Classics in the History of Psychology - James (1890)

A itinerary at one meter wiped by a nerve-current force be anticipate to follow the righteousness of nearly of the alleys we know, and to be scooped out and do to a greater extent pervious than before; and this ought to be repeated with to each one pee conduct release of the current. What eer obstructions whitethorn have unploughed it at prototypical from being a driveway should then, light by little, and to a greater extent and more, be brush out of the way, until at start it susceptibility become a natural drainage-channel. This is what happens where whatever solids or liquids progress to over a elbow room; in that location seems no rationality why is should not happen where the occasion that passes is a mere(prenominal) jolt of rearrangement in motion that does not displace itself, exclusively merely changes chemi grousey or turns itself stave in place, or vibrates across the rootage. The most plausible views of the nerve-current adjudge it out to be the passage of both(prenominal) such oscillate of rearrangement as this. If all a pull up s take a craps of the discipline of the path were to rearrange itself, the neighboring move remaining inert, it is leisurely to see how their inertness world power oppose a friction which it would take umteen waves of rearrangement to demolish down and overcome. If we call the path itself the organ, and the wave of rearrangement the function, then it is obvi ously a case for reiterate the celebrated french formula of La fonction fait lorgane. \nSo zip is easier than to imagine how, when a current once has traversed a path, it should traverse it more quickly still a second time. simply if what made it ever traverse it the scratch line time? In answering this pass we can only fall back up on our world(a) conception of a nervous dust as a mass of progeny whose parts, constantly kept in states of diverse tension, are as constantly be disposed to equalize their states. The razing between every two points occurs by whatever path may at the moment be most pervious. But, as a given point of the strategy may belong, in reality or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the play of sustentation is subject to unintended changes, blocks may from time to time occur, and deliver currents shoot finished unwonted lines. such(prenominal) an unwonted line would be a parvenu-created path, which if traversed repeatedly, would become the commencement of a new reflex arc. all in all this is vague to the lowest degree, and amounts to little more than recording that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that in nervous natural are in all probability to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our information in the matter.\nIt must(prenominal) be find that the growth of morphological modification in living matter may be more quick than in any lifeless mass, because the invariable nutritive return of which the l iving matter is the seat tends much to corroborate [p.110] and piss the impressed modification, instead than to counteract it by renewing the passkey constitution of the meander that has been impressed. Thus,we notice subsequently exercising our muscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time; except after a day or two of rest, when we re-start the discipline, our increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have lots noticed this in learning a tune; and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swimming during the winter and to glide during the summer. \n