The Human Nature Club; an introduction to the study of mental life

Chapter I What The Brain Does

Mrs. Ralston stood at the door of her son's room and knocked. '^Breakfast in five minutes, Arthur. I thought you got up when I called before." *'All right; I'll be down," came from within, and Mrs. Ralston w^^nt downstairs. There she found the rest of the family assembled in the sitting-room. **Arthur will be down in a few minutes; we'll wait for him," she said; and then turning to Mr. Tasker, who was half boarder, half friend of the family, **How did you like the lecture last night?"

"It was fine," was the reply. *' Solid and worth while, and still very entertaining. His general theme was the interesting things one can find in the world all about him if he'll only look. You remember how we puzzled over his title, *They Have Eyes'? He claimed, for instance, that we could see how the rivers and valleys and plains and lakes have been formed if we'd only watch Bear Brook. "

**Yes!" broke in Mrs. Elkin, Mrs. Ralston's married daughter; **but don't you think that it depends on who looks? The geologist sees all those things in Bear Brook because he knows geology, just as a cook could tell just how hot the oven was by looking at a loaf of cake, while you, though you are a schoolmaster, couldn't see anything but dough and crust."

**I know that's so in some things," said her husband; '*for don't you remember how the man who had the high school before Tasker would see all sorts of bugs and worms when he was walking along the road, things you couldn't see till he almost put his finger on them? It isn't the eyes that see; it's the knowledge behind them. It wasn't his eyes; it was his course at the state agricultural college. I thought last night at the lecture that if it weren't so, I wouldn't have any excuse for knowing almost nothing of the world outside the boot and shoe business and the art of beguiling brook-trout. You have to study a long while before you can see things. If there were any 2»cience that didn't need systematic school training, I'd study it."

**I wish we could study the real world somehow," replied Tasker. * 'We've had a Browning class and a Greek art class and a Church History class, and I wouldn't wonder if it would do us good to stop studying books and study real things for a while.

''Let's study breakfast," said Mrs. Ralston. *'I wonder what's the matter with Arthur?"

*'I'll run up and bring him down," said Mr. Elkin. *'You folks go ahead."

He went up and entered Arthur's room without knocking.

There sat Arthur, all dressed except one shoe, which he held in his right hand. His left hand was scratching his head, and his face wore a meditative expression.

The Human Nature Club j;

"What's the matter, Arthur? Breakfast's all ready."

**I know that, Elkin. Say! Can you tell me how many stairs you just came up?"

''What in the world do you want to know that for? Come on down to breakfast."

"I won't go down those stairs till I either know how many stairs there are or know why I don't know. I don't believe you know yourself."

*'There are — there are — well, I guess I don't. Odd, too; I've been up and down them hundreds of times."

Arthur began to laugh at his brother-in-law, and the latter to cover his confusion went out and called to those below: "Come up here, everybody. Arthur's gone daft. He's sitting here raving about stairs."

"Yes! Come up here," cried Arthur; "we'll see who's the fool. Stand up *n a row there," he added as they came into the room. "How many stairs did you just come up, mother? Well, well! And you've been up those stairs thousands of times. Next! Next! Eyes to see! This is an observant family."

"What's got into you, Arthur?" said his sister. "It is queer that we should all know so little about a thing we've done so often; but what started you thinking such stuff?"

"You know that lecture last night? Well, when I got out of the bath-tub I thought I'd start in to observe things, and I wondered what I could observe, and then I wondered why I felt fresh from a cold bath, and I couldn't tell; and that set me thinking while I was dressing that lots of common things were really rather mysterious, and then it struck me that I had dressed myself without thinking about it at all, and I wondered at that; and then I noticed that I had my right shoe on, and I wondered if I always put that one on first; and then I wondered about doing things without thinking about them, and thought of the next thing I had to do — to go downstairs, that is — and I realized that I generally did that without thinking how to do it at the time, and then it struck me that I really couldn't think how to do it, that I didn't even know whether there were a dozen steps or twenty. And then I wondered how I could have gone up and down those stairs and never noticed that. I suppose you folks are hungry and think I'm silly."

'*Yes! I know why I want to eat," remarked Mr. Elkin.

They ate their meal in a queer way. Mr. Tasker sat with his brows furrowed, whispering occasionally to himself. Arthur would occasionally stop eating to stare at some one or apparently to question himself. At last he blurted out, **Why do you suppose Emma likes boiled eggs, while I, her brother, abominate them?"

