Propensity to Motion, Repetition and Imitation

Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here: [LINK TO TABLE OF LINK]. Section XXII: Of Propensity to Motion, Repetition, and Imitation

SECTION 22. OF PROPENSITY TO MOTION, REPETITION, AND IMITATION

I. 1. In the hemiplagia, when the limbs on one side have lost their power of voluntary motion, the patient is for many days perpetually employed in moving those of the other. 2. When the voluntary power is suspended during sleep, there commences a ceaseless flow of sensitive motions, or ideas of imagination, which compose our dreams. 3. When in the cold fit of an intermittent fever some parts of the system have for a time continued torpid, and have thus expended less than their usual expenditure of sensorial power; a hot fit succeeds, with violent action of those vessels, which had previously been quiescent. All these are explained from an accumulation of sensorial power during the inactivity of some part of the system.

Besides the very great quantity of sensorial power perpetually produced and expended in moving the arterial, venous, and glandular systems, with the various organs or digestion, as described in Section XXXII. 3. 2. there is also a constant expenditure of it by the action of our locomotive muscles and organs of sense. Thus the thickness of the optic nerves, where they enter the eye, and the great expansion of the nerves of touch beneath the whole of the cuticle, evince the great consumption of sensorial power by these senses. And our perpetual muscular actions in the common offices of life, and in constantly preserving the perpendicularity of our bodies during the day, evince a considerable expenditure of the spirit of animation by our locomotive muscles. It follows, that if the exertion of these organs of sense and muscles be for a while intermitted, that some quantity of sensorial power must be accumulated, and a propensity to activity of some kind ensue from the increased excitability of the system. Whence proceeds the irksomeness of a continued attitude, and of an indolent life.

However small this hourly accumulation of the spirit of animation may be, it produces a propensity to some kind of action; but it nevertheless requires either desire or aversion, either pleasure or pain, or some external stimulus, or a previous link of association, to excite the system into activity; thus it frequently happens, when the mind and body are so unemployed as not to possess any of the three first kinds of stimuli, that the last takes place, and consumes the small but perpetual accumulation of sensorial power. Whence some indolent people repeat the same verse for hours together, or hum the same tune. Thus the poet:

Onward he trudged, not knowing what he sought,

And whistled, as he went, for want of thought.

II. The repetitions of motions may be at first produced either by volition, or by sensation, or by irritation, but they soon become easier to perform than any other kinds of action, because they soon become associated together, according to Law the seventh, Section IV. on Animal Causation. And because their frequency of repetition, if as much sensorial power be produced during every reiteration as is expended, adds to the facility of their production.

If a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, as described in Sect. XII. 3. 3. the action, whether of our muscles or organs of sense, is produced with still greater facility or energy; because the sensorial power of association, mentioned above, is combined with the sensorial power of irritation; that is, in common language, the acquired habit assists the power of the stimulus.

This not only obtains in the annual, lunar, and diurnal catenations of animal motions, as explained in Sect. XXXVI. which are thus performed with great facility and energy; but in every less circle of actions or ideas, as in the burthen of a song, or the reiterations of a dance. To the facility and distinctness, with which we hear sounds at repeated intervals, we owe the pleasure, which we receive from musical time, and from poetic time; as described in Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3. And to this the pleasure we receive from the rhimes and alliterations of modern verification; the source of which without this key would be difficult to discover. And to this likewise should be ascribed the beauty of the duplicature in the perfect tense of the Greek verbs, and of some Latin ones, as tango tetegi, mordeo momordi.

There is no variety of notes referable to the gamut in the beating of the drum, yet if it be performed in musical time, it is agreeable to our ears; and therefore this pleasurable sensation must be owing to the repetition of the divisions of the sounds at certain intervals of time, or musical bars. Whether these times or bars are distinguished by a pause, or by an emphasis, or accent, certain it is, that this distinction is perpetually repeated; otherwise the ear could not determine instantly, whether the successions of sound were in common or in triple time. In common time there is a division between every two crotchets, or other notes of equivalent time; though the bar in written music is put after every fourth crotchet, or notes equivalent in time; in triple time the division or bar is after every three crotchets, or notes equivalent; so that in common time the repetition recurs more frequently than in triple time. The grave or heroic verses of the Greek and Latin poets are written in common time; the French heroic verses, and Mr. Anstie's humorous verses in his Bath Guide, are written in the same time as the Greek and Latin verses, but are one bar shorter. The English grave or heroic verses are measured by triple time, as Mr. Pope's translation of Homer.

But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the greater returning periods, and the still more distant choruses, which, like the rhimes at the ends of verses, owe their beauty to repetition; that is, to the facility and distinctness with which we perceive sounds, which we expect to perceive, or have perceived before; or in the language of this work, to the greater ease and energy with which our organ is excited by the combined sensorial powers of association and irritation, than by the latter singly.

