Life and Habit

visible on our mental horizon, and fades away in the case of those who leave offspring, so imperceptibly that none can say when it is out of sight. But, like the island, whether we can see it or

s a finite creature would point out his bound

more certain than that this is not at all the case, but that every individual person is a compound creature, being made up of an infinite number of distinct centres of sensation and will, each one of which is personal, and has a s

ot our own; for the time being, we become so completely part of them, that we are ready to do things most distasteful and dangerous to us, if they think it for their advantage that we should do so. Thus we sometimes see people become mere processes of their wives or nearest relations. Yet there is a something which blinds us, so that we ca

by other people except in so far as we remember their wishes, we yet generally conform to the usages which the current feeling of our peers has taught us to respect; their will having so mastered our original nature, that, do what we may, we can never again separate ourselves and dwell in the isolation of our own single personality. And even though we succeeded in this, and made a clean sweep of every mental influence which had ever been brought to bear upon us, and though at the same t

r of living souls, on whose welfare the healthy condition of our blood, and hence of our whole bodies, depends. We breathe that they may breathe, not that we may do so; we only care about oxygen in so far as the infinitely small beings which course up and down in our veins care about it: the whole arrangement and mechanism of our lungs may be our doing, but is for their convenience, and they only serve us because it suits their purpose to do so, as long as we serve them. Who shall draw the line between the parasites which are part

e is no strange and paradoxical view put forward wantonly, but that it follows as a matter of course from the

each system consists of 'an enormous mass of minute centres of action. . . . Every element has its own special action, and even though it derive its stimulus to activity from other parts, yet alone effects the actual performance of duties. . . . Every single epithelial and muscular fibre-cell leads a sort of parasitical existence in relation to the rest of the body. . . . Every single bone corpuscle really possesses conditi

variola, in the constitution, shows that the organic element remembers for the remainder of its life certain modifications it has received. The manner in which a cicatrix in a child's finger grows with the growth of the body, proves, as has been shown by Paget, that the organic element of the part does not forget the impre

e light, which, though single, is compounded of the red, blue, and yellow rays. It would appear, then, as though "we," "our souls," or "selves," or "personalities," or by whatever name we may prefer to be called, are but the consensus and full flowing stream of countless sensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or "selves," who probably know no more that we exist, and that

ere house ends and animal begins, more than they can say where animal ends and soul begins. For our bones within us are but inside walls and buttresses, that is to say, houses constructed of lime and stone, as it were, by coral insects; and our houses without us are but outside bones, a kind of exterior skeleton or shell, so that we perish of cold if perm

is, too, not a spiritual being, which, without matter, or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and blood and bones; with organs, senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, into some other part of which being, at the time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for ever from either age or antecedents. Truly, sufficient for the life is the evil thereof. Any speculations of ours conc

lf a successful corpuscle, than by speculating about my nature. He would serve me best by serving himself best, without being over curious. I should expect that my blood might suffer if

they have committed murder. When the balance of power is well preserved among them, when they respect each other's rights and work harmoniously together, then we thrive and are well; if we are ill, it is because they are quarrelling with themselves, or are gone on strike for this or that addition to their environment, and our doctor must pacify

ght being to fall back upon the superficial and common sense view, and refuse to tolerate discussions which seem to hold out little prospect of commercial valu

sophers, who seem unwilling, if one may say so without presumption, to accept th

tted about, but when the irritation was discontinued they ceased to move. Headless birds, under excitation, can still perform with their wings the rhythmic movements of flying. But here are some facts more curious still, and more difficult of explanation. If we take a frog or a strong and healthy triton, and subject it to various experiments; if we touch, pinch, or burn it with acetic aci

much the same thing as though its head were cut off-"if acetic acid be applied over the upper and under part of the thigh, the foot of the same side will wipe it away; but if that foot be cut off, after some ineffectual efforts and a short period of inaction," during which it is hard not to surmise that the headless body is considering what it had b

the late frog, does just what the frog did before its head was cut off-it tries to get at the place with its right foot. You now cut off its right foot: the headless body deliberates, and after a while tries to do with its left foot what it can no longer do with

ensations are called up by the impressions, and that the animal can not only feel, but can voluntarily direct its movements so as to get rid of the irritation which annoys it. But such an i

ces is ever excited without "stimulus of some kind," and unless we can answer this que

the "leg or whole body" had not perceived something which made it feel when it was not quiescent?)-"Again we find that such movements may be performed not only when the brain has been removed, the spinal cord remaining entire, but also when the spinal cord has been itself cut across, so as to be divided into two or more portions, each of them completely isolated from each other, and from other parts of

irritate any one of these pieces, you will find it move much as it would have moved under like irritation if the animal had remained undivided, but you will no longer find any concert between the m

he lower limbs may be excited to movement by an appropriate stimulant, though the animal has clea

have no power over the head and shoulders, as any one else has to claim the animalship for these last. What we say is, that the animal has ceased to exist as a frog on being cut in half, and that the two halves are no longer, either of them, the frog, but are simply pieces of still living organism, each of which ha

d with the nerves of the posterior extremities, but which is cut off from the brain. For if it were so, there must be two distinct centres of sensation and will in the same animal, the attributes of the brain not bei

y, at Yarmouth, sent up to London, and then sent down to Yarmouth again to be eaten, instead of being eaten at Yarmouth when caught. But from the phenomena exhibited by three pieces of an animal, it is impossible to argue that the causes of the phenomena were present in the quondam animal itself; the memory of an infinite series of generations having so habituated the local centres of sensation and will, to act in conc

s the absurdity of maintaining that we can make one frog into two frogs by cutting a frog into two pieces, but there is no absurdity in believing that the two pieces have minor centres of sensation and intelligence within themselves, which, when the animal is entire, act in m

e. Hundreds of thousands would die through the dislocation of existing arrangements. Nevertheless, each of the three parts into which England was divided would show signs of provincial life for which it would find certain imperfect organisms ready to hand. Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, accustomed though they are to act in subordination to London, would probably take up the reins of government in their several sections; they would make their town councils into local governments, appoint judges from the ablest of their magistrates, organise relief committees, and endeavour as well as they could to remove any acetic acid that might be now poured on Wiltshire, Warwickshire, or Northumberland, but no concert between the thre

view of the phenomenon when he says

the animal are adapted to a special end; we find in them the characters of intelligence and wil

ends; not a general and vague adaptation, but a determinate adaptation to a determinate end? In the reflex action we find all that constitutes in some sort the very groundwork of an intelligent act-that is to say, the same series of stages, in the same order, with th

he animal cannot be said to be any longer in existence. Half a frog is not a frog; nevertheless, if the hind legs are capable, as M. Ribot appears to admit, of "perceiving the impression" which produces their action, and if in that action there is (and there would certainly appear t

there are acts which we do without knowing that we do them; but the analogy of many habits which we have been able to watch in their passage from laborious consciousness to perfect unconsciousness, would suggest that all action is really psychological, only that the soul'

owing the multitude of matters which would be continually arresting it; those animals which had developed a power of working automatically, and without a recurrence to first principles when they

pite of appearances." A little later (p. 223), he says, "It is quite possible that if a headless animal could live a sufficient length of time" (that is to say, if the hind legs of an animal could live a sufficient length of time without the brain), "there would be found in it" (them) "a consciousness like that of the lower species, which would consist merely in the faculty of apprehending the external world." (Why merely? It is more than appreh

ecomes manifold in her eggs, but that each individual may be manifold in the sense of being compounded of a vast number of subordinate individualities which have

ttle universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organism

e parts and processes of us, so are we b