Self-discovery

“Yes. The environment teaches man in only one way: through conditioning drills. You know that in order to form a conditioned reflex the situation and stimulus must be repeated frequently. And that's just how life experience develops. And in order to form an unconditioned reflex that is inherited the drill must be repeated for many generations for thousands of years. You were right about the biological information in the organism; it is not expressed verbally, but by the reflexes, both conditioned and unconditioned. And it is man's will that controls reflexes, of course, in a limited way. You don't think through from beginning to end which muscle must contract how much when you light a cigarette, and you don't think through the chemical reactions of the muscle contraction. The consciousness gives the order to light up and the reflexes take over. Both the specific one that you acquired from practicing that filthy habit — crumple the cigarette, inhale the smoke — as well as the general ones passed on to you from your distant ancestors: grabbing, breathing, and so on…” Vano Aleksandrovich — it wasn't clear whether it was intended to be an illustration or not — lit a cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

“I'm leading up to the fact that the consciousness controls when there is something to control. In the operative part of the organism, when the final action, as Sechenov noted long ago, is a muscular one… remember?” Androsiashvili sat back in his chair and quoted:” 'A child laughing at a toy, Garibaldi smiling at the accusation of excessive love for his country, a young girl trembling at the first thoughts of love, Newton creating universal laws and writing them down — the final fact in all these instances is muscular action. Ah, how brilliantly Ivan Mikhailovich wrote! So the operative part gives the mind something to control and lets it choose among its vast store of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes for each unique situation. And in the constructive part, where the body's chemistry takes place, there is nothing for the mind to do. Just think for a moment about what conditioned reflexes are involved in metabolism?”

“Drink or not, give me a little more horseradish, can't abide pork, smoking, and….” Krivoshein got confused. “And well, I guess washing, brushing your teeth….”

“There's a dozen more like that,” nodded the professor, “but they are all minor, semichemical, semimuscular, superficial reflexes. And deeper in the organism there are definite reflex processes that are connected so unilaterally that there is nothing to control: oxygen leaves the bloodstream, breathe; not enough protein for the muscles, eat; excreted water, drink; poisoned yourself with things forbidden for the organism, be sick or die. And there are no variations. You can't say that life did not teach people about metabolic reactions — it taught them cruelly. Epidemics — how nice it would be to figure out through the use of your mind and your reflexes just which bacillus was destroying you and purge it from your body like fleas! Famines — just hibernate like a bear instead of puffing up and dying! Wounds and mutilations in fighting — regenerate your torn — off limb or gouged eye! And that's not enough. It would all be done at high speed. Muscular reaction happens in tenths and hundredths of a second, and the fastest of the metabolic actions — secretion of adrenaline into the bloodstream — takes seconds. The secretion of hormones by the glands and the pituitary is discovered only after years, and maybe only once in a lifetime. Thus,” he smiled wanly, “this knowledge is not lost by the organism; it simply has not yet been acquired. It's too difficult for man to learn such a lesson.”

“And therefore mastery of metabolism could drag on for millions of years?”

“I'm afraid that it could take dozens of millions of years,” sighed Vano Aleksandrovich. “We mammals are very recent inhabitants of earth. Thirty million years — is that an age? Everything is still ahead of us.

“There will be nothing ahead of us, Vano Aleksandrovich!” exclaimed Krivoshein. “The present environment changes from year to year — what kind of million — year learning process can there be, what kind of repetition of lessons? Man has stepped off the path of natural evolution, and now he must figure things out for himself.”

“And we are.”

“What? Pills, powders, hemorrhoidal suppositories, enemas, and bed rest? Are you sure that we are improving man's breed this way? Maybe we're ruining it?”

' I'm not trying to talk you into involving yourself with pills and powders if those are the terms you choose to use for the antibiotics our department is developing,” Vano Aleksandrovich said, his face taking on a cold and haughty look. “If you want to study your idea — go ahead, dare. But explaining the unrealistic and unplanned aspects of this decision in graduate work and for a future dissertation is my right and my duty.”