Everybody laughed except Mr. Tasker. He pulled out his watch, and said: ''Will you folks all listen to me a few minutes? I have a scheme. If you'll keep still for five minutes, I'll tell you about it. I must go down to the school at a quarter-past eight, and you can make fun of it after I've gone. You know before the excitement of Arthur's discovery we were saying that it would be a fine thing if we could study some things in the real world for ourselves, instead of just soaking 1n book knowledge, if we could get the sort of pleasure (and profit too) that the lecturer last night told us came from looking to see how things really are. Now, no one of us has enough knowledge to start in studying bugs or plants or brooks, and not all of us have enough of an interest in any one of these things to induce us to do the studying. But I believe there's one thing that we're all interested in, that's well worth looking at, but that doesn't require us to read German books or buy microscopes or make big collections. Arthur has opened his eyes to it this morning, and I got my idea from him. Let's look and see how real people live and act and think. Let's get our eyes open to human nature, to the real world, not of mountains, or brooks, or birds, or beetles, but of people. Let's have a club, 'The Human Nature Club,' whose business it shall be to see how and why we and our friends do the things we do, think the thoughts we think. Let's start in by finding out how^ we can dress ourselves without thinking about it, and how we can go up and down a flight of stairs from one to twenty years without learning how many stairs there are. Think it over; I must go. Good morning all!"

''Wait a minute; I'll go with you," said Arthur. They left the house together, Mr. Tasker going to the high school and Arthur to his duties as assistant manager of the Redpath Tool Company.

Mr. Tasker did not return to the house till nearly eight o'clock that evening. When he came into the sitting-room he was surprised to see besides the regular household, Miss Fairbanks, a music-teacher who lived in the neighborhood, Miss Atwell and Miss Clark, two teachers in the graded school, and Mr. Henshaw, the manager, editor, chief reporter — in fact, the general producer of the Westfield Registe7\

'*Who is having a surprise party?'* he exclaimed.

'*This is the Human Nature Club," replied Mrs. Elkin. ''I spent most of the morning talking about it, and all of the afternoon hunting these folks and telling them about it. We've just elected you boss, or rather president, and we're ready to start ahead."

'* We've progressed this far," added the editor. "Everybody here knows that the scheme is to watch real people, especially ourselves, to see what they are, how they learn things, why they think and feel and act as they do. Everybody is to keep his eyes open for facts about people. We had just begun to air our wisdom in connection with that mystery of the stairs. Now, how shall we run this organization, Mr. President?"

**I suggest," responded Mr. Tasker, *'that we leave rules and regulations till we have investigated the 'mystery of the stairs,' as you call it. What did you decide, Arthur? You are the father of this, our first problem. "

"I don't know that I have decided. I've been thinking of a number of things like it, things which I z^-Vi get along with first-rate, but which I don't seem to know much about. I didn't know whether there were four or five or six buttons on my vest; I don't know how many hooks there are in my closet, though I've used that closet for eight years."

*'It's the same sort of thing, isn't it, when I go along the hall in the dark and stop just in front of my bedroom door? I couldn't for the life of me tell how many steps I take, but I always stop in the right place. '*

**That's like my playing the piano/' said Miss Fairbanks; **I see the notes and put my fingers on the keys, but I don't once think, 'That is G, ' or 'That is a half-note higher,' or *Now I will stretch my little finger way out.' Of course I could if I stopped to think about it, but I don't, any more than you think of the number of stairs or the number of steps. I'm sure we all do do things that way without thinking about them, and we can agree for a start that one can do things without at the time or afterward knowing much about it."

*'That is so," said Mr. Tasker; ''but it makes two new questions out of our old one. In the first place, how do we come to do things without having to think about what we're doing? In the second place, how do we know so little afterward about what we've done so many times?"

