112. What are typical movements of self-preservation?
113. What are typical movements of play?
114. Is play more than a general exercise of the body?
115. Are all inherited movements possible immediately after birth?
116. What is the difference between reflexes and instincts?
§ [13]. Thought and Movement
Consciousness is not a factor in reflex or instinctive movements. But these movements soon enter into a twofold connection with consciousness. (1) When such movements occur, they often result in consciousness. They are either seen, or perceived through the sense of touch or through the kinesthetic sense. These images of the movement become associated with the images originating from the sensory stimulations which give rise to the movement. (2) In consequence of this association the visual, touch, and kinesthetic images of the movement, particularly the most common, the kinesthetic, may themselves produce this movement to which they owe their existence. The mere thought of how one feels when performing a movement brings about, if it is vivid enough, the movement itself. The hearing of dance music awakens the kinesthetic ideas of dancing, and these become real movements, although perhaps only swaying movements of the body or the head. Vivid thinking similarly brings about whispering of words. Even vivid imagination of the movement of a foreign body has such powers. A passionate and excited billiard player thinks of the hoped-for movement of the running ball. This leads to imagery of a similar movement of his own body, and the result is the actual movement, rather ridiculous to the onlooker because it is entirely purposeless.
Through this connection with consciousness instinctive movements become voluntary movements. The term voluntary means just this connection with consciousness; it has no other meaning.
Suppose a child sees something white and glittering and puts it instinctively into his mouth. It happens to be a lump of sugar. Its taste is pleasant. It is retained, dissolved, and swallowed. All the impressions, occurring at about the same time, become associated: the sight of the thing, the movements of the arm and hand, the taste, the movements of the tongue and the lips. The more frequently this thing happens, the more firmly established are the associations. Later the sight of sugar reproduces at once its taste, the visual and kinesthetic images of the movements, and the movements themselves—the arm is stretched out, the tongue and lips making sucking movements—although the sugar may be lying so far away that it cannot be touched. The child’s consciousness then contains what we have previously called will, and what may also be called desire: a vivid impression accompanied by pleasantness, sensations of restlessness, and an image of a pleasant conclusion of the whole experience. We say then that the child wills, desires, to have the sugar.
We can will to do only that which in its elements we have previously done by instinct. If we do not know how a movement feels when we perform it, of course we cannot bring it about by way of our consciousness, that is, by our will. Children have as much command of speech as they have acquired by instinctively producing speech sounds in response to accidental stimulations. This instinctive production occurs usually rather late in the case of certain sounds, as k, r, sh; and accordingly, in spite of all special efforts on the part of the parents, children learn to produce those sounds only at that late time. We presuppose, of course, that they are not deaf. For in deaf children the speech sounds instinctively produced do not enter into an association with the kinesthetic sensations and therefore cannot be voluntarily reproduced; that is, the children remain dumb. Many a grown person remembers that all his attempts at learning the pronunciation of a certain sound in foreign speech (take for example the gutteral German r, or the German ch, or the French nasal sounds) were in vain until by a mere accident, instinctively, he pronounced that very sound. After that he had command of it.