The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
have them; and so far from their being educated by the lower centres
exclusively, they educate themselves.[94]
We have already noticed the absence of reactions from fear and hunger
in the ordinary brainless frog. Schrader gives a striking account of
the instinctless condition of his brainless pigeons, active as they
were in the way of locomotion and voice. "The hemisphereless animal
moves in a world of bodies which ... are all of equal value for him....
He is, to use Goltz's apt expression, _impersonal_.... Every object is
for him only a space-occupying mass, he turns out of his path for an
ordinary pigeon no otherwise than for a stone. He may try to climb over
both. All authors agree that they never found any difference, whether
it was an inanimate body, a cat, a dog, or a bird of prey which came
in their pigeon's way. The creature knows neither friends nor enemies,
in the thickest company it lives like a hermit. The languishing cooing
of the male awakens no more impression than the rattling of the peas,
or the call-whistle which in the days before the injury used to make
the birds hasten to be fed. Quite as little as the earlier observers
have I seen hemisphereless she-birds answer the courting of the male.
A hemisphereless male will coo all day long and show distinct signs
of sexual excitement, but his activity is without any object, it is
entirely indifferent to him whether the she-bird be there or not. If
one is placed near him, he leaves her unnoticed.... As the male pays
no attention to the female, so she pays none to her young. The brood
may follow the mother ceaselessly calling for food, but they might as
well ask it from a stone.... The hemisphereless sphereless pigeon is
in the highest degree tame, and fears man as little as cat or bird of
prey."[95]
Putting together now all the facts and reflections which we have been
through, it seems to me that _we can no longer hold strictly to the
Meynert scheme_. If anywhere, it will apply to the lowest animals;
but in them especially the lower centres seem to have a degree of
spontaneity and choice. On the whole, I think that we are driven to
substitute for it some such general conception as the following, which
allows for zoological differences as we know them, and is vague and
elastic enough to receive any number of future discoveries of detail.
CONCLUSION.
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