"I think that perhaps I can answer the first question," said Miss Atwell. "When I was visiting Kate Maxwell, at Barnard College, I went to some classes with her, and at one of them the professor was lecturing about the brain. He said that the brain was a machine for connecting our bodily acts or movements with what we heard and saw and felt. For instance, the reason why when you see a team coming, you get out of the way, is that some sort of commotion in your eyes is transmitted along a nerve to your brain and stirs up some commotion there, which is transmitted through other nerves to your muscles and somehow makes them move your body in such a fashion that you run across the street out of the way. As far as I could make out, the brain was like the big switchboard in the telephone office. Messages coming in from all over the body get connected with the proper wires, so to speak, and sent out to the right muscles. Now, if I'm right, all you have to suppose to answer our question is that the commotion or message can be sent to the right muscles without your thinking about it — without the operator at the switchboard having to bother about it, to stick to my illustration. Thus just seeing the top of the stairs and feeling each one as you step rouses just the right movements. When you were first learning to play the piano you would make mistakes and have to think about what you were doing, but after enough practice the brain would do the work of itself. The commotion aroused in the brain by seeing the notes of a certain chord would go in a certain way — that is, to the right muscles — because it had gone that way so many times. It would be like water that having worn a certain channel always runs in it. Excuse me for talking so long, but I think we can see a reason for our being able to do things unconsciously if we think how the brain acts.*'

**That sounds all right, with one exception,'* answered Mr. Tasker. "You say, if I understand you, that anything which we have done in certain circumstances tends to be done again if the same circumstances occur again. But that isn^t so if the results of the act are painful. Little Helen, the first time she saw a candle — when she was about a year and a half old — put out her hand to take it and was burned. According to your theory she would the next time she saw a candle, put out her hand. But as a matter of fact she didn't. She shrank back without reaching. What you say is true of cases where the results are pleasurable or indifferent, and

Fig. I.

explains our cases, but it needn't always be true. Isn't that so?"

Miss Atwell nodded assent, and Mr. Tasker continued: *'I wish you'd let me draw a picture to show my notion of what you said about the brain, and see if I understand you. Perhaps it will help us all."

Arthur brought in the baby's blackboard, and Mr. Tasker drew his picture (Figure i), giving at the same time the following explanation:

io The Human Nature Club

*'This picture is supposed to represent very roughly what happens in doing two things which we do automatically — that is, without thinking about how to do them. The two things are playing the piano and chewing gum. In playing the piano something happens in the eye which sends some sort of a current or commotion or explosion up to the brain, as I show by the line a b. This results in some sort of current or commotion being sent to the muscles which move the forearm and fingers, as I have shown by the dotted line B A, Just how the thing coming from the eye gets switched so that it starts the thing going to the arm I don't know, as I show that by the line of crosses b B^ which means simply that somehow a b \^ connected with B A so that what the eye sees influences what the arm does. In chewing gum the presence of the gum in the mouth arouses the jaw muscles to act in the same way, a continuous line, m b^, representing the mouth-brain connection, a dotted line, B^ /, the brain-jaw muscle connection, and a line of crosses the connection between the two. Does that represent the ideas of the company and agree with what the professor said, Miss Atwell?*'

**Your explanation is worthy of our high school principal, but I'm glad you don't have to teach drawing," said Mr. Henshaw.

**Don't laugh at my drawing," was the reply; **for if that represents the idea, I'm going to try another to show my general idea of the brain as I've derived it from Miss Atwell's description. Here is the brain (Figure 2), with a lot of things — nerves, I suppose they are — coming in from all over the body and bring-

1 1 ing in the 'commotions* that correspond to the electric currents coming in to the telegraph office over the wires. The continuous lines represent those. The dotted lines are the nerves going out to all the muscles. The crosses are the connections made on

Fig. 2.

the switchboard. Multiply all these lines by thousands and you have the brain. Is that right?"

'*It's right as far as it goes, but the brain is more than that, I'm sure, though I can't remember just what else the lecturer did say about it."

'*Why wouldn't it be a good thing for me to run over to Dr. Leighton's house, and see if he can't tell us a bit about our brains. We can learn about the outside facts of human nature ourselves by watching ourselves and other folks, but we can't watch our brains; and he has had the chance to study them, so why not profit by his experience? I think that we'll find that the brain plays a big part in making human nature what it is in other things besides these unconscious performances, habits, automatic acts or whatever you call them."

Mr. Henshaw*s proposition was received with approval and he went after the doctor. The others spent the next ten minutes in talking over what had been said and in congratulating themselves on the success of their first meeting.

'*This has been as hard thinking as I've done for a good while, apart from business," remarked Mr. Elkin; *'yet I declare I've enjoyed every minute of it. It pays to think about things if you know anything about them to start with, and can work them out yourself, or make believe that you do."

"My head is full of about twenty questions to be investigated, which will be, if anything, more interesting than this one," added Arthur.

So they kept on until Mr. Henshaw came in with Dr. Leighton. After he had greeted the company, the doctor began:

*'Mr. Henshaw tells me that you are observers of human nature, and have a notion at the start that what people do and feel depends largely on the way their brains work, and since you can't yourselves observe what goes on in people's brains you have asked me to tell you something about it.

