FIG. 3. DIAGRAM SHOWING AFFERENT (SENSORY) NEURONE WHICH INFLUENCES DIRECTLY THREE EFFERENT (MOTOR) NEURONES.

The arrows show the direction of the impulse when the sense organ (SO) is stimulated. Movement is effected when the impulse reaches the muscles (M).

attending the response G will analogously increase the readiness of synapse DG for conducting. If like results be repeated often and consistently enough, eventually the stimulation will choose immediately the path ADG in preference to any other and the response G will then come promptly and surely.

5. Secondary Neurone Connections

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Educational Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 141-142; 307308. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913.] (Adapted.)

Mental activity is satisfying to man; mental emptiness is annoying. The brain of man contains millions of neurones which crave stimulation. They are in "readiness to conduct," though no immediate gratification of any more practical want follows their action.

Native satisfiers and annoyers referred to above as well as many others belonging to such original behavior series as have to do with food-getting, food-seeking, danger-avoiding, and the like, involve a direct bond of neurone connection between the suitable stimulating situation and its appropriate response. Thus, the presence of suitable food to the mouth stimulates through its own direct bond the masticating response. Acquired bonds may also crave exercise.

In additions to direct bonds, whether original or acquired, between situations and responses, there are original tendencies to make and enjoy making secondary connections. For example, a child likes to see and hear a rattle. Direct bonds are at work. But to handle and shake the object himself so as to produce the noise is still greater satisfaction. Hearing the rattle when he shakes it is an example of a secondary connection. It represents the action of the neurones concerned in the child's manipulations, those concerned in his sensations and those concerned in connecting the latter with the former. To do something and have something happen is, other things equal, instinctively satisfying. There are many concrete forms of secondary connections. Making plans and getting conclusions, making imaginary people and thereby getting further imaginations of how they would act, as well as making movements and thereby getting sensations, are satisfying. They are originally satisfying in the sense that nature gives satisfyingness to the connection as soon as training and education give the ability to make the plan or form the image, etc.

Secondary connections have great significance for both improving and satisfying human wants. Those bonds or connections in which the sensory situation is replaced by an abstract plan, and the immediate muscular response by a contemplated action, tried out on the level of thought only, will, in the long run, do most for satisfying human wants. Each secondary connection can do the work of thousands of gross concrete behavior-series, providing for situations before they are met, for elements of situations never encountered by themselves, and for groups of situations whose essential similarity the more animal-like connections could never reveal. "Furthermore, these tendencies to secondary, or higher,' connections may rise free from the appetites of the single creature who exercises them and deal with the world in the interests of all men. Work and play with 'ideas'. . . can be impersonal and ideal to an extent and to a degree that would never be attained by direct responses to the concrete situations themselves."

6. Mechanism and Drive

[WOODWORTH, R. S., Dynamic Psychology, New York, Columbia University, 1918, and MCDOUGALL, W., Introduction to Social Psychology, Boston, John W. Luce Co., 1918.]

(Adapted.)

Professor Woodworth, in his Dynamic Psychology (pp. 36ff.), presents the two concepts of "mechanism" and "drive." "One is the problem, how we do a thing, and the other is the problem of what induces us to do it." "The sensory nerve drives the motor center (which drives the muscle), being itself driven by a stimulus reaching the sense organ from without." Sometimes different nerve impulses come together, "with the result in some cases that one strengthens the other, and in some cases that one weakens or suppresses the other." The drive in some cases "is not entirely the local stimulus, but other centers in the brain and spinal cord, being themselves aroused from outside, furnish drive for the center that is directly responsible for the movement." "A nerve center, aroused to activity, does not in all cases relapse into quiescence, after a momentary discharge. Its state of activity may outlast the stimulus that aroused it, and this residual activity in one center may act as drive to another center; or, a center may be 'sub-excited' by an external stimulus that is not capable of arousing it to full discharge; and, while thus sub-excited, it may influence other centers, either by way of reinforcement or by way of inhibition." "The relationship between the mechanisms, such that one, being partially excited, becomes the drive of another, is especially significant in the case of what have been called 'preparatory and consummatory reactions' by Sherrington. A consummatory reaction is one of direct value to the animal-one directly bringing satisfaction—such as eating or escaping from danger.. ." "Preparatory reactions are only mediately of benefit to the organism, their. value lying in the fact that they lead to, and make possible, a consummatory reaction." "That there is a persistent inner tendency towards the consummatory reaction is seen, when, for instance, a hunting dog loses the trail; . . . This seeking, not being evoked by any external stimulus (but rather by the absence of an external stimulus), must be

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driven by some internal force." " The dog's behavior is to be interpreted as follows: the mechanism for a consummatory reaction, having been set into activity by a suitable stimulus, acts as a drive operating other mechanisms which give the preparatory reactions. Each preparatory reaction may be a response in part to some external stimulus, but it is facilitated by the drive towards the consummatory reaction. Not only are some reactions thus facilitated, but others are inhibited. The dog on the trail does not stop to pass the time of day with another dog; he is too busy.

"Drive . . . is not essentially distinct from mechanism. The drive is a mechanism already aroused. . . . Any mechanism might be a drive. But it is the mechanisms directed towards consummatory reactions-whether of the simple sort seen in animals or of the more complex sort exemplified by human desires and motives-that are most likely to act as drives."

Instincts and the native capacities provide a large number of the determining or dynamic forces in behavior. We should also name the bodily and emotional states known as emotions, which closely accompany instinctive activities and the expression of native capacities. These factors account for our readiness to act, and for many particular drives, motives, desires or urges.

McDougall in his Social Psychology (p. 19) says: "The human mind has certain innate or inherited tendencies which are the essential springs or motive powers of all thought and action, whether individual or collective, and are the bases from which the character and will of individuals and of nations are gradually developed under the guidance of the intellectual faculties."

McDougall and Woodworth agree that every instinct results in states of readiness, and drives to action. They disagree over the question: "Are all motives instinctive?" McDougall believes that native capacities and instinctive impulses are not the only motive powers of the human mind to thought and action. He says: "In the developed human mind there are springs of action of another class, namely, acquired habits of thought and action" (p. 44).

Again, McDougall says: "We may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity; by the impulsive force of some instinct (or some habit derived from an instinct), every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along toward its end and every bodily activity is initiated or sustained. ... Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn" (p. 45).

McDougall's position is not as extreme as it appears at first sight for he admits that habits derived from instincts are motive factors. But others like Woodworth, are disposed to believe that there are habits, possessing driving potency, which are really not derived from instincts.

7. Stimuli and Responses; Every Mental Act Is Motor [WOODWORTH, Robert S., Psychology-A Study of Mental Life, pp. 46– 47. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1921.]

The main point of this discussion is that all mental phenomena, whether movements, sensations, emotions, impulses or thoughts, are a person's acts, but that every act is a response to some present stimulus. This rather obvious truth has not always seemed obvious. Some theorists, in emphasizing the spontaneity and "self-activity" of the individual, have pushed the stimulus away into the background; while others, fixing their attention on the stimulus, have treated the individual as the passive recipient of sensation and "experience" generally. Experience, however, is not received; it is lived, and that means done, only it is done in response to stimuli. The concept of reaction covers the ground.

8. Different Sorts of Stimuli

[WOODWORTH, Robert S., Psychology-A Study of Mental Life, p. 47. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1921.]

To call all mental processes reactions means that it is always in order to ask for the stimulus. Typically, the stimulus is an external force, or motion, such as light or sound, striking on a sense organ. There are also the internal stimuli, consisting of