Life and Habit

by Samuel Butler

Is it possible, then, to avoid imagining that if we have within us so many tributary souls, so utterly different from the soul which they unite to form, that they neither can perceive us, nor we them, though it is in us that they live and move and have their being, and though we are what we are, solely as the result of their co-operation—is it possible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves atoms, undesignedly combining to form some vaster being, though we are utterly incapable of perceiving that any such being exists, or of realising the scheme or scope of our own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without matter, or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and blood and bones; with organs, senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, into some other part of which being, at the time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for ever from either age or antecedents. Truly, sufficient for the life is the evil thereof. Any speculations of ours concerning the nature of such a being, must be as futile and little valuable as those of a blood corpuscle might be expected to be concerning the nature of man; but if I were myself a blood corpuscle, I should be amused at making the discovery that I was not only enjoying life in my own sphere, but was bonâ fide part of an animal which would not die with myself, and in which I might thus think of myself as continuing to live to all eternity, or to what, as far as my power of thought would carry me, must seem practically eternal. But, after all, the amusement would be of a rather dreary nature.

On the other hand, if I were the being of whom such an introspective blood corpuscle was a component item, I should conceive he served me better by attending to my blood and making himself a successful corpuscle, than by speculating about my nature. He would serve me best by serving himself best, without being over curious. I should expect that my blood might suffer if his brain were to become too active. If, therefore, I could discover the vein in which he was, I should let him out to begin life anew in some other and, quâ me, more profitable capacity.

With the units of our bodies it is as with the stars of heaven: there is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among them. Our will is the fiat of their collective wisdom, as sanctioned in their parliament, the brain; it is they who make us do whatever we do—it is they who should be rewarded if they have done well, or hanged if they have committed murder. When the balance of power is well preserved among them, when they respect each other’s rights and work harmoniously together, then we thrive and are well; if we are ill, it is because they are quarrelling with themselves, or are gone on strike for this or that addition to their environment, and our doctor must pacify or chastise them as best he may. They are we and we are they; and when we die it is but a redistribution of the balance of power among them or a change of dynasty, the result, it may be, of heroic struggle, with more epics and love romances than we could read from now to the Millennium, if they were so written down that we could comprehend them.

It is plain, then, that the more we examine the question of personality the more it baffles us, the only safeguard against utter confusion and idleness of thought being to fall back upon the superficial and common sense view, and refuse to tolerate discussions which seem to hold out little prospect of commercial value, and which would compel us, if logically followed, to be at the inconvenience of altering our opinions upon matters which we have come to consider as settled.

And we observe that this is what is practically done by some of our ablest philosophers, who seem unwilling, if one may say so without presumption, to accept the conclusions to which their own experiments and observations would seem to point.

Dr. Carpenter, for example, quotes the well-known experiments upon headless frogs. If we cut off a frog’s head and pinch any part of its skin, the animal at once begins to move away with the same regularity as though the brain had not been removed. Flourens took guinea-pigs, deprived them of the cerebral lobes, and then irritated their skin; the animals immediately walked, leaped, and trotted about, but when the irritation was discontinued they ceased to move. Headless birds, under excitation, can still perform with their wings the rhythmic movements of flying. But here are some facts more curious still, and more difficult of explanation. If we take a frog or a strong and healthy triton, and subject it to various experiments; if we touch, pinch, or burn it with acetic acid, and if then, after decapitating the animal, we subject it to the same experiments, it will be seen that the reactions are exactly the same; it will strive to be free of the pain, and to shake off the acetic acid that is burning it; it will bring its foot up to the part of its body that is irritated, and this movement of the member will follow the irritation wherever it may be produced.

The above is mainly taken from M. Ribot’s work on heredity rather than Dr. Carpenter’s, because M. Ribot tells us that the head of the frog was actually cut off, a fact which does not appear so plainly in Dr. Carpenter’s allusion to the same experiments. But Dr. Carpenter tells us that after the brain of a frog has been removed—which would seem to be much the same thing as though its head were cut off—“if acetic acid be applied over the upper and under part of the thigh, the foot of the same side will wipe it away; but if that foot be cut off, after some ineffectual efforts and a short period of inaction,” during which it is hard not to surmise that the headless body is considering what it had better do under the circumstances, “the same movement will be made by the foot of the opposite side,” which, to ordinary people, would convey the impression that the headless body was capable of feeling the impressions it had received, and of reasoning upon them by a psychological act; and this of course involves the possession of a soul of some sort.

Here is a frog whose right thigh you burn with acetic acid. Very naturally it tries to get at the place with its right foot to remove the acid. You then cut off the frog’s head, and put more acetic acid on the some place: the headless frog, or rather the body of the late frog, does just what the frog did before its head was cut off—it tries to get at the place with its right foot. You now cut off its right foot: the headless body deliberates, and after a while tries to do with its left foot what it can no longer do with its right. Plain matter-of-fact people will draw their own inference. They will not be seduced from the superficial view of the matter. They will say that the headless body can still, to some extent, feel, think, and act, and if so, that it must have a living soul.

Dr. Carpenter writes as follows:—“Now the performance of these, as well as of many other movements, that show a most remarkable adaptation to a purpose, might be supposed to indicate that sensations are called up by the impressions, and that the animal can not only feel, but can voluntarily direct its movements so as to get rid of the irritation which annoys it. But such an inference would be inconsistent with other facts. In the first place, the motions performed under such circumstances are never spontaneous, but are always excited by a stimulus of some kind.”

Here we pause to ask ourselves whether any action of any creature under any circumstances is ever excited without “stimulus of some kind,” and unless we can answer this question in the affirmative, it is not easy to see how Dr. Carpenter’s objection is valid.