We shall return to this point when we investigate fear in children. Let us here only state that, at his birth, man is far less perfect than many animals. He must acquire by education and experience much knowledge of which animals are possessed at the beginning.
The less care parents give to their young, the more completely do they furnish them through heredity with instinctive knowledge; the less considerable this inheritance, the more care and attention must parents give to their offspring in order to keep them alive.
This apparent inferiority in the gifts of instinct at birth is, as it is with the gifts of fortune, fully compensated for by the greater capability of those animals to increase their intellectual capacity by education, and by the work of their own experience to surpass by far animals more favoured by instinct; so it is with man, who subjugates them all.
Let us think of the tremendous difficulties which walking presents to man. Children are at first very much afraid of falling, even before they have experienced such a thing. Every movement is performed with difficulty; it is at first a task painfully learnt; gradually it becomes less a matter of reflection, until at last one can scarcely call it voluntary. We may not call it automatic, because when the will to make us walk is wanting we do not move, but when we have once set out on a walk, or to make a journey, we may go on for a long time without reflecting in the least that we are walking.
Ribot[10] tells of a violoncellist who suffered from epileptic vertigo, during which he became unconscious. He earned his living by playing in the orchestra of a theatre, and it was often noticed that he continued playing in time, even after he had lost consciousness. It has happened to all of us to read aloud without understanding what we have read, or absent-mindedly to write one word for another, and many will have experienced such extreme fatigue that they have slept while walking. There are endless phenomena proving that movements which at first cost a great effort of the will, become at length so habitual that we perform them without being aware of it.
Now what is the cause of this transformation of voluntary into automatic movements?
When we first try to execute a series of complicated movements the brain must work hard. If the cells of the upper story—that is, of the convolutions—do not take part in it, it all comes to nothing; the assistance of all the organs of sense is necessary in order to shed light on the confusion of orders and counterorders which must be sent to all the fibres of the muscles. The work is accomplished under the direction of a competent, enlightened administration; but through repetition of the same work, easier paths, broader lines of communication are formed in the lower story of the brain, and gradually the same work can be performed by the cells of the lower part—that is, without the co-operation of the will. This is easy to understand. The oftener a thing is repeated, the more the mechanism tends to become permanent, and it ends in the work being despatched by the less noble parts of the brain.
The serious aspect of the question is, that physiologists would like to catalogue many qualities which we have always considered as the most noble of our character, the most sublime feelings of human nature, amongst the automatic movements and more material instincts in the lower story of the brain.
For instance, for the maintenance of our species the love of the mother for her children is indispensable. The lower animals that produce a numerous offspring may carelessly abandon them, but when the progeny is sparse, there is no other way to preserve the species than through the greater and more prolonged attention on the part of the parents.
Let us for a moment study the character of the monkey. I quote from the celebrated book by Brehm, who conscientiously relates what he himself noticed.