It is plain, then, that if physiological science has achieved the least light upon the problems of psychology, the meaning which any word or phrase possesses is not something that the sound of the word or its written symbol is endowed with, or something that filters through from any Platonic realm of ideas, but the meaning of any word is given to it by the person who speaks or hears it. Moreover, this endowment of meaning is implicit in the arousal of action tendencies at the time when the word is spoken or heard. In the example recently cited, the word “fire” had a different meaning for the insured landlord from what it had for the uninsured tenant because the habits of precaution which the former had acquired established a different motor attitude toward fire than did the procrastination of the latter. Consequently, the shouting and the conflagration were stimuli in the presence of which the landlord could be calm, while the tenant could not.
The application of this principle of the dependence of meaning upon action-patterns extends, however, to other situations than those in which emotional riots are observable. Indeed, we undertake to say that even such plain, concrete words as basket, horse, and river have a meaning because they arouse us to motor activities of one sort or another. It may well be, of course, that we start to think of a basket in terms of its color, or shape, or its cost; and of a horse in like terms; while we think of a river only in connection with its height during seasons of drought or flood: but eventually the basket will, by implying receptacle, lead in our imagination to the acts of filling and emptying; while the horse will be finally pulling our loads or carrying our weight on his back; and the river will be either waded or swum by us, or become related to our necessities or pastimes (our habits) in some other manner. And when we thus develop a specific action-pattern toward such an object, we are said to know what it means. It has long been a maxim in education that not until we know how to use and control our environment, do we become fully intelligent towards it. The theory and the fact of action-patterns gives unusual support to this particularly profitable maxim. Spinoza laid down the principle that the will and the intellect are one and the same, and this principle too has complete verification from mechanistic psychology. Thought is dependent upon bodily activity, and it does not matter for our present purpose whether that activity be overt or subtly concealed.
The question now arises: Does the meaning of abstract terms, of the terms we use in our judgments of value, consist in the same kind of motor tendencies as those which are aroused by concrete terms? From the following considerations I believe we can say that it does.
To begin with, abstract terms are one and all the result of the process of abstraction. This process consists in our picking out some common feature or quality from a great variety of objects, and giving it a name in order to fix it in our memory. For example, fire, the inside of ripe watermelon, and the outside of ripe cherries may all be called red. The concept, or abstract term, “red” can thereafter be used on occasion as a gestural sign for all these various objects when their color is being signified. Moreover, the process of abstracting these common qualities is itself a motor process. It is, physiologically speaking, the same sort of activity as collecting postage stamps or beetles’ wings. Indeed, the simplest perception of any concrete object, any red object, for example, involves motor activity of a highly elaborate character. When we look at such an object, not only is the retina of the eye stimulated, but various muscles and glands are simultaneously activated to an elaborate transformation of energy. Likewise, when we hear, taste, smell, or have any other perception, other characteristic transformations of energy are taking place through the arousal of action-patterns. Now we have just stated that abstract terms are derived from the multifarious perception of concrete objects. In what, then, does the meaning of abstract terms consist? It consists in their function of recalling some of the particular experiences from which they were derived. Such an abstract word as “red” has, then, a meaning for us simply because it arouses in any of its phases that particular action-pattern which all sorts of red things have stimulated in us.
This same principle may now be applied to show how even the meaning which attaches to the words we employ to convey judgments of value may be explained in physiological terms. For the highly abstract character which the words cheap, beautiful, and good seem at times to possess is simply due to the fact that at the mention of any such word we are simultaneously stimulated to so great a variety of actions that we are unable to follow any one of them through to its conclusion. When such a condition persists, the meaning is said to be vague.
It is, of course, not to be forgotten that every time we use a word, whether we read it, speak it, or hear it, the meaning it arouses is traceable to the fact that firm bonds have been established between the eye, ear, and throat mechanisms on the one hand, and related parts of the body which are involved on the other. This union of the reading-reflexes with the somatic-reflexes is provided for by a very simple mechanism called the conditioned reflex. By such a device, any two reflexes which have been aroused together frequently enough by external stimuli will ever thereafter tend to arouse each other. That is why the word “fire” which we all were taught to use to indicate a certain kind of object, will, even if spoken in a wilderness of snow, make us feel some of the effects which flame once produced upon us. Contrariwise, the blindfolded man will, by no other cue than the touch of his fingers, name such objects as carpet, leather, sandpaper, and nails. And from what we have already said about the source of the meaning of abstract terms being traceable to concrete experiences, we may now say that such words as cheap, beautiful, and good, one and all owe their significance to the fact that they too exhibit the law of the conditioned reflex both in their origin and in their maturity.
