AND PERSONALITY 



mal has made a decision as to running away or charging 

 before he is shot, he may carry out that decision, even 

 though the complete heart shot has been delivered. The 

 same is true of the boa constrictor. If its action pattern 

 at the moment of decapitation is to coil and crush a man, 

 then the headless body will continue that intent. The head- 

 less body could not alter the intent, since the pattern of 

 action had been established. It is just as if the gear of a 

 motor car were shifted and then the driver met instanta- 

 neous death; the motor car would execute the pattern of 

 action, and it could not change that pattern of action. The 

 mechanism, by means of which the animal is endowed with 

 this last superpower is the instantaneous output of ad- 

 renalin that steps up the oxidation, hence the power of the 

 brain, the heart, and the sympathetic nervous system. 



81 



