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In habit formation it is often advisable to arrange in a different order the stimuli which are to bring the desired responses, for the very essence of habit formation is found in the fact that the particular response can be secured regardless of the order in which they are called for. In thinking, as a subject is developed, our control is measured by the better perspective which we secure.
Something in the throat makes one cough; the tendency is to eject the obnoxious particle and thus modify the subsequent stimulus. The hand touches a hot thing; it is impulsively, wholly unintellectually, snatched away. But the withdrawal alters the stimuli operating, and tends to make them more consonant with the needs of the organism.
Further, Knauer reports that even at the height of post-rheumatic stupor, external stimuli make some impression, in that a thoughtful facial expression appears. In deep stupors, such as occurred in our series, this response is not seen. The same phenomenon of “rousing,” larval in Knauer’s cases, is often well marked in encephalitis lethargica and is, of course, a pathognomonic symptom of delirium.
Without stimuli, in one form or another, creative work is impossible, nor indeed the spirit of kindliness and generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not justify Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions. A Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans can ever hope to do.
A cell may, it is true, be congenitally defective, in which case disease is, so to speak, its normal state. But if originally sound and subsequently diseased, there has certainly been some excess, deficiency, or wrong quality in the materials or stimuli applied to it.
The Venus fly-trap responds to as delicate a stimulus as do any of the contact ceptors of animals, and the motor activity resulting from the stimulus is as complex. To an insect-like touch the plant responds; to a rough contact there is no response; that is, the motor mechanism of the plant has become attuned to only such stimuli as simulate the contact of those insects which form its diet.
That is to say, these qualities are not actually present in the things themselves; they are rather the particular responses which our consciousness makes to stimuli. Take, for instance, tone or colour. What we call tone or sound is not known to acoustics.
Each of the causes of muscular tension may exert its special influence on the voice. Let us go over the ground once more, this time with special reference to the actions of the throat muscles. Involuntary actions of the vocal organs normally occur in response to stimuli furnished by the emotions and feelings.
All simultaneously generated engrams are associated; there is also association of successively aroused engrams, though this is reducible to simultaneous association. In fact, it is not an isolated stimulus that leaves an engram, but the totality of the stimuli at any moment; consequently any portion of this totality tends, if it recurs, to arouse the whole reaction which was aroused before.
These are impossible without an active disposition to welcome points of view hitherto alien; an active desire to entertain considerations which modify existing purposes. Retention of capacity to grow is the reward of such intellectual hospitality. The worst thing about stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest development; they shut the mind off from new stimuli.
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