How the “All-or-none” Principle Helps to Disclose an Amazing Secret
It being thus apparent that words possess meaning because they arouse motor tendencies in us, let us now see what justification there is for the assertion previously made that these motor tendencies need not be at all visible as overt actions in order to perform their epistemological function. This justification is found in the all-or-none principle of nervous and muscular activity,—a principle having the most far-reaching consequences for both psychology and ethics. We are all familiar with the fact that less work is involved in lifting the arm leisurely to a horizontal position than in moving it through the same radius with a heavy weight held in the hand. However, we are not all familiar with the fact that in the case of the leisurely movement only a few of the myriad nerve and muscle fibers of the arm are being innervated, the rest being completely passive, while in the case of lifting the heavy weight, the proportion of fully active and inertly passive fibers is just the opposite. But this is exactly the case. According to the all-or-none principle discovered by Lucas and Adrian,[3] whenever a single nerve fiber functions at all, it acts in its maximum capacity. Never is such a fiber partially activated; in its all-or-none functioning it is as uncompromising as gravity. Consequently, even though the arm may feel uniformly flabby when it is indolently moved about, some few of its nerve and muscle fibers are working to their limit.
This being the case, it is readily apparent that the various qualities of muscular movement,—languid, intentional, unintentional, or deliberate,—have one and all a strictly quantitative basis. If a man’s smile spreads out into a grin, this change in the quality of his countenance is caused by the simple addition of fully functioning neuro-muscular units under the skin of his face. If the grin dwindles to the smile, and that again vanishes into a look only faintly reminiscent of pleasure, the opposite process of subtraction is then taking place. Consider now the further implications of this law of Lucas and Adrian. For the logical inference is that when we merely think of lifting our arm, but do not lift it visibly, an essential part of the arm-lifting mechanism has been nevertheless specifically stimulated to activity; it is only because not enough muscle fibers have been innervated to overcome the inertia of the limb that the arm does not rise. That is, indeed, our common experience. When we lie abed on a cold winter morning and speculate on the question of getting up, our imagination of the heroic deed is perfectly of a piece with the real business of shivering on the drafty floor. Indeed, according to the all-or-none principle, since even the slightest neuro-muscular activity is positive, the terms “overt” or “covert” as applied to action refer merely to what an observer can or cannot readily perceive. This principle can be justly applied to the problem of the meaning of words. The implication is sound that even though the action-patterns which are aroused by words are unfelt by us or invisible to an onlooker, these motor tendencies are just as truly positive physiological events, so far as they go, as are the most violent efforts we openly manifest. For the pattern of action is the same; the only difference is in the number of nerve and muscle fibers involved.
It was a motto of Jesus that “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Although the particular phrase, “in his heart,” is now regarded as too wild a hyperbole to be justified by the facts, yet the all-or-none principle furnishes an unsuspected substantiation of the essential truth of this motto with respect to certain individuals. We have long known that thinking did somehow lead to action,—that both the rogue and the philanthropist, the slanderer and the coquette often schemed and planned secretly for years without giving any outward hint of what their future behavior was to be. History is full of the trouble caused for those who had “no art to read the mind’s construction in the face” of him who could “smile and smile and be a villain.” And now the secret is out why for so many centuries it was believed that thought produced action and mind ruled matter. Thought is action, but action of so elusive a character as to be totally beyond the unaided eye to detect; and thought “leads” to action for the same reason that a spark can produce a conflagration and a hole in a dyke produce a flood. In all three cases the greater effect is due to the magnification of the exciting cause. The ancients held that mind ruled the body for the reason that, being ignorant of the fact of covert muscular responses, they assumed an incorporeal cause for a series of events whose end-term alone they were able to discern as embodied in the movements of matter.