Right And Wrong Thinking And Their Results
	Intended Actions <  Previous Contents Next  >

All bodily actions may be separated into two classes, those intended and those not intended.

Thinking is the cause of all intended actions. The accuracy of this proposition is self-evident be cause intending, purposing, proposing, or designing is in itself thinking, and this kind of thinking is always the cause of this class of actions. One intends to call on a friend. If he did not think about it, he could not go. Having thought about it, if that thinking ceases, as, for instance, when he forgets, then going becomes impossible. This illustration, though simple, is conclusive of the truth of the proposition.

That a man has forgotten some mental action or was not aware of it when it occurred is no proof that it did not take place. A vast number of actions are preceded by unrecognized thoughts, but this does not furnish any exception to the universal truth of the proposition. On the contrary, it serves to sustain its accuracy; whether recognized or not, the thought was there in the mind doing its work. A person is often able to recall unnoticed thinking of which he would never have become conscious had not some subsequent incident directed his attention to it. Who has not been so absorbed in a book that at the time he was not aware of a conversation going on in the room, or even of remarks addressed to himself, yet afterward has distinctly remembered hearing them? Simple incidents like this show that thinking often occurs without conscious recognition of it by the thinker. Psychologists say that the amount of unrecognized thinking is vastly in excess of that which is recognized.

The action of the skilled performer on the piano is an illustration of the way in which things that were at first the result of intended and clearly recognized thinking at last are done without any consciousness of that thinking. With the beginner every action is preceded by a fully recognized thought. The position at the piano, the poise of the shoulders and head, the control of the arms and hands, the action of the fingers, and just how they must be moved in each particular case for striking each key, and the force of each stroke -- all these are the subjects of conscious thinking on the part of the student. Not a motion is made without previous thought, which includes not only the thought to move but also how that motion is to be accomplished. After long-continued repetition of the motions included in the first and simpler lesson, when each thought has, so to speak, worn its own peculiar channel into the brain and has become so familiar that consciousness of it has some- what waned, then a more difficult lesson is undertaken. The thinking which preceded the simpler actions gradually disappears, being displaced or submerged by the attention given to more difficult ones, until finally all conscious recognition of it ceases. With each step the thinking connected with the preceding practice drops gradually out of sight until at last the performer's conscious thought is all directed to expression. This requires careful attention to each of the many difficult and more delicate peculiarities of every single motion which, in proper combination, express the soul of music. These motions are necessarily preceded by an immense host of unnoticed thoughts, because without them the performer would be motionless and the instrument dumb. Each step suggests to the mind the next one to be taken, and thus the series moves in its accustomed order. Each motion is the result of unnoticed thinking which is as intentional in its character as it was when the beginner consciously and purposely initiated it.

Baldwin records a remarkable instance of this kind of action: "The case is cited of a musician who was seized with an epileptic attack in the midst of an orchestral performance, and continued to play the measure quite correctly while in a state of apparently complete unconsciousness. This is only an exaggerated case of our conscious experience in walking, writing, etc. Just as a number of single experiences of movement become merged in a single idea of the whole, and the impulse to begin the combination is sufficient to secure the performance of all the details, so single nervous reactions become integrated in a compound reflex." But the "impulse to begin" is itself mental action, and without it no step of the performance could be undertaken.

This “impulse to begin “a certain piece of music which has been performed many times is followed by the thinking which produces the first motion, and that by the thinking and consequent action of the second, and so on to the end. The habit of thinking a certain series of thoughts, each thought succeeding another in an invariable order, becomes so fully established by constant repetition that, once begun, they follow each other in their regular order without the conscious volition of the thinker. But if this habit has not been fully established, or if it has fallen into disuse from lack of practice, then difficulties arise and conscious thinking has to be called into action.

This tendency to do again what has often been done is clearly stated by Baldwin: "The thought of a movement has preceded and led to the movement so often, that there is a positive tendency, at the nerve centers, to the discharge of the energy necessary to the accomplishment of the act along the proper courses."

The Italian psychologist, Mosso, has stated the case excellently. He says: " Every movement [in walking] is performed with difficulty; it is at first a ask painfully learned; gradually it becomes less a matter of reflection; until at last one can scarcely call it voluntary. We may not call it automatic, because when the will 10 walk is wanting we do not move, but when we have once set out to walk or to make a journey, we may go on for a long time without reflecting in the least that we are walking. . . .Many have experienced such extreme fatigue that they have slept while walking. There are endless phenomena proving that movements that at first cost a great effort of the will, become at length so habitual that we perform them without being aware of it." The " will to walk," which is thinking, sets in motion that series of mind actions which results in walking, and the mind goes on controlling and directing the machinery of the body without the thinker's active consciousness.

Mosso's words here quoted would apply with equal exactness to any series of complicated actions. The writer does not consciously think how he shall form his letters and words as he traces them; his conscious thought is engaged with the idea he wishes to express; but thoughts he is not aware of are continuously directing the motions of the many muscles which move the pen aright.

Lack of continuity of sense excitation has been recognized by most people. When the hand is placed in contact with any object, there is, through the sense of touch, an immediate and definite consciousness of certain conditions. If the hand remains in the same position, simply resting there without effort, the consciousness of these conditions gradually disappears. Though the course of activity flows in the opposite direction, yet it is clearly recognized that the mind itself affects the physical activities very much in the same way that the sense excitations affect the mind.

In the sense excitations, continuous action results in their disappearance from the mental horizon. May not the elements of consciousness which are aroused by mental action fade out of sight in a similar way though the mental activity be as constantly present as the physical conditions under the hand? If so, this presents sufficient explanation of the disappearance from consciousness of those thoughts which have been made habitual by frequent repetition, and it also explains many, if not all, of those actions which are called reflex or automatic.

All this shows that "one thought of a movement," or “the impulse to begin," which is the mental intention to perform certain actions, is that which sets in motion the complicated machinery of the body, and its action could not occur without it. Therefore in every minute particular the proposition holds true that thinking, either noticed or unnoticed, is the cause of all intended action.