**You are quite right in thinking that human thought and action, in other words, human nature, depend on what happens in the brain. For instance, Mr. Tasker here is a steady sort of person, but if

I should inject into his brain a little of a certain drug, he would become very volatile and changeable for the time being, would feel very wretched and then very exalted, etc. His nature would be changed for the time being. Let me cut out a little piece in one part of your brain and you'd never see things any more. Let me cut out a little piece in another place and you would lose your command of language. Let a person tire his brain by overworking or maltreating it and his nature grows irritable. You have all seen that in young children after an exciting, restless day. If a person's brain doesn't grow, he may really have no human nature at all, but be an idiot, almost like a mere beast.

''What, then, is this brain of ours, and how does it do its work? In order to be clear I shall have to simplify things somewhat, and I beg you not to imagine that in these ten minutes you will get an accurate or complete notion. I will try, however, not to give a false notion. The brain and the other parts of the nervous system are a very complicated apparatus for fitting our acts to our surroundings, for making us swallow food when it's in our throat, reach for things we want, take food when we're hungry, go to work when it's time, etc. The brain's business is to be influenced by what happens to us, what we see, hear, feel, etc., and to influence what happens in us — /. ^., what we do or say. It thus is the connecting link between what the world does to us and what we do to the world.

**Now, to see how the brain or nervous system does this, how it works, we must see how it is made. So

H first look at this picture, a picture of one of the units or * cells, ' millions of which together make up the brain. You see that it looks like a string frayed out at both ends, and has a notable swelling in one place and little side strings running off from it and fraying out at their ends. The real thing which it represents may be very short or may be several feet long, but it is never anything like as big around as the picture shows it. A hundred of these nerve-cells, or brain units, or nerve-strings stuck together in a y7-^_^^ bundle would not be as big around

^ I as the smallest needle. Now,

imagine nerve cells or strings like this with one end in the eye and the other end in the brain or spinal cord, which is really a part of the brain. Imagine other thousands starting from the ears and nose and tongue and fingers and stomach and joints — in fact, from different organs all over the body — and ending in the brain. Imagine, also, other thousands of such nerve-cells or strings with one end in the brain and the other end in connection with some muscle, or perhaps gland. Imagine, in the third place, thousands of such nerve-strings, entirely inside the brain — I always mean to include the spinal cord, too — running from one part of it to another. Imagine all

X

Fig. 3.

these strings to keep the same places. Then you will have a notion of what the brain and nervous system is. It is just the sum total of all these nerve-cells running from eyes, ears, skin, etc., to a central mass, where there are a lot of connecting strings, and running out from it to all the muscles. You were quite right in likening the brain to the switchboard of a telephone office; and just as a telephone system is really nothing but a lot of incoming and outgoing wires and a lot of connecting wires at some central station, so the nervous system, including the brain, is really only a lot of nerve-cells, incoming cells, outgoing ceils and connecting or associative cells.

*'That is what the brain is. Now, what the brain does is just what the particular nerve strings or cells do. When we say that anything is done by the brain, we mean just that it is done by one or ten or ten thousand of these nerve strings or cells. Just as a telegraph system acts only as the wires act, so the brain acts only as its cells act. How, then, do these cells act? What does a nerve-cell do? If we answer that question we shall know what the brain does.

"Now I shall tell you the important, the essential business of a nerve-cell. There may be other things which it does, but its one sure and chief business, or function^ to use a scientific word, is to transmit^ to so act that any commotion or action at one end of it will be carried along it to its other end. If you will call to mind some common cases of transmission, you will get a clear notion of what I mean. Drop a stone in a pond, and the wave around it causes another wave in a wider circlCj that causes still another, and i6 The Human Nature Club

so on till the last wave may be at the pond's edge. The water, we say, has transmitted the wave from the center to the edge of the pond. The action or commotion at the center has been carried across the water. Take a piece of clothesline ten or fifteen feet long; shake one end of it up and down ; the * wave' of motion passes along the string to the other end. Put one end of a poker in the fire, and the other end gets hot. The electric discharge of a lightning-flash striking one end of a lightning-rod is transmitted along it to the ground. The rod conducts it, we say.

