effort on our part. Still others were accomplished only with effort, and after a
struggle to decide which of two lines of action we should take. Some of our acts
were reflex, some were chiefly instinctive, and some were volitional.
Simple Reflex Acts.—First, there are going on within every living organism
countless movements of which he is in large part unconscious, which he does
nothing to initiate, and which he is largely powerless to prevent. Some of them
are wholly, and others almost, out of the reach and power of his will. Such are
the movements of the heart and vascular system, the action of the lungs in
breathing, the movements of the digestive tract, the work of the various glands in
their process of secretion. The entire organism is a mass of living matter, and
just because it is living no part of it is at rest.
Movements of this type require no external stimulus and no direction, they are
reflex; they take care of themselves, as long as the body is in health, without let
or hindrance, continuing whether we sleep or wake, even if we are in hypnotic or
anæsthetic coma. With movements of reflex type we shall have no more
concern, since they are almost wholly physiological, and come scarcely at all
within the range of the consciousness.
Instinctive Acts.—Next there are a large number of such acts as closing the eyes
when they are threatened, starting back from danger, crying out from pain or
alarm, frowning and striking when angry. These may roughly be classed as
instinctive, and have already been discussed under that head. They differ from
the former class in that they require some stimulus to set the act off. We are fully
conscious of their performance, although they are performed without a conscious
end in view. Winking the eyes serves an important purpose, but that is not why
we wink; starting back from danger is a wise thing to do, but we do not stop to
consider this before performing the act.
And so it is with a multitude of reflex and instinctive acts. They are performed
immediately upon receiving an appropriate stimulus, because we possess an
organism calculated to act in a definite way in response to certain stimuli. There
is no need for, and indeed no place for, anything to come in between the
stimulus and the act. The stimulus pulls the trigger of the ready-set nervous
system, and the act follows at once. Acts of these reflex and instinctive types do
not come properly within the range of volition, hence we will not consider them
further.
Automatic or Spontaneous Acts.—Growing out of these reflex and instinctive