Habit. strain, and (2) the compatibility or incompatibility of the prevailing tendencies-resulting in an intensification, perpetuation, modification, or neutralization of ancestral characters, as the case may be. All such action is but "heredity," acting in one or other mode; nevertheless it results in what are practically "variations" of offspring from the parent form. The reproduction of ancestral characters, as distinguished from parental, is termed atavism." But another and fundamentally different kind of action from that of either heredity or atavism. also causes variation. Such are changes in the surrounding circumstances of parents or of the embryo during its development, which may result in variations of form that may be inherited. Thus certain affections of the skin, or of the nervous system, or of the generative organs, or of the hands and feet (supernumerary fingers and toes), are very apt to be inherited. Amongst variations of the generative organs, an entire absence of the uterus, or womb, is sometimes inherited, and this is especially interesting, because such a variation can only be propa gated indirectly. There is another bodily activity we possess about which a word or two should here be said. It is related to that power of ours whereby actions are performed, that have been already distinguished * as "analogous to reflex action." This is the power we have of forming habits, which is itself the sign of our possession of a special internal spontaneity by which our organism tends, within limits, to "react" when acted on. For what is a "habit"? A "habit" is not formed by repeated actions, though it may be strengthened and confirmed by them. If an act performed once only † had not in it some power of generating a "habit," then a thousand repetitions of that act would not generate it. Habit is the determination in one direction of a previously vague tendency to action. We have a natural tendency to activity. Action is not only natural to us, it is a positive want. Our powers and energies also tend to increase with activity and exercise (up to a certain limit), while they diminish, and finally * See above, p. 167. See further below, chap. xxiii. perish, through a too prolonged repose. Thus a power of generating "habit" lies hid in all, and in the very first of those actions which facilitate and increase the general activity and power of our body, and facilitate and increase the exercise of that power in definite modes and directions. * actions. This tendency to bodily activity which underlies Instinctive "habit," naturally leads us on to consider the kind of action we before referred to as "instinctive." Instinct, as a "feeling," belongs to the next chapter,† but a mention of the bodily movements to which it gives rise must not here be omitted. Instinctive movements differ from reflex actions in that they are not merely responsive to a stimulus felt, but are so responsive to it as to serve a future unforeseen purpose. Such an action is that of the infant which, in response to a feeling produced on its lips, first sucks + the nipple, and then swallows the thence extracted nourishment with which its mouth is filled. It is an action necessary for the nutrition and life of the infant; it is also an action done directly after birth, when there has been as yet no time for learning to perform it. It is a definite and precise action, and one performed in a similar manner by all infants, though it is effected by a very complex mechanism, and is performed at once, prior to all experience. But not only sucking and deglutition, but also the movements by which the products of excretion are removed from the body of the infant, are instinctive. In later life, various other instinctive actions minister indirectly or directly to reproduction. It is an instinct which prompts the little girl, with unconscious coquetry, to decorate herself, and not only to fondle her doll, but to press it to that region whence her future offspring will draw its nourishment. Later on, when come the days of love and courtship, instinct leads youths and maidens to seek each other's society, and tends naturally to induce affectionate feelings and ultimately caresses, each of which acts as a further stimulus, ultimately leading on towards actions indispensable to the race. *See above, p. 168. † See below, p. 184. As to this, the celebrated anatomist, Bichat, says, "It is instinct, which I do not understand, and of which I can give no account, which makes the infant, at the time of birth, draw together its lips to commence the action of sucking." Death and life. Hierarchy of functions. During the earlier stages of life the vital activities which build up the body are manifestly in excess. Life ever reacts upon obstacles and increases in vigour from the need, which obstacles create, for increased activity on the part of the organism. During middle life there is, roughly speaking, a balance between the reparative and the destructive processes; but as age advances, the processes of repair relatively and absolutely decrease, and life is maintained in a more and more unstable equilibrium, till the fatal end inevitably arrives, and death reduces what was an organism" (all the parts of which were reciprocally ends and means) to a mass of organic matter of different kinds, devoid of that intrinsic activity which pertained to it through the whole of life. Normally, however, life does not cease with the individual, but persists in that individual's offspring. Generative activity accompanies the period of life's greatest vigour, and but a relatively feeble vitality characterises, as a rule, those declining years which remain. to us after the processes of reproduction have come finally to an end. During healthy life the actions of the various cells, tissues, organs, and systems of organs of the body, constitute a hierarchy of activities which results in the supreme activity which each of us knows as his own life. The "cells" which constitute each several tissue of the body, though they have a sort of life of their own, yet have their quasi individual lives merged, as it were, in the life and activity of the tissue of which they form a part—just as the various activities of the different minute fragments or varieties of protoplasm which form a "cell" are merged in the life of that cell. In the same way the properties of the various tissues are merged in the function of the organ of which they form a part. The stomach digests food, and does it by means of the properties of its component tissues, but it is the stomach as a whole which carries on the function of such digestion, part of which is due to muscular action (the contraction of the muscular fibres in its walls), and part to solution. So, also, the functions of each separate organ are merged in a higher unity, namely, the function of the system of organs whereof they form a part. Thus the retina at the back of the eye has its own activity, but it can only exercise it usefully, in conjunction with the humours and structures in front of the retina; nor can all these together effect sight, without the brain; nor will even this conjunction suffice, except when a due supply of vivifying blood circulates through the whole. The heart, again, is the main organ of circulation; yet circulation is not a function of the heart apart from the vessels, but of it and all the vessels likewise. In a similar way the functions of all the systems of organs which together compose the body, unite and merge into a higher unity of activity-the life of the whole body. This "life" is the function of man's body considered as one whole, just as the subordinate functions are those of the body's several sets of organs. Having thus briefly passed in review our essentially bodily activities-those known to us by external observation-we must next proceed to consider those other bodily activities with which we are made acquainted by consciousness, through introspection-and, ultimately, those higher mental powers with which the activities of the body seem to be least concerned. N A recapitu lation. CHAPTER XIV. OUR LOWER MENTAL POWERS. We have a multitude of mere feelings severally related to the various orders of our intellectual perceptions, emotions, and volitions. These sensitive faculties, which are of the greatest practical importance to life, exist beside the intellect, and not unfrequently practically supply its place in simple matters when intellect is permanently or temporarily absent. A recapitulation-Two orders of mental powers-Pleasure and pain -Definite sensations—Consentience-Instinctive feelings—Mental images― Their association - Emotions — Sensuous memory – Knowledge and sensuous knowledge-Feelings of activity, passivity, power, self, not-self, and difference-Sensuous generalized cognitions-Feelings relating to succession, extension, position, shape, size,number,and motion—Feelings relating to surprise,doubt, agreement and disagreement, and of pleasurable satisfaction from conduct-Sensuous inference and feeling of causation-Appetites and desires-Tendency to imitation-Emotional language-Feeling for beauty-Co-ordinate feelings-Organic volition—Sensuous attention—Feelings of means and end. In THE full significance of this chapter will probably not be In the foregoing chapter it has been shown that we have three kinds of bodily activities: (1) those accompanied by feeling and consciousness; (2) those which can never be |