*'Now, we don't know just what sort of commotion it is that a nerve-cell, a nerve-string, conducts, or just how it transmits it; but we do know that it does do it, that its business is to conduct what we may call nerve-currents or nervous discharges set up at one end of it to its other end. Thus a commotion or nervecurrent, set up or started in cells having their ends in the eye by the sight of a dollar bill on the sidewalk, is transmitted or conducted along them to their ends in the brain. Now, this commotion or discharge or current can pass from the frayed end of one cell to the frayed end of another cell close enough to it, just as the electric current can go from one wire to another if they are near enough. I'll show this in a rough picture (Figure 4). So the current started in the eye, having reached the brain, may go over to the ends of connecting cells, go along these, go over to other cells, go along them, and finally end up at certain muscles. It may there make the muscles move in certain ways so that we stoop to pick the dollar bill

Cell A.

up, just as an electric current may be transmitted from a battery through switch after switch until it finally ends in a charge of dynamite and blows a rock to pieces.

*' Moreover, just as an electric current may blow up a rock, or light a lamp, or silver-plate a spoon, or connect / your telephone with mine, or with Mr. Elkin's, or with that of some man in New York, according to what connections are made between the different wires, so the result of any nerve-current in a nerve-cell depends on what other cells that cell is connected with. One person's nerve-cells are so connected that the sight of a mouse makes her jump on a chair; another person's nerve-cells are so connected that the sight of a mouse makes him seize a cane and try to exterminate it. A cat's nerve-cells are so connected that the sight of a mouse makes her jump at it. When people act differently in the same

Fig. 4.

" The current circumstances, it generally means that P|ff ^^ the"other

via the frayed ends at x.

their nerve-cells have diiferent connections.

''I mustn't take any more of your time, and I have a patient to see this evening, anyway. Any time that I can help you again, be sure to let me know."

The doctor hastily left the room, in the midst of exclamations of thanks from the company.

'*Dr. Leighton ought to have been a teacher,"

said Mr. Tasker. "That was a pretty good piece of description to be given extemporaneously."

*'Well! These young doctors that the good medical schools are turning out know their business, I think," replied Mr. Elkin. **What were you scribbling all the time?"

*'You'll be glad later that I did scribble. I've taken down every word in shorthand, and I*m going to have our typewriter make a copy. That talk of the doctor's will do us about ten times as much good if we read it over carefully and keep a copy to refer to. It seems all clear now, but by next week it will be foggy in my mind, I'm sure, if I don't have a chance to go over it. If any of you would like to do the same, I'll get more copies made."

''One for me, please," said Mr. Tasker; and all agreed to come to the next meeting with all the doctor's description clearly fixed in their minds.

**It's time for me to go,'* said Miss Atwell. "What question is proposed for next time?"

"I'd like to know why people who are very old think most about things that happened when they were very young," said Mrs. Elkin.

"And I'd like to know why you always break dishes when you are all tired out mentally."

"I'd like to know if there are any things that we can do not only without thinking about them, but also without even learning to do them at all," said Arthur.

"I'd like to find the explanation of some of the things the Christian Science people do," added the editor. "But let's leave it to Mr. Tasker."

"Well, I suggest that Arthur's point be taken up first, at any rate, as it seems more closely connected with to-night's discoveries, and also that some one sum up the result of the Human Nature Club's findings so far. Is that agreed? Very well; 1*11 appoint Miss Atwell. The Human Nature Club is adjourned until next Saturday.*'

NOTES BY THE EDITOR.

The gist of this chapter is that the brain is a machine for making connections between what we feel and what we do, so that we can fit our acts to our surroundings. We can do things without thinking about them when such connections have been made. In technical terms, the brain is an associative mechanism, and can carry on automatic activities.

Chapter II Things We Do Without Learning

'*The Human Nature Club will come to order.

**Let us have the report of the last meeting from Miss Atwell. "

*'Mr. Chairman, at its first meeting the club investigated the facts reported by Mr. Arthur Ralston, and found that they suggested two questions: First, how we could do things without thinking of what we were doing; and secondly, how we could do a thing a great many times and still know very little about it. The latter question we did not reach, as it seemed rather apart from the first, but the first we answered by saying that the brain could learn by practice to fit our actions to our surroundings in certain cases, and so finally get along without any assistance from our thoughts; the act, that is, becomes automatic. With the help of Dr. Leighton, we found the reason for the growth of such habits to be the structure of the brain, it being really not, as it looks, a big lump of jelly-like stuff, but a wonderfully complex system of connections between the parts of our body which sense or feel things and those parts which cause our actions.'*