A certain uniformity or repetition of parts enters the very composition of harmony. Thus two octaves nearest to each other in the scale commence their vibrations together after every second vibration of the higher one. And where the first, third, and fifth compose a chord the vibrations concur or coincide frequently, though less to than in the two octaves. It is probable that these chords bear some analogy to a mixture of three alternate colours in the sun's spectrum separated by a prism.

The pleasure we receive from a melodious succession of notes referable to the gamut is derived from another source, viz. to the pandiculation or counteraction of antagonist fibres. See Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3. If to these be added our early associations of agreeable ideas with certain proportions of sound, I suppose, from these three sources springs all the delight of music, so celebrated by ancient authors, and so enthusiastically cultivated at present. See Sect. XVI. No. 10. on Instinct.

This kind of pleasure arising from repetition, that is from the facility and distinctness, with which we perceive and understand repeated sensations, enters into all the agreeable arts; and when it is carried to excess is termed formality. The art of dancing like that of music depends for a great part of the pleasure, it affords, on repetition; architecture, especially the Grecian, consists of one part being a repetition of another; and hence the beauty of the pyramidal outline in landscape-painting; where one side of the picture may be said in some measure to balance the other. So universally does repetition contribute to our pleasure in the fine arts, that beauty itself has been defined by some writers to consist in a due combination of uniformity and variety. See Sect. XVI. 6.

III. 1. Man is termed by Aristotle an imitative animal; this propensity to imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in all the customs and fashions of the world: many thousands tread in the beaten paths of others, for one who traverses regions of his own discovery. The origin of this propensity of imitation has not, that I recollect, been deduced from any known principle; when any action presents itself to the view of a child, as of whetting a knife, or threading a needle, the parts of this action in respect of time, motion, figure, is imitated by a part of the retina of his eye; to perform this action therefore with his hands is easier to him than to invent any new action, because it consists in repeating with another set of fibres, viz. with the moving muscles, what he had just performed by some parts of the retina; just as in dancing we transfer the times of motion from the actions of the auditory nerves to the muscles of the limbs. Imitation therefore consists of repetition, which we have shewn above to be the easiest kind of animal action, and which we perpetually fall into, when we possess an accumulation of sensorial power, which is not otherwise called into exertion.

It has been shewn, that our ideas are configurations of the organs of sense, produced originally in consequence of the stimulus of external bodies. And that these ideas, or configurations of the organs of sense, referable in some property a correspondent property of external matter; as the parts of the senses of light and of touch, which are excited into action, resemble in figure the figure of the stimulating body; and probably also the colour, and the quantity of density, which they perceive. As explained in Sect. XIV. 2. 2. Hence it appears, that our perceptions themselves are copies, that is, imitations of some properties of external matter; and the propensity to imitation is thus interwoven with our existence, as it is produced by the stimuli of external bodies, and is afterwards repeated by our volitions and sensations, and thus constitutes all the operations of our minds.

2. Imitations resolve themselves into four kinds, voluntary, sensitive, irritative, and associate. The voluntary imitations are, when we imitate deliberately the actions of others, either by mimicry, as in acting a play, or in delineating a flower; or in the common actions of our lives, as in our dress, cookery, language, manners, and even in our habits of thinking.

Not only the greatest part of mankind learn all the common arts of life by imitating others, but brute animals seem capable of acquiring knowledge with greater facility by imitating each other, than by any methods by which we can teach them; as dogs and cats, when they are sick, learn of each other to eat grass; and I suppose, that by making an artificial dog perform certain tricks, as in dancing on his hinder legs, a living dog might be easily induced to imitate them; and that the readiest way of instructing dumb animals is by practising them with others of the same species, which have already learned the arts we wish to teach them. The important use of imitation in acquiring natural language is mentioned in Section XVI. 7. and 8. on Instinct.

3. The sensitive imitations are the immediate consequences of pleasure or pain, and these are often produced even contrary to the efforts of the will. Thus many young men on seeing cruel surgical operations become sick, and some even feel pain in the parts of their own bodies, which they see tortured or wounded in others; that is, they in some measure imitate by the exertions of their own fibres the violent actions, which they witnessed in those of others. In this case a double imitation takes place, first the observer imitates with the extremities of the optic nerve the mangled limbs, which are present before his eyes; then by a second imitation he excites to violent action of the fibres of his own limbs as to produce pain in those parts of his own body, which he saw wounded in another. In these pains produced by imitation the effect has some similarity to the cause, which distinguishes them from those produced by association; as the pains of the teeth, called tooth-edge, which are produced by association with disagreeable sounds, as explained in Sect. XVI. 10.

The effect of this powerful agent, imitation, in the moral world, is mentioned in Sect. XVI. 7. as it is the foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains and pleasures of others, and is in consequence the source of all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the miseries, or with the joys, of our fellow creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of ideas in some measure similar or imitative of those, which we believe to exist in the minds of the persons, whom we commiserate or congratulate?

