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ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD.' 



BT J. MARK BALDWIN. 



In earlier articles of this series ' I have endeaTored to trace the 

 development of the child's active life up to the rise of volition. 

 The transition from the involuntary class of muscular reactions 

 to which the general word " suggestion" applies, to the perform- 

 ance of actions foreseen and intended occurs, as I have before in- 

 timated, through the persistence and repetition of imitative sug- 

 gestions. The distinction between simple imitation and persistent 

 imitation has already been made and illustrated in an earlier arti- 

 cle. Now, in saying that volition — the conscious phenomenon of 

 will — arises historically on the basis of persistent imitation, what 

 I mean is this : that the child's first exhibition of will is its re- 

 peated effort to imitate movements seen and noises heard. 



An adequate analysis of will with reference to the fiat of voli- 

 tion reveals tliree great factors for which a theory of the origin of 

 this function must provide. These three elements of the volun- 

 tary process are desire, deliberation, and effort. Desire is distin- 

 guished from impulse by its intellectual quality, i.e., the fact 

 that it always has reference to a presentation or pictured object. 

 Organic impulses may pass into desires, when their objects 

 become conscious. Further, desire implies lack of satisfaction of 

 the impulse on which it rests — a degree of inhibition, thwarting, 

 unfultilment. Put more generally, these two characteristics of 

 desire are: (1) a pictured object suggesting a satisfaction which 

 it does not give, and (2) an incipient motor reaction which the 

 imaged object stimulates but does not discharge.^ 



The first clear cases of desire — as thus imderstood — in the 

 life of the child are seen in the movements of its hands in grasp- 

 ing after objects seen. As soon as there is clear visual presenta- 

 tion of objects we 6nd impulsive muscular reactions directed 

 toward them, at first in an excessively crude fashion, but becom- 

 ing rapidly refined. These movements are free and uninhibited — 

 simple sensori-motor suggestive reactions. But I find, in experi- 

 ments with my children, that the vain grasping at distant objects, 



1 The theory of the rise of volition bere announced was presented in detail 

 at the International Congress for Experimental Psychology which met in Lon- 

 don in August ; a full abstract is to be found in the Proceedings of tbe Con- 

 gress. The entire paper with further elaboration Is to appear in an early 

 issue of Brain (London). 



2 "Suggestion in Infancy," Science, Feb. 27,1891; "Infants' Movements," 

 Science, Jan. 8, 1892. 



' Cf. my " Handbook of Psychology,' Vol. II., Chap. XIV., 5 2, for a fuller 

 development. 



which prevailed up to about the sixth month, tended to disappear 

 rapidly in the two subsequent months — just about the time of 

 the rise of imitation. During the eighth month, my child, H. , 

 would not grasp at highly- colored objects more than sixteen 

 inches distant, her reaching distance being ten to twelve inches.* 

 This training of impulse is evidently an association of muscular 

 (arm) sensations with visual experiences of distance. The sug- 

 gested reaction becomes inhibited in a growing degree by a coun- 

 teracting nervous process; and here are the conditions necessary 

 to the rise of desire. It is safe, therefore, I think, to say, that 

 desire takes its rise in visual suggestion and develops under its 

 lead. 



The two further requisite-3 to the process of volition are delib- 

 eration and effort. The word ''deliberation" characterizes the 

 content of consciousness, and may be best described as a state of 

 polyideism, or relatively unreduced plurality of presentations, 

 with a corresponding plurality of motor tendencies (motives). 

 The feeling of effort seems to accompany the passage of con- 

 sciousness into a monoideistic state after deliberation. It arises 

 just when an end is put to the motor plurality by synthesis or 

 co-ordination. Deliberation may exist without effort, as is seen 

 in deliberative suggestion already described and in pathological 

 aboidia, in which a man is a prey to un-coordinated impulses. 



Now these further conditions of the rise of will are present first 

 in childhood in persistent imitation, the try-try-again experience. 

 In the pre-imitative period, the so-called efforts of infants are 

 suggestive reflexes. My child, E., strained to lift her head in the 

 second month when any one entered the room ; and in her fourth 

 month, after being lifted by the clasping of both her hands around 

 her mother's fingers, the mere sight of fingers extended before her 

 made her grasp at them and attempt to raise herself. Such 

 cases — on which many writers rely, e.g., Preyer — fall easily under 

 sensori-motor suggestion as it borders on physiological habit. The 

 nearest it comes to will is that it may involve faint glimmerings 

 of desire, but it certainly lacks all deliberation. Further, simple 

 imitation, as has already been said, can be readily accounted for 

 without any appeal to deliberation or effort and even without an 

 appeal to desire. 



In persistent imitation we have an advance on simple imitation 

 in two ways : (1) A comparison of the first result produced by 

 the child (movement, sound) with the suggesting image or 

 " copy " imitated, i. e., deliberation. This gives rise to the state 

 of dissatisfaction, motor restlessness, which is desire, best de- 

 scuibedas "will-stimulus;" (2) the outburst of this complex motor 

 condition in a new reaction, accompanied in consciousnees by the 

 attainment of a monoideistic state (end) and the feeling of effort. 

 Here, then, in persistent imitation we have, thus briefly put, the 

 necessary elements of the voluntary psychosis for the first time 

 present. 



The reason that in imitation the material for will is found is 

 seen to be that here the "circular process" already described 

 maintains itself. In reactions which are not imitative (for exam- 

 ple, an ordinary pain-movement reaction) this circular process, 

 whereby the result of the first movement becomes itself a stimu- 

 lus to the second, etc., is not brought about; or, if it do arise, it 

 consists simply in a repetition of the same motor event fixed by 

 association — as the repetition of the ma sound so common with 

 very young infants. Consciousness remains monoideistic. But 

 in imitation the reaction performed comes in by eye or ear as a 

 new and different stimulus ; here is the state of motor polyideism 

 necessai'y for the supervention of the feeling of effort. 



From this and other lines of evidence,'' we are able to see more 

 clearly the conditions under which effort arises. It seems clear 

 that (1) the muscular sensations arising from a suggestive reaction 

 do not present all the conditions; in young children, just as in 

 habitual adult performances, muscular sensations simply give a 

 repetition of the muscular event. The kiueesthetic centre empties 

 into a lower motor centre in some such way as that described 

 by James {Psychology, II., p. 583) along the diagonal line mc, mp va 



< See Science, XVI., 1890, p. 247. 



= Other evidence Is (a) a research on students, called " Persistent Imitation 

 Experiment," and {b) evidence from the pathology of speech ; for both of 

 which see the detailed article to appear in Brain. 



