Both divisions of the autonomic nervous system are controlled by the limbic brain (the hypothalamus and adjacent structures). Different authors have described their functions in different terms. Allport related the pleasurable emotions to the para-sympathetic, the unpleasant ones to the sympathetic. [36] Olds distinguishes between 'positive' and 'negative' emotive systems, activated respectively by the parasympathetic and sympathetic centres in the hypothalamus. [36a] From a quite different theoretical approach, Hebb also arrived at the conclusion that a distinction should he made between two categories of emotion, 'those in which the tendency is to maintain or increase the original stimulating conditions (pleasurable or integrative emotions)' and 'those in which the tendency is to abolish or decrease the stimulus (rage, fear, disgust)'. [36b] Pribram has made a similar distinction between 'preparatory' (warding-off) and 'participatory' emotions. [36c] Hess and Gellhorn, distinguish between an ergotropic (energy-consuming) system operating through the sympathetic division to ward off threatening stimuli, and a trophotropic (energy-conserving) system which operates through the parasympathetic in response to peaceful or attractive stimuli. [37] Gellhorn has summarised the emotional effects of two different types of drugs: on the one hand the 'pep pills', such as benzedrine, and on the other the tranquillisers, such as chlorpromazine. The former activates the sympathetic, the latter the parasympathetic, division. When administered in small doses, the tranquillisers cause 'slight shifts in the hypothalamic balance to the parasympathetic side, resulting in calm and contentment, apparently similar to the state before falling asleep, whereas more marked alterations lead to a depressive mood'. [38] The benzedrine-type drugs, on the other hand, activate the sympathetic division, cause increased aggressiveness in animals, and in man in small doses alertness and euphoria, in larger doses over-excitation and manic behaviour. Lastly, Cobb has summed up the implicit contrast in a pointed form: 'Rage is called the most adrenergic, and love the most cholinergic [characteristically parasympathetic] reaction.' [39]
What this short survey indicates is, in the first place, a general trend among authorities in this field to distinguish between two basic categories of emotion -- though the definitions of the categories differ, and are mixed up with the hedonic tone (which, in the present theory, is an independent variable of either category; cf. pp. 226f). In the second place, there is a general feeling that the two categories are 'somehow' correlated to the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system.
But the correlation is not a simple and clear-cut one. Thus, for instance, according to MacLean, 'erection is a parasympathetic phenomenon, whereas ejaculation depends on sympathetic mechanisms' [40] -- which, as far as categories are concerned, is neither here nor there. Moreover, strong parasympathetic stimulation may cause nausea or vomiting which, though cathartic (that is, 'cleansing' in the literal sense), can hardly be called an act of psychological self-transcendence. In a word, the functioning of the autonomic nervous system is one of the most intriguing physiological aspects of man's emotional life; and in fairness to the general reader I ought to point out that, while there is ample evidence that the self-assertive emotions are mediated by the sympathico-adrenal division, there is no conclusive proof for the symmetrical correlation suggested here. Such proof can be forthcoming only when human emotions outside the hunger-rage-fear class will be recognised as a worthwhile object of study by experimental psychology -- which at present is not the case. In conformity with the Zeitgeist, the self-transcending emotions are still the stepchildren of psychology, in spite of their evident reality. Weeping, for instance, is certainly an observable behavioural phenomenon (the Behaviourist could even measure the amount of lachrymation in milligrams per second). But it is almost completely ignored in psychological literature.*
* For a discussion of the subject, and a bibliography of weeping, see The Act of Creation, Chapters XII-XIV and pp. 725-8.
Some additional facts about the autonomic nervous system are pertinent to our theme. In strongly emotional or pathological conditions, the mutually antagonistic, i.e., equilibrating action of the two divisions no longer prevails; instead they may mutually reinforce each other, as in the sexual act; or over-excitation of one division may lead to a temporary rebound or over-compensatory 'answering effect' by the other [41]; lastly, the parasympathetic may act as a catalyst that triggers its antagonist into action. [42]
The first of these three possibilities is relevant to our emotional state in listening to rhapsodic music -- a Wagner opera for instance -- where relaxed, cathartic feelings seem to be paradoxically combined with euphoric arousal. The second possibility is reflected in 'emotional hangovers' of one kind or another. The third possibility is the most relevant to our theme: it shows in concrete physiological terms how one type of emotional reaction can act as a vehicle for its opposite -- as self-transcending identification with the hero on the screen releases vicarious aggressiveness against the villain; as identification with a group or creed releases the savagery of mob-behaviour. The rationalisations for it are formulated in the language-symbols of the new cortex; but the emotive dynamism is generated by the old brain, and conveyed to viscera and glands by the autonomic nervous system.
This is another point where neurophysiological research begins to merge with psychology, to provide clues to its paradoxes -- and perhaps a first inkling of an answer to the human predicament.
