Locomotion
Locomotion as the third sentient operation, a faculty for spontaneous local movement consequent upon knowledge.
In this very brief Article Glenn defines locomotion, the third operation of the sentient order, and discusses the nature of the faculty. He shows that its exercise is consequent upon knowledge — the animal moves because it first apprehends something as to be sought or avoided — and for this reason he declares it a faculty for spontaneous local movement, distinguishing such movement from the merely passive motion of a body pushed from without. He discusses the organ used by the locomotive faculty, and sets out the reason for naming locomotion a sentient rather than a merely vegetal faculty, since it presupposes sensation and belongs to the animal precisely as sentient.
Article 4. Locomotion
a) Definition of Locomotion
Locomotion is the power to move locally by reason of an immanently active principle; it is an organic faculty exercised by the sentient organism in moving from place to place.
The faculty of locomotion is the immediate and proximate principle of spontaneous local movement in animals and human beings. It is something really distinct from appetition, for it is the faculty for going after what appetition tends towards. Appetition may be said to “issue orders”; locomotion tends to “execute the orders.”
Every sentient organism has the faculty of locomotion in some degree, and the higher (or more complex) animal organisms all possess it completely.
b) Nature and Organ of Locomotion
The movement exercised by the locomotive power or faculty is, properly speaking, spontaneous movement. That is to say, it is local movement consequent upon knowledge. Living bodies, even sentient living bodies, manifest other types of movement. Thus there is the automatic movement of heart and lungs, which requires no sensed stimulus from without, no sensed prod to action. There is reflex movement which is the muscular reaction to a stimulus imparted exteriorly to the nerves; reflexes, as such movements are called, may take place with or without the knowledge of the sentient being which experiences them, but when they are recognized or known, the knowledge is never their cause. In spontaneous movement, however, we have movement consequent upon appetency, which, in turn, is awakened by knowledge of an object as good to be attained. The knowledge which stirs the organism to appetition and local movement is, in men and brutes collectively, sense-knowledge. In man, the knowledge which arouses appetency and movement may be also a purely intellectual knowledge. Nor does human knowledge necessarily lead to local movement to achieve what is sentiently known as desirable or good to have. Man has absolute control of the larger bodily movements as long as he is physically and mentally sound, as long as reason is not dethroned by insane fear or anger or other passion. A man can stand to his duty, come what may. He cannot directly control the beating of an excited heart, or chattering teeth, or trembling hands, or quaking knees. But as long as he has the use of reason and ordinary bodily strength for normal action, he can face danger or even move into it, despite the fact that all sentient or bodily appetite is pulling him the other way. In such a case, man’s intellectual knowledge and recognition of duty or proper conduct is the knowledge that stirs appetency, and the appetency that prevails is called the free-will. Thus man is not the slave of bodily appetites, nor is he constrained to that local movement for which bodily appetites express a tendency or drive. A famous example of all this is found in the sentinels of Herculaneum and Pompeii who stood at the post of duty,—although every sentient impulse must have urged them to run to safety,—while molten lava surged down upon them and burned out their lives. The glorious Christian martyrs, soldiers fighting in battle, and even a tired laborer carrying on the prosaic routine of his work, are further examples of the superior control exercised by rational appetency (the will) over sentient appetency as a source and cause of local movement.
The organ of the faculty of locomotion is the muscle-and-bone structure of the organism. For while local movement in an organism is consequent upon knowledge, the movement itself is not a _knowing-_activity, as sensation is essentially, and appetition is virtually. Sensation is knowing; appetition is, in some manner, an appreciation of the thing known, for it is the tendency to act upon knowledge. But movement, in itself, involves no knowledge. It is executed by the sentient organism by means of muscular activity which sets the framework or bone-structure of the organism in motion. Hence we say that the organ of locomotion is the muscle-and-bone structure of the body. We call locomotion a sentient faculty because it belongs to the sentient order of life-activities; it is not sentiency itself, but it is associated with, and consequent upon sentiency or sense-knowledge.
Summary of the Article
In this very brief Article we have defined locomotion, the third operation of the sentient order. We have discussed the nature of this faculty, and have seen that it is consequent, in its exercise, upon knowledge, and for this reason we have declared it to be a faculty for spontaneous local movement. We have discussed the organ used by the locomotive faculty, and have discerned the reason for naming locomotion a sentient faculty.