REFLEX ACTION 213 



any individual unless his feelings and thoughts result in 

 action or the inhibition of action. It owes its existence, 

 therefore, to movement to the necessity of co-ordinated 

 movement between the various parts of the complex cell- 

 community which we call a multicellular animal. In its 

 lowest manifestations it directs and co-ordinates movements 

 of a comparatively simple sort. In its highest manifestations 

 it directs and co-ordinates movements which may be exceed- 

 ingly complex and multitudinous, as when a man in early 

 youth forms a plan in the execution of which he spends a 

 long life. 



363. Since mind is quite useless without the power of 

 making movements, it is evident that this power, in its be- 

 ginnings at least, must have been evolved before mind. At 

 the present day movements occur in many plants and animals 

 (e. g. unicellular animals) in which there are apparently no 

 sense organs nor nervous tissue. Their environments are so 

 simple, their ranges of action so limited that sensation and 

 thought would be of as little use to them as to the individual 

 cells of higher animals. Presumably therefore Nature, with 

 her usual parsimony, has not endowed them with a super- 

 fluous possession. In my own body occur movements, for 

 example in the intestines, of which I am quite unconscious. 

 All movement, therefore, is not associated with mental 

 phenomena. All the movements in my body which are un- 

 connected with sensation are known as reflex movements. 

 But clearly it would not be correct to define reflex action 

 as action which is not associated with sensation, for many 

 reflexes in my body are associated with a great deal of it 

 for example, the reflex of coughing, the convulsions associated 

 with tickling, and the painful movements in the hollow 

 viscera. It would not even be correct to define reflexes as 

 actions which are not initiated by sensation, for the convul- 

 sions of tickling and several other reflexes do not occur in 

 the absence of sensation, for example under chloroform. 



364. Feelings are sometimes defined as sensations into 

 which have entered the elements of pleasure or pain. 1 More 

 frequently the term is used in a wider sense, but the ability 

 to distinguish without circumlocution between sensations 

 which have the peculiar tone imparted by pleasure or pain 



1 It may be said that thoughts may be pleasurable or painful, 'and 

 that thoughts are not sensation. There is strong evidence, however, 

 that thoughts never have this emotional element unless they first give 

 rise to certain physical changes to which is due, directly, the pleasure 

 or pain. (See The Principles of Psychology,l>y Professor William James, 

 vol. ii., p. 449.) 