Summary
The evolution of arthropods and marsupials shows that mistakes in brain building do occur. The strategy of evolution is subject to trial and error, and there is nothing particularly improbable in the assumption that in the course of the explosive growth of the human neocortex evolution erred once more. The Papez-MacLean theory offers strong evidence for the dissonant functioning of the phylogenetically old and new cortex, and the resulting 'schizophysiology' built into our species. This would provide a physiological basis for the paranoid streak running through human history, and point the direction of the search for a cure.
XVII
A UNIQUE SPECIES
I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. Swift, Voyage to Brobdingnag
The Unsolicited Gift
In one of his essays, Sir Julian Huxley made a list of the characteristics which are unique to the species man: language and conceptual thought; the transmission of knowledge by written records; tools and machinery; biological dominance over all other species; individual variability; the use of the forelimb for manipulating purposes only; all-year-round fertility; art, humour, science, religion, and so on. [1] But the most striking feature of man from the evolutionist's point of view is not included in the list -- nor have I read a serious discussion of it by any other leading biologist.
It could be called 'the paradox of the unsolicited gift'; I shall try to convey it by a parable. There was once an illiterate shopkeeper in an Arab bazaar, called Ali, who, not being very good at doing sums, was always cheated by his customers -- instead of cheating them, as it should be. So he prayed every night to Allah for the present of an abacus -- that venerable contraption for adding and subtracting by pushing beads along wires. But some malicious djin forwarded his prayers to the wrong branch of the heavenly Mail Order Department, and so one morning, arriving at the bazaar, Ali found his stall transformed into a multi-storey, steel-framed building, housing the latest I.B.M. computer with instrument panels covering all the walls, with thousands of fluorescent oscillators, dials, magic eyes, et cetera; and an instruction book of several hundred pages -- which, being illiterate, he could not read. However, after days of useless fiddling with this or that dial, he flew into a rage and started kicking a shiny, delicate panel. The shocks disturbed one of the machine's millions of electronic circuits, and after a while Ali discovered to his delight that if he kicked that panel, say, three times and afterwards five times, one of the dials showed the figure eight! He thanked Allah for having sent him
such a pretty abacus, and continued to use the machine to add up two and three -- happily unaware that it was capable of deriving Einstein's equations in a jiffy, or predicting the orbits of planets and stars thousands of years ahead.
Ali's children, then his grandchildren, inherited the machine and the secret of kicking that same panel; but it took hundreds of generations until they learued to use it even for the purpose of simple multiplication. We ourselves are Ali's descendants, and though we have discovered many other ways of putting the machine to work, we have still only learned to utilise a very small fraction of the potentials of its estimated hundred thousand million circuits. For the unsolicited gift is of course the human brain. As for the instruction book, it is lost -- if it ever existed. Plato maintains that it did once but that is hearsay.
The comparison is less far-fetched than it may seem. Evolution, whatever the driving force behind it, caters for the species' immediate adaptive needs; and the emergence of novelties in anatomical structure and function is by and large guided by these needs. It is entirely unprecedented that evolution should provide a species with an organ which it does not know how to use; a luxury organ, like Ali's computer, far exceeding its owner's immediate, primitive needs; an organ which will take the species millennia to learn to put to proper use -- if it ever does.
All the evidence indicates that the earliest representative of homo sapiens -- Cro-Magnon man, who emerges on the scene some fifty to a hundred thousand years ago -- was already endowed with a brain which in size and shape was the same as ours. But he made hardly any use of it; he remained a cave-dweller, and never grew out of the Stone Age. From the point of view of his immediate needs, the explosive growth of the neocortex overshot the mark by a time factor of astronomic magnitude. For several tens of thousands of years, our ancestors went on manufacturing bows and arrows and spears, while the organ which tomorrow will take us to the moon was already there, ready for use, inside their skulls.
When we say that mental evolution is a specific characteristic of man and absent in animals, we confuse the issue. The learning potential of animals is automatically limited by the fact that they make full use -- or nearly full use -- of all organs of their native equipment, including their brains. The capacities of the computer inside the reptilian and mammalian skull are exploited to the full, and leave no scope for further learning. But the evolution of man's brain has so wildly overshot man's immediate needs that he is still breathlessly catching up with its unexploited, unexplored possibilities. The history of science and philosophy is, from this point of view, the slow process of learning to actualise the brain's potentials. The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.
Looking in Utter Darkness . . .
But why was this process of learning to use our brains, in a quite literal sense, so slow, spasmodic and beset with reverses? Here is the crux of the problem. The answer, as suggested before, is inadequate co-ordination between the old brain and the new brain -- the old brain getting in the way of the new; the passionate neighing of affect-based beliefs preventing us from listening to the voice of reason. Hence the mess we made of our social history; but the progress of 'dispassionate' science laboured under the same curse. We are in the naive habit of visualising it as a steady, cumulative process, where each epoch adds some new item to the knowledge of the past, where each generation of Ali's descendants is learning to make better use of Allah's present, thus nicely progressing from the magic-ridden, myth-addicted infancy of civilisation, through the pangs of adolescence, to detached, rational maturity.
