Erasmus Darwin

“ When a child first wrote the word man, it was distinguished in his mind into three letters, and those letters into many parts of letters; but by repeated use the word man becomes to his hand in writing it, as to his organs of speech in pronouncing it, but one movement without any deliberation, or sensation, or irritation, interposed between the parts of it. And as many separate motions of our muscles thus become united, and form, as it were, one motion; so each separate motion before such union may be conceived to consist of many parts or spaces moved through ”

“ There is another tribe of desires, which are commonly termed appetites, and are the immediate consequences of the absence of some irritative motions. Those, which arise from defect of internal irritations, have proper names conferred upon them, as hunger, thirst, lust, and the desire of air, when our respiration is impaired by noxious vapours; and of warmth, when we are exposed to too great a degree of cold. But those, whose stimuli are external to the body, are named from the objects, which are by nature constituted to excite them ”

“ This appears first, because our pains and pleasures are always caused by our ideas or muscular motions, which are the motions of the extremities of the sensorium. And, secondly, because the sensation of pleasure or pain frequently continues some time after the ideas or muscular motions which excited it have ceased: for we often feel a glow of pleasure from an agreeable reverie, for many minutes after the ideas, that were the subject of it, have escaped our memory; and frequently experience a dejection of spirits without being able to assign the cause of it but by much recollection. ”

“ As there are many diseases produced by the quantity of the sensation of pain or pleasure being too great or too little; so are there diseases produced by the susceptibility of the constitution to motions causable by these sensations being too dull or too vivid. ”

“ There are many motions of the body, belonging to the irritative class, which might by a hasty observer be mistaken for associated ones; as the peristaltic motion of the stomach and intestines, and the contractions of the heart and arteries, might be supposed to be associated with the irritative motions of their nerves of sense, rather than to be excited by the irritation of their muscular fibres by the distention, acrimony, or momentum of the blood. ”

“ It is not easy to assign a cause, why those animal movements, that have once occurred in succession, or in combination, should afterwards have a tendency to succeed or accompany each other. It is a property of animation, and distinguishes this order of being from the other productions of nature. ”

“ Many of these external properties of bodies, which stimulate our organs of sense, do not seem to effect this by a single impulse, but by repeated impulses; as the nerve of the ear is probably not excitable by a single vibration of air, nor the optic nerve by a single particle of light ”

“ As the nerves of the senses have each their appropriated objects, which stimulate them into activity; so the muscular fibres, which are the terminations of other sets of nerves, have their peculiar objects, which excite them into action; the longitudinal muscles are stimulated into contraction by extension, whence the stretching or pandiculation after a long continued posture, during which they have been kept in a state of extension ”

“ I. The various organs of sense require various kinds of stimulation to excite them into action; the particles of light penetrate the cornea and humours of the eye, and then irritate the naked retina; rapid particles, dissolved or diffused in water or saliva, and odorous ones, mixed or combined with the air, irritate the extremities of the nerves of taste and smell ”

“ You voluntarily call up all your ideas of causation, that are related to the effect you desire, and voluntarily examine and compare them, and at length determine whether to ascend the tree, or to gather stones from the neighbouring brook, is easier to practise, or more promising of success ”

“ So the distention or elongation of muscles by objects external to them irritates them into contraction, though the cuticle or other parts may intervene between the stimulating body and the contracting muscle. Thus a horse voids his excrement when its weight or bulk irritates the rectum or sphincter ani. These muscles act from the irritation of distention, when he excludes his excrement, but the muscles of the abdomen and diaphragm are brought into motion by association with those of the sphincter and rectum. ”

“ I. Stimulation is of various kinds adapted to the organs of sense, to the muscles, to hollow membranes, and glands. Some objects irritate our senses by repeated impulses. II. 1. Sensation and volition frequently affect the whole sensorium. 2. Emotions, passions, appetites. 3. Origin of desire and aversion. ”