There are certain concurrent or successive actions of some of the glands, or other parts of the body, which are possessed of sensation, which become intelligible from this propensity to imitation. Of these are the production of matter by the membranes of the fauces, or by the skin, in consequence of the venereal disease previously affecting the parts of generation. Since as no fever is excited, and as neither the blood of such patients, nor even the matter from ulcers of the throat, or from cutaneous ulcers, will by inoculation produce the venereal disease in others, as observed by Mr. Hunter, there is reason to conclude, that no contagious matter is conveyed thither by the blood-vessels, but that a milder matter is formed by the actions of the fine vessels in those membranes imitating each other. See Section XXXIII. 2. 9. In this disease the actions of these vessels producing ulcers on the throat and skin are imperfect imitations of those producing chanker, or gonorrhœa; since the matter produced by them is not infectious, while the imitative actions in the hydrophobia appear to be perfect resemblances, as they produce a material equally infectious with the original one, which induced them.

The contagion from the bite of a mad dog differs from other contagious materials, from its being communicable from other animals to mankind, and from many animals to each other; the phenomena attending the hydrophobia are in some degree explicable on the foregoing theory. The infectious matter does not appear to enter the circulation, as it cannot be traced along the course of the lymphatics from the wound, nor is there any swelling of the lymphatic glands, nor does any fever attend, as occurs in the small-pox, and in many other contagious diseases; yet by some unknown process the disease is communicated from the wound to the throat, and that many months after the injury, so as to produce pain and hydrophobia, with a secretion of infectious saliva of the same kind, as that of the mad dog, which inflicted the wound.

This subject is very intricate.—It would appear, that by certain morbid actions of the salivary glands of the mad dog, a peculiar kind of saliva is produced; which being instilled into a wound of another animal stimulates the cutaneous or mucous glands into morbid actions, but which are ineffectual in respect to the production of a similar contagious material; but the salivary glands by irritative sympathy are thrown into similar action, and produce an infectious saliva similar to that instilled into the wound.

Though in many contagious fevers a material similar to that which produced the disease, is thus generated by imitation; yet there are other infectious materials, which do not thus propagate themselves, but which seem to act like slow poisons. Of this kind was the contagious matter, which produced the jail-fever at the assizes at Oxford about a century ago. Which, though fatal to so many, was not communicated to their nurses or attendants. In these cases, the imitations of the fine vessels, as above described, appear to be imperfect, and do not therefore produce a matter similar to that, which stimulates them; in this circumstance resembling the venereal matter in ulcers of the throat or skin, according to the curious discovery of Mr. Hunter above related, who found, by repeated inoculations, that it would not infect. Hunter on Venereal Disease, Part vi. ch. 1.

Another example of morbid imitation is in the production of a great quantity of contagious matter, as in the inoculated small-pox, from a small quantity of it inserted into the arm, and probably diffused in the blood. These particles of contagious matter stimulate the extremities of the fine arteries of the skin, and cause them to imitate some properties of those particles of contagious matter, so as to produce a thousandfold of a similar material. See Sect. XXXIII. 2. 6. Other instances are mentioned in the Section on Generation, which shew the probability that the extremities of the seminal glands may imitate certain ideas of the mind, or actions of the organs of sense, and thus occasion the male or female sex of the embryon. See Sect. XXXIX. 6.

4. We come now to those imitations, which are not attended with sensation. Of these are all the irritative ideas already explained, as when the retina of the eye imitates by its action or configuration the tree or the bench, which I shun in walking past without attending to them. Other examples of these irritative imitations are daily observable in common life; thus one yawning person shall set a whole company a yawning; and some have acquired winking of the eyes or impediments of speech by imitating their companions without being conscious of it.

5. Besides the three species of imitations above described there may be some associate motions, which may imitate each other in the kind as well as in the quantity of their action; but it is difficult to distinguish them from the associations of motions treated of in Section XXXV. Where the actions of other persons are imitated there can be no doubt, or where we imitate a preconceived idea by exertion of our locomotive muscles, as in painting a dragon; all these imitations may aptly be referred to the sources above described of the propensity to activity, and the facility of repetition; at the same time I do not affirm, that all those other apparent sensitive and irritative imitations may not be resolvable into associations of a peculiar kind, in which certain distant parts of similar irritability or sensibility, and which have habitually acted together, may affect each other exactly with the same kinds of motion; as many parts are known to sympathise in the quantity of their motions. And that therefore they may be ultimately resolvable into associations of action, as described in Sect. XXXV.

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Darwin, Erasmus, 2005. Zoonomia, Vol. Or, the Laws of Organic Life. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15707/15707-h/15707-h.htm#sect_XXII

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