In fact, however, progress was neither steady nor continuous:
The philosophy of nature evolved by occasional leaps and bounds alternating with delusional pursuits, regressions, periods of blindness and amnesia. The great discoveries which determined its course were sometimes the unexpected by-products of a chase after quite different hares. At other times, the process of discovery consisted merely in the cleaning away of the rubbish that blocked the path. The mad clockwork of Ptolemy's epicycles was kept going for two thousand years; and Europe knew less geometry in the fifteenth century A.D. than in Archimedes' time. If progress had been continuous and organic, all that we know, for instance, about the theory of numbers, or analytical geometry, should have been discovered within a few generations after Euclid. For this development did not depend on technological advances or the taming of nature: the whole corpus of mathematics is potentially there in the ten billion neurons of the computing machine inside the human skull. . . . The jerky and basically irrational progress of knowledge is probably related to the fact that evolution has endowed homo sapiens with an organ which he was unable to put to proper use. Neurologists have estimated that even at the present stage we are only using two or three per cent of the potentialities of its built-in 'circuits'. [2]
If one takes a kind of bird's-eye view of the history of science, the first thing that strikes one is its discontinuity. About tens of thousands of years of human prehistory we know very little. Then, in the sixth century B.C., we find suddenly, as if sprung from nowhere, a galaxy of Philosophers in Miletus and Elea and Samos, discussing the origins and evolution of the universe, searching for the ultimate principles underlying all diversity. The Pythagoreans attempted the first grand synthesis: they tried to weave the separate threads of mathematics, music, astronomy and medicine into a single carpet with an austere geometrical design. That carpet is still in the making, but its pattern was laid down in the three centuries of the Heroic Age of Greek science. However, after the Macedonian conquest, there followed a period of orthodoxy and decline.
Aristotle's categories became the grammar of existence, his animal spirits ruled the world of physics, everything worth knowing was already known, and everything inventable already invented. The Heroic Age was guided by the example of Prometheus stealing the fire of the gods; the philosophers of the Hellenistic period dwelt in Plato's cave, drawing epicycles on the wall, their backs turned to the daylight of reality. After that there came a period of hibernation lasting for fifteen centuries. During that time the march of science was not only halted, but its direction reversed. A contemporary philosopher of science, Dr Pyke, wrote about 'the inability of science to go backwards -- once the neutron has been discovered it remains discovered'. [3] Does it? In the fifth century B.C. the educated classes knew that the earth was a spherical body floating in space and spinning round its axis; a thousand years later they thought that it was a flat disc. [4]
In St. Augustine's City of God, all the treasures of ancient Greek learning, beauty and hope were banned, for all pagan knowledge was 'prostituted with the influence of obscene and filthy devils. Let Thales depart with his water, Anaximenes with the air, the Stoics with their fire, Epicurus with his atoms. . . . ' And depart they did. To fiddle with the dials of the unsolicited gift became taboo. The revival of learning in the twelfth century was followed by the disastrous marriage of Aristotle's physics with the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, and by another three centuries of sterility, stagnation and scholastic philosophy -- 'looking', as Erasmus cried, 'in utter darkness for that which has no existence whatsoever'.
The only periods in the whole of Western history in which there was a truly cumulative growth of knowledge are the three great centuries of Greece, and the last three centuries before the present. Yet the apparatus to generate that knowledge was there all the time during the intervening two thousand years -- and also during the thirty thousand years or so which separate us from Altamira and Lascaux. But it was not allowed to generate that knowledge. The affect-inspired phantasmagorias of totem and taboo, dogma and doctrine, guilt and fear, drove back again and again the 'filthy devils' of knowledge. For most of the time throughout human history, the marvellous potentials of the new cortex were only permitted to exert their powers in the service of old emotional beliefs: in the magic-motivated paintings of the Dordogne caves; in the translation of archerypal imagery into the language of mythology; in the religious
art of Asia or of the European Middle Ages. Reason's task was to act as the handmaid of faith whether it was the faith of medicine-men, theologians, scholastics, dialectical materialists, devotees of President Mao or King Mbo-Mba. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars; it is in the crocodile and the horse that we carry in our skulls. Of all the uniquenesses of man this seems to be the foremost.
The Peaceful Primate
It is characteristic of the conventional biologist's touching optimism that Huxley's list contains only positive, desirable properties. That other terrible uniqueness of our species, intra-specific warfare,* is not even mentioned in passing -- although in a separate essay in the same volume, on 'War as a Biological Phenomenon', Huxley points out that 'there are only two kinds of animals that habitually make war -- man and ants. Even among ants, war is mainly practised by one group, comprising only a few species among the tens of thousands that are known to science.' [5] In fact, however, rats, too, wage group or clan warfare. The members of the rat clan, as those of the insect state, do not 'know' each other individually, only by the characteristic smell of their shared nest, hive or locality. The stranger, although of the same species but from a different clan, is instantly recognised by his different smell -- he 'stinks'. So he must be ferociously attacked, and if possible killed.