176 The Unity of the Organism 



cles are necessarily involved in the two sorts of action, and 

 since the stimuli reaching these muscles from the two 

 sources must use the same final paths to those muscles, back 

 of the antagonism between the two sets of reflexes is the 

 question, which, in a given case, is more important to the 

 organism, the scratching action or the withdrawal-from- 

 danger action? 



Since the scratch-reflex in the dog is probably connected 

 primarily with flea and other insect bites, and since on the 

 whole it may be assumed that these are rather annoyances 

 than real dangers to life and limb as the "nocuous" excita- 

 tions are by fundamental nature, it would be fair to infer 

 that though either reflex might under certain circumstances 

 inhibit the other, the threshold for the injury-escaping re- 

 flex would be lower. I do not know that there is anything 

 in the evidence which bears directly on this point, but the 

 question is one that would surely arise were the whole" sub- 

 ject of antagonistic reflexes to be looked at from the stand- 

 point of the needs and adaptations of the normally living 

 organism. 



The way certain other reflexes, antagonistic in a sense, 

 are yet correlated in a larger sense, is more obvious than in 

 the case just given. Thus the reflex appertaining to two 

 limb muscles which oppose each other does not merely ac- 

 tivate the muscle which contracts ; it simultaneously causes 

 depression of the opposing muscle. Cooperative antagon- 

 ism, as it might be called, of this general sort is widespread 

 among higher animals, and applies to glandular, circulatory 

 and various other mechanisms as well as to the muscular. 

 Indeed, it being undoubtedly true, as Sherrington repeatedly 

 points out, that the "outward behavior" of animals involves 

 a great variety of movements which proceed in an orderly 

 sequence, if they are normal, it seems almost necessary to 

 suppose that really all normal reflexes must be cooperative 

 and harmonious with reference to the organism as a whole, 



