Sir,

Experimenting with animals, the late Rudolph Magnus demonstrated lines of communication running from all the internal and external sense receptors and uniting in the brain-stem in a junction, which he called the Zentralapparat. He contended that the Zentralapparat worked in such a way that its guidance adjusted the parts of the animal, so that it was, controlled as a whole in a certain pattern of behaviour. He did not describe the pattern, but, nevertheless, contended that it was the best which the animal might use as the means whereby it might go on to perform reaction which we ordinarily think of as movement. The discovery of the Zentralapparat compels us to conceive two progressive stages in reaction: first, the stage whereby the animal is adjusted as a whole to operate in the best way it can as a mechanism, and, secondly, the stage where the animal uses the mechanism thus adjusted for the purpose of performing reaction we may describe as serving it to gain the ends which enable it to satisfy its needs in its living.

Magnus also showed that an animal displayed many different patterns of behaviour. In one of these the muscular tension throughout the animal was the least possible. Adjusted as a whole in this way, the animal has the advantage of reacting in any direction without having to overcome any unbalance of muscular tension. A behaviour pattern of this kind would appear to provide the best pattern for an animal to use at the very start of reaction. May it not be that this was the pattern Magnus believed was controlled by the Zentralapparat?

Magnus further showed that each behaviour pattern had associated with it a distinctive head-neck relativity. There was, he showed, a particular head-neck relativity associated with the pattern where the muscular tension was the least possible throughout the animal. Reasoning that this pattern is precisely the pattern controlled by the Zentralapparat, we see that the head-neck relativity, indicating a distribution of the least possible muscular tension throughout an animal, could be taken to indicate that the Zentralapparat was in control of behaviour in a way that was in no degree being influenced by the animal performing any reaction belonging to what we have described as the second stage of reaction.

Our object in making this connection is to show that when we have discovered a principle enabling an animal to demonstrate the head-neck relativity associated with the behaviour pattern where the muscular tension is the least possible throughout, we shall be able to use this relativity as an indicator giving operational verification that the Zentralapparat is freely controlling the behaviour pattern, completely uninfluenced by the animal interfering with it in any other way, and that the lines of sensory communication which enter into its construction are adjusted to let it work in accordance with its nature at its best, and are, therefore, demonstrated to be, themselves, well adjusted.

Giving thought to these matters, we can readily understand that no animal will demonstrate this head-neck relativity unless it can be induced to withhold all that kind of reaction which we usually recognise as movement. We can see that it is not likely to consent to this when we consider that the hands of the investigator testing its behaviour pattern are much more likely to arouse in it an instinctive urge to perform rather than to forgo reaction, which habit has taught it is of the essence of its living and survival. From all this we can see that it is most difficult to obtain by animal experiment an accurate illustration of the head-neck relativity giving operational verification that the Zentralapparat is at work without interference from the animal, or that the sensory communications are adjusted to work at their best. Even if we were fortunate enough to succeed, it is probable that animal experiments offer small hope of teaching us how we may use this relativity, or the knowledge we have about it in the animal world, for the purpose of gaining an improved control over human reaction.

In this connection, it is fortunate that Mr. F. Matthias Alexander, who conducted experiments on human reaction twenty-five years before Magnus published his work,(1) was able to evolve a technique enabling a person to withhold what he called "end gaining" reaction. He showed that a person who employed this technique might provide himself with a head-neck relativity associated with sensory appreciation working in an improved way. He did not, of course, at first know that his experiments were demonstrating the influence of a mechanism working outside the bounds of performance of which we are conscious, but, as he continued experimenting, be was soon able to see that the person who employed a technique of inhibiting end-gaining reaction, and who thus provided himself with a head-neck relativity associated with an improved sensory appreciation, might, by employing this head-neck relativity as the first step in the guidance of consciously controlled reaction, be able to bridge the gap between the working of the self of which we are conscious and the working of which we are not.

The technique demonstrated that man bad entertained a false assumption in believing that he could directly control reaction so that it might be of the best possible kind for ensuring both the integrity of the self and success in enabling him to gain his ends. It showed that the manner of working of the living human organism demanded that we could gain conscious control over it only by indirect means. It showed, therefore, that we should have to evolve and use means which permitted a mechanism working below the level of conscious experience to bring its integrating influence to bear upon the self so that the self might be adjusted as a whole in the best possible way for use under the guidance of sensory appreciation working in the best possible way.

In this connection, we are indebted to Magnus for having explained the anatomical background showing the means Mr. Alexander used while employing his own original and imaginative method, which, having in it nothing of highly specialised knowledge, may be used by the ordinary person for improving his use of the self and his control of reaction.(2)

Mungo Douglas
Bolton, Lanes.

(1) Magnus, R. Körperstellung. Berlin, 1924.
(2) Alexander, F. M. Man's Supreme Inheritance; first published 1910. Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual; first published 1923. The Use of the Self; first published 1932. The Universal Constant in Living; 1942.