instrumental mechanism for our mental
operations. There are trains of thought which induce
others in a manner perfectly involuntary; but what
we can do is to encourage trains of thought which we
desire to keep up, and to repress their opposites. The
process by which we do this is exactly the same process
by which, for instance, we try to provoke or repress a
cough. The cough is entirely automatic, but we can
play downwards from the cerebrum and replace the mere
tickling in the throat which usually calls forth a oough.
The mind wills the result, though it does not will the-
separate muscular movements. If you will to look
fixedly at a clock, and, at the same time, to move your
head from side to side, the eyes roll of themselves as you
move your head. In each case we have to train our
automaton. To play the fiddle a man must educate his
Me, and to do mental work a man must prepare his
cerebrum. That is why far more importance is rightly,
attached to disciplining the mind than to learning par-
ticular things—(applause),—though, of course, there
are useful and useless knowledge. We should naturally
wish our children's education to be directed to pro-
fitable things, but the question is whether there may
not be things that will never be of direct use in after
life, but which are invaluable as training. The foun-
dation of all the power of using the brain is the capacity ,
to fix the attention, the power of keeping the mind
devoted to one particular set of sequences of thought.
We will to keep our attention fixed, and the will has a
positive and direct power of fixing attention upon one
thing in exclusion of another. Dr. Carpenter tre
pointed out what he called a fundamental distinction
between himself and those whom he described as the
automatists. They, he said, think that the strongest
imptession prevails but he holds that the will makes the
struggle; else why is one so exhausted by overcoming
distractions? Passing to that which he long ago described
as " unconscious cerebration," appr(?achmg. it from the
physiological point of view, which Sir William Hermi-
ts" as he afterwards discovered, has called it " latent
thought," Dr. Carpenter recalled the cases in which a
man tries to remember some fact. He selects from
among the ideas which present themselves auto-
matically the one that he will follow out. But sup-
posing the fact does not turn up, then we have a
curious instance of automatism. When once you have
impressed upon your mind that there as something you
want to get hold of and have been puzzling over it for
hours, your best plan is to leave the mind to itself, to
put the reins upon the horse's back, and the lost idea
will present itself without your being able to explain
, how- A student at Leyden (the Rev. John de Liefde
.a, Dutch clergyman in London, told the story)
worked at night a mathematical problem he had
, been puzzling over for days. He slept in the
same room as Mr. de Liefde, and in the morn-
ing was wholly unaware that he had got out
of bed in sight of his room-companion and worked
the problem, and that by a shorter method than he
had tried before. 'The mind worked along tracks pre-
viously established, and no doubt the wonderful feats
of the calculating boys were performed by an analo-
gous process; by direct intuition rather than ordinary
calculation. We might apply this to the direction of
our mental course. We see this habit of fixed atten-
tion which is in the most remarkable degree the result
of training; and we may begin even in the second or
third year to encourage a child to keep its attention
fixed for a short time while some explanation is being
given. Later it becomes unnecessary to solicit this
attention; but the greater the power of fixing the
mind, the greater the power of self-control. Self-
control is the fixation of the attention upon one
set cif motives to the exclusion of another set. In
all cases the stronger motive preponderates, but we