p.1-2 Psychology is the science of the mind. It aims to find out
all about the mind - the whole story - just as the other sciences aim to find out all about the subjects of which
they treat... we find that there are certain general truths with which we should first acquaint ourselves... The first such
truth is that the mind is not the possession of man alone. Other creatures have minds. Psychology... finds
itself unable to require any test or evidence of the presence of mind which the animals do not meet, nor does it find any
place at which the story of the mind can begin higher up than the very beginnings of life. For as soon as we ask,
"How much mind is necessary to start with?" we have to answer, "Any mind at all"
p.5 Mind has done all that has been done: it has built human institutions, indited literature,
made science, discovered the laws of Nature, used the forces of the material world, embodied itself in all the monuments which
stand to testify to the presence of man. What could tell us more of what mind is than this record of what mind has done? [JLJ
- written before the arrival of the computer. Perhaps a computer, operating in simulation of Mind, is the solution to many
complex problems...]
p.11 Mind does only one thing... on the different materials which come and go in it. This
one thing is the combining, or holding together, of the elements which first come to it as sensations, so that it
can act
p.15 we have the combining tendency of the mind, the grouping together and relating of mental states and
of things, called Apperception.
p.16 Our action is always the result of our thought, of the elements of knowledge which are at the time
present in the mind.
p.17 behind every action which our conduct shows there must be something thought of, some sensation or knowledge
then in mind, some feeling... which prompts to the action.
This general principle is Motor Suggestion. It simply means that we are unable to have any thought
or feeling whatever, whether it comes from the senses, from memory, from the words, conduct, or command of others, which does
not have a direct influence upon our conduct.
p.18 we find also, in much of our action, an element due to the exercise of the Imagination. We
fill in the gaps in the world of perception by imagining appropriate connections; and we then act as if we
knew that these imaginations were realities.
p.18-19 we have a special name for those thoughts which influence
us directly and lead us to action: we call such thoughts Motives. We also have a special name for the sort
of action which is prompted by clearly-thought-out motives: Will... Will is only a name for the action upon suggestions
of conduct which are so clear in our minds that we are able to deliberate upon them, acting only after some reflection, and
so having a sense that the action springs from our own choice. The real reasons for action, however, are thoughts...
we call them Motives
p.19 we are dependent upon these Motives, these Suggestions; we cannot act without Motives, nor
can we fail to act on these Motives which we have... Voluntary action or Will is therefore only a complex and very
highly conscious case of the law of Motor Suggestion; it is the form which suggested action takes on when Apperception is
at its highest level.
p.20 for each of our intentional actions we must have some
way of thinking about the action, of remembering how it feels, looks, etc.; we must have something in mind equivalent
to the experience of the movement. This is called the principle of Kin�sthetic Equivalents, an expression which loses its
formidable sound when we remember that "kin�sthetic" means having the feeling of movement; so the principle expresses the
truth that we must in every case have some thought or mental picture in mind which is equivalent to the feeling of
the movement we desire to make; if not, we can not succeed in making it.
p.30 there is what is called the Reflex Theory. This holds
that instincts are reflex actions... only much more complex. They are due to the compounding and adding together of simple
reflexes... the continued reflex adjustments of the organism to its environment, whereby more and more delicate adaptations
to the external world were secured. In this way, say advocates of this theory, we may account for the fact that the
animal has no adequate knowledge of what he is doing when he performs an act instinctively; he has no end or aim in his mind;
he simply feels his nervous system doing what it is fitted to do by its organic adaptations to the stimulations...
whatever these may be.
p.34 suppose we agree that many of the complex instincts really involved intelligent adaptation in their
acquisition.
p.36-37 What is meant by Intelligence?
This word may be used in the broad sense of denoting all use
of consciousness, or mind, considered as a thing in some way additional to the reflexes of the nervous system. In
the life of the animal, as in that of man, wherever we find the individual doing anything with reference to a mental picture,
using knowledge or experience in any form, then he is said to be acting intelligently.
p.43 Another of the most interesting questions of animal life is that which
concerns their plays. Most animals are given to play.
p.44 The plays of animals are very largely instinctive, being indulged in
for the most part without instruction.
p.45 We indulge in the scheme of play, whatever it be, as if it were a real
situation, at the same time preserving our sense that it is not real.
p.48 play has come to be the very complex thing that it really is by the laws of evolution; for survival
by natural selection always supposes that the attribute or character which survives is important enough to keep the animal
alive in the struggle for existence; otherwise it would not be continued for successive generations
p.48 the plays of animals are of the greatest utility to them
in this way: they exercise the young animals in the very activities - though in a playful way - in
which they must seriously engage later on in life.
p.61-62 It is evident, on the surface, that the further away we get in the
child's life from simple inherited or reflex responses, the more complicated do the processes become, and the greater becomes
the difficulty of analyzing them, and arriving at a true picture of the real mental condition which lies back of them.
p.82-83 The first thing of significance to him, as has been
said, is movement... the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things
that affect him with pleasure or pain... immediate satisfaction or redemption from pain, is this - movements come
to succor him. Change in his bodily feeling... these things are accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the
one he sees and feels about him... a pain-movement-pleasure state of mind... It is by movements that he gets
rid of pains and secures pleasures.
p.88 Now as he proceeds with these imitations of others, he finds himself gradually understanding the others,
by coming, through doing the same actions with them, to discover what they are feeling, what their motives are, what the laws
of their behavior.
p.105 Reflex functions... include all those responses
which the nervous system makes to stimulations from the outside, in which the mind has no alternative or control.
They happen whether or no.
p.106 each of the senses has its own set of reflex adjustments
to the stimulations which come to it... Most of these reflexes not only go on when the brain is removed from the
skull, but it is an interesting detail that they are generally exaggerated under these conditions... The nervous apparatus
involved in these "third-level" functions may be called the "reflex circuit"
p.121 many experts agree that diseases of the mind,
whatever their brain seat may be, all involve impairment of the Attention. This, at any rate, is a general
mark of a ... defective mind... attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception,
and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form of defect.
p.180 It is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a movement tends to start that very movement...
They picture the movements, the attention is fixed on them, and appropriate actions follow.
p.181 the motor mind tends to very quick generalizations... The reason he generalizes is that the
brain energies are not held back in the channels of perception, but pour themselves right out toward the motor equivalents
of former perceptions which were in any way similar
p.183-184 it is excessively difficult for this scholar to give continuous or adequate attention to anything
of any complexity. The movements of attention are so easy, the outlets of energy, to use the physical figure, so large and
well used, that the minor relationships of the thing are passed over... So while he seems to take in what is told him, with
an intuition that is surprisingly swift, and a personal adaptation no less surprising, the disappointment is only the more
keen when the instructor finds the next day that he has not penetrated at all into the inner current of this scholar's mental
processes.
