Life and Habit

by Samuel Butler

“Thus,” he continues, “a decapitated frog” (here then we have it that the frog’s head was actually cut off) “after the first violent convulsive moments occasioned by the operation have passed away, remains at rest until it is touched; and then the leg, or its whole body may be thrown into sudden action, which suddenly subsides again.” (How does this quiescence when it no longer feels anything show that the “leg or whole body” had not perceived something which made it feel when it was not quiescent?)—“Again we find that such movements may be performed not only when the brain has been removed, the spinal cord remaining entire, but also when the spinal cord has been itself cut across, so as to be divided into two or more portions, each of them completely isolated from each other, and from other parts of the nervous centres. Thus, if the head of a frog be cut off, and its spinal cord be divided in the middle of the back, so that its fore legs remain connected with the upper part, and its hind legs with the lower, each pair of members may be excited to movements by stimulants applied to itself; but the two pairs will not exhibit any consentaneous motions, as they will do when the spinal cord is undivided.”

This may be put perhaps more plainly thus. If you take a frog and cut it into three pieces—say, the head for one piece, the fore legs and shoulder for another, and the hind legs for a third—and then irritate any one of these pieces, you will find it move much as it would have moved under like irritation if the animal had remained undivided, but you will no longer find any concert between the movements of the three pieces; that is to say, if you irritate the head, the other two pieces will remain quiet, and if you irritate the hind legs, you will excite no action in the fore legs or head.

Dr. Carpenter continues: “Or if the spinal cord be cut across without the removal of the brain, the lower limbs may be excited to movement by an appropriate stimulant, though the animal has clearly no power over them, whilst the upper part remains under its control as completely as before.”

Why are the head and shoulders “the animal” more than the hind legs under these circumstances? Neither half can exist long without the other; the two parts, therefore, being equally important to each other, we have surely as good a right to claim the title of “the animal” for the hind legs, and to maintain that they have no power over the head and shoulders, as any one else has to claim the animalship for these last. What we say is, that the animal has ceased to exist as a frog on being cut in half, and that the two halves are no longer, either of them, the frog, but are simply pieces of still living organism, each of which has a soul of its own, being capable of sensation, and of intelligent psychological action as the consequence of sensations, though the one part has probably a much higher and more intelligent soul than the other, and neither part has a soul for a moment comparable in power and durability to that of the original frog.

“Now it is scarcely conceivable,” continues Dr Carpenter, “that in this last case sensations should be felt and volition exercised through the instrumentality of that portion of the spinal cord which remains connected with the nerves of the posterior extremities, but which is cut off from the brain. For if it were so, there must be two distinct centres of sensation and will in the same animal, the attributes of the brain not being affected; and by dividing the spinal cord into two or more segments we might thus create in the body of one animal two or more such independent centres in addition to that which holds its proper place in the head.”

In the face of the facts before us, it does not seen far-fetched to suppose that there are two, or indeed an infinite number of centres of sensation and will in an animal, the attributes of whose brain are not affected but that these centres, while the brain is intact, habitually act in connection with and in subordination to that central authority; as in the ordinary state of the fish trade, fish is caught, we will say, at Yarmouth, sent up to London, and then sent down to Yarmouth again to be eaten, instead of being eaten at Yarmouth when caught. But from the phenomena exhibited by three pieces of an animal, it is impossible to argue that the causes of the phenomena were present in the quondam animal itself; the memory of an infinite series of generations having so habituated the local centres of sensation and will, to act in concert with the central government, that as long as they can get at that government, they are absolutely incapable of acting independently. When thrown on their own resources, they are so demoralised by ages of dependence on the brain, that they die after a few efforts at self-assertion, from sheer unfamiliarity with the position, and inability to recognise themselves when disjointed rudely from their habitual associations.

In conclusion, Dr. Carpenter says, “To say that two or more distinct centres of sensation and will are present in such a case, would really be the same as saying that we have the power of constituting two or more distinct egos in one body, which is manifestly absurd.” One sees the absurdity of maintaining that we can make one frog into two frogs by cutting a frog into two pieces, but there is no absurdity in believing that the two pieces have minor centres of sensation and intelligence within themselves, which, when the animal is entire, act in much concert with the brain, and with each other, that it is not easy to detect their originally autonomous character, but which, when deprived of their power of acting in concert, are thrown back upon earlier habit, now too long forgotten to be capable of permanent resumption.

Illustrations are apt to mislead, nevertheless they may perhaps be sometimes tolerated. Suppose, for example, that London to the extent, say, of a circle with a six-mile radius from Charing Cross, were utterly annihilated in the space of five minutes during the Session of Parliament. Suppose, also, that two entirely impassable barriers, say of five miles in width, half a mile high, and red hot, were thrown across England; one from Gloucester to Harwich, and another from Liverpool to Hull, and at the same time the sea were to become a mass of molten lava, so no water communication should be possible; the political, mercantile, social, and intellectual life of the country would be convulsed in a manner which it is hardly possible to realise. Hundreds of thousands would die through the dislocation of existing arrangements. Nevertheless, each of the three parts into which England was divided would show signs of provincial life for which it would find certain imperfect organisms ready to hand. Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, accustomed though they are to act in subordination to London, would probably take up the reins of government in their several sections; they would make their town councils into local governments, appoint judges from the ablest of their magistrates, organise relief committees, and endeavour as well as they could to remove any acetic acid that might be now poured on Wiltshire, Warwickshire, or Northumberland, but no concert between the three divisions of the country would be any longer possible. Should we be justified, under these circumstances, in calling any of the three parts of England, England? Or, again, when we observed the provincial action to be as nearly like that of the original undivided nation as circumstances would allow, should we be justified in saying that the action, such as it was, was not political? And, lastly, should we for a moment think that an admission that the provincial action was of a bonâ fide political character would involve the supposition that England, undivided, had more than one “ego” as England, no matter how many subordinate “egos” might go to the making of it, each one of which proved, on emergency, to be capable of a feeble autonomy?

M. Ribot would seem to take a juster view of the phenomenon when he says (p. 222 of the English translation)—

“We can hardly say that here the movements are co-ordinated like those of a machine; the acts of the animal are adapted to a special end; we find in them the characters of intelligence and will, a knowledge and choice of means, since they are as variable as the cause which provokes them.