quo and a muscular, glandular, or other terminus ad quem. A path once traversed by a nerve-current might be expected to follow the law of most of the paths we know,[1] and to be scooped out and made more permeable than before; and this ought to be repeated with each new passage of the current. Whatever obstructions may have kept it at first from being a path, should then, little by little, and more and more, be swept out of the way, until at last it might become a natural drainage-channel. This is what happens where either solids or liquids pass over a path; there seems no reason why it should not happen where the thing that passes is not a moving body, but a mere wave of rearrangement in matter that does not displace itself in the line of the "path," but merely changes chemically or turns itself round in place, or vibrates across the line. The most plausible views of the nerve-current make it out to be the passage of some such wave of rearrangement as this. If only a part of the matter of the path were to "rearrange" itself, the neighboring parts remaining inert, it is easy to see how their inertness might oppose a friction which it would take many waves of rearrangement to break down and overcome. If we call the path itself the "organ," and the rearrangement of the molecules the "function," then it is obviously a case for repeating the celebrated French formula of "La fonction fait l'organe"
So nothing is easier than to imagine how, when a current once has traversed a path, it should traverse it more readily still a second time. But what made it ever traverse it the first time?[2] In answering this question we can only fall back on our general conception of a nervous system as a mass of matter whose parts, constantly kept in states of different tension, are as constantly tending to equalize their states. The equalization between any two points occurs through whatever path may at the moment be most pervious. But, as a given point of the system may belong, actually or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the play of nutrition is subject to accidental changes, blocks may from time to time occur, and make currents shoot through unwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would be a new-created path, which, if traversed repeatedly, would become the beginning of a new reflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter.[3]
- ↑ Some paths, to be sure, are banked up by bodies moving through them under too great pressure, and made impervious. These special cases we disregard.
- ↑ We can not say the will, for, though many, perhaps most, human habits were once voluntary actions, no action can be primarily such. While an habitual action may once have been voluntary, the voluntary action must before that, at least once, have been impulsive or reflex. It is this very first occurrence of all that we consider in the text.
- ↑ Those who desire a more definite formulation may consult J.Fiske's "Cosmic Philosophy," vol.ii, pp.142-146, and Spencer's "Principles of Biology," sections 302 and 303, and the part entitled "Physical Synthesis" of his "Principles of Psychology." Mr.Spencer there tries, not only to show how new actions may arise in nervous systems and form new reflex arcs therein, but even how nervous tissue may actually be born by the passage of new waves of isomeric transformation through an originally indifferent mass. I can not help thinking that Mr.Spencer's data, under a great appearance of precision, conceal lamentable vagueness and improbability, and even self-contradiction,
