Ants and Some Other Insects: An Inquiry Into the Psychic Powers of These AnimalsForel, Auguste
Science
Ants and Some Other Insects: An Inquiry Into the Psychic Powers of These Animals
Forel, Auguste
Insects -- Biology; Psychology, Comparative
Within ourselves, moreover, we are able to observe in the three
above-mentioned regions all varieties and degrees of so-called psychic
dignity, from the simplest reflex to the highest mental manifestations.
The feelings and impulses connected with self-preservation (hunger,
thirst, fear) and with reproduction (sexual love and its concomitants)
represent within us the region of long-inherited, profoundly
phyletic, fixed, instinct-life. These instincts are nevertheless
partially modified and partly kept within due bounds through the
interference of the higher cerebral activities. The enormous mass
of brain-substance, which in man stands in no direct relation to
the senses and musculature, admits not only of an enormous storing
up of impressions and of an infinite variety of motor innervations,
but above all, of prodigious combinations of these energies among
themselves through their reciprocal activities and the awakening of
old, so-called memory images through the agency of new impressions.
In contradistinction to the compulsory, regular activities of the
profoundly phyletic automatisms, I have used the term “plastic” to
designate those combinations and individual adaptations which depend
on actual interaction in the activities of the cerebrum. Its loftiest
and finest expression is the plastic imagination, both in the province
of cognition and in the province of feeling, or in both combined.
In the province of the will the finest plastic adaptability, wedded
to perseverance and firmness, and especially when united with the
imagination, yields that loftiest mental condition which gradually
brings to a conclusion during the course of many years decisions that
have been long and carefully planned and deeply contemplated. Hence the
plastic gift of combination peculiar to genius ranks much higher than
any simpler plastic adaptability.
The distinction between automatism and plasticity in brain-activity is,
however, only a relative one and one of degree. In the most different
instincts which we are able to influence through our cerebrum, i.
e., more or less voluntarily, like deglutition, respiration, eating,
drinking, the sexual impulse, maternal affection, jealousy, we observe
gradations between compulsory heredity and plastic adaptability, yes,
even great individual fluctuations according to the intensity of the
corresponding hereditary predispositions.
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