Life and Habit

seem to throw any light upon Embryology and inherited instincts, and otherwise to follow the train of thought which the class of actions above-mentioned would suggest; mor

s of the crusher. I have no wish to instruct, and not much to be instructed; my aim is simply to entertain and interest the numerous class of people who, like myself, know nothing of science, but who enjoy speculating and reflecting (not too deeply) upon the phenomena around them. I have therefore allowed myself a loose rein, to run on with whatever came uppermost, without regard to whether it was new or old; f

ntific people; it is intended for the general public only, with whom I believe

something quite other than his music; yet he will play accurately and, possibly, with much expression. If he has been playing a fugue, say in four parts, he will have kept each part well distinct, in such a manner as to prove that his mind w

ntion must have been exercised on many more occasions than when he was actually striking notes: so that it may not be too much to say that the attention of a first-rate player may have been exercised-to an infinitesimally small exte

n the player himself can perceive them; nevertheless, it may have been perfectly plain that the player was not attending to what he was doing, but was listening to conversation on some other subject, not to say

shall observe that he finds it hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary consciousness of what he has once learnt so thoroughly that it has passed, so to speak, into the domain of unconsciousness, than he found it to learn the note or passage in the first instance. The effo

ch he has done during the five minutes, we will say, of his performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over. If he calls to mind anything beyond the main fact that he has played such and such a piece, it will pro

mbers more than he remembers remembering, for he avoids mistakes which he made at one time, and his performance proves that all the notes are in his memory, though if called upon to play such and such a bar at random from the middle of the piece, and neither more nor less, he will probably say that he cannot remember it unless h

the brain was only done by means of brain work which was very keenly perceived, even to fatigue and positive distress. Even now, if the

t as much difficulty in awakening consciousness which has become, so to speak, latent,-a consciousness of that which is known too well to admit of recognised self-analysis while the knowledge is being exercised-as in creating a co

orresponding muscular action. Yet the uniformity of our handwriting, and the manner in which we almost invariably adhere to one method of forming the same character, would seem to suggest that during the momentary formation of each letter our memories must revert (with an intensity too rapid for our perception) to many if not to all the occasions on which we have ever written the same letter previously-the memory of these occasions dwelling in our minds as what has been called a residuum-an unconsciously struck balance or average of them all-a fused mass of individual reminiscences of which no trace can be found in our consciousness, and of which the only effect would seem to lie in the gradual changes of handwriting which are perceptible in most people till they have reached middle-age, and sometimes even later. So far are we from consciously remember

king of something else. So a paid copyist, to whom the subject of what he is writing is of no importance, does not even notice it. He deals only with familiar words and familiar characters without caring to go behind them, and thereupon writes on in a quasi-unconscious manner; but if he comes to a word or to characters with which he is but little acquainted, he becomes immediately awa

e only being unfamiliar. Nevertheless, although we do not perceive more than the general result of our perception, there can be no doubt of our having perceived every letter in every word that we have read at all, for if we come upon a word misspelt our attention is at once aroused; unless, indeed, we have actually corrected the misspelling, as well as noticed it, unconsciously, through exceeding familiarity with the way in which it ought to be spelt. Not only do we perceive the letters we have seen without noticing that we have perceived them, but we find it almost impossible to notice that we notice them when we have once learnt to read fluently. To try to

ing; for if a man goes down a lane by night he will stumble over many things which he would have avoided by day, although he would not have noticed them. Yet time was when walking was to each one of us a new and arduous task-as arduous as we should now

the substance of what we wish to say. Yet talking was not always the easy matter to us which it is at present-as we perceive more readily when we are learning a new language which it may take us months to master. Nevertheless, when we have once mastered it we speak it without further consciousness of knowledge or memory, as regards the more common words, and without even noticing our consciousness. Here, as in the other instances a

may be perceived in

of those who have either an exceptional genius for music, or who have devoted the greater part of their time to practising. Except in the case of these persons it is generally found easy t

to stop at any moment; though not so completely as would be imagined by those who have not made the experiment of trying to stop in the middle of a

re difficult to become conscious of any character without discomfiture, and we cannot arrest ourselves in the middle o

hout hindrance to our running or walking. Pursuit and flight, whether in the chase or in war, must for many generations have played a much more prominent part in the lives of our ancestors than they do in our own. If the ground over which they had to travel had been generally as free from obstruction as our modern cultivated lands, it is possible that we might not find it as easy to no

ay attention to our words than to our steps. Certainly it is very hard to become conscious of every syllable or indeed of every word we say; the attempt to do so will often bring us to a check at once; nevertheless we can generally stop talking if we wish to do so, unless the crying of infants be considered as a kind of quasi-speech: this comes earlier, and is often quite uncontrollable,

habit the longer the practice, the longer the practice, the more knowledge-or, the less

at sum; others are free born. Some learn to play, to read, write, and talk, with hardly an effort-some show such an instinctive aptitude for arithmetic that, like Zerah Colburn, at eight years old, they achieve re

in figures by the person appointed to record them. He raised the number 8 progressively to the sixteenth power, and in naming the last result, which consisted of 15 figures, he w

ginal number could be written down. He was then required to find the cube

re the question could be taken down he replied 25,228,800, and

and 263, which are the only two numbers from the multiplication of which it would result. On 171,395 be

case of prime numbers, which he generally discovered almost as soon as they were proposed to him. The number 4,294,967,297, which is 232 + 1, having been given him, he discovered, as Euler had previously done, that it was not the prime number which Fermat had suppo

t by 15. And on being asked to tell the square of 999,999 he obtained the correct result, 999,998,000,001, by twice multiplying the square of 37,037 by 27. He then of his own accord multiplied that product by 49, and said that the result (viz., 48,999,902,000,049) was equal to the square of 6,999,993

s going forward in his mind; yet that operation could not (from the readiness with which his answers were furnished) have been at all allied to the usual modes of procedure, of which, indeed, he was entirely ignorant, not being able to perform on paper a simple sum in multiplication or division. But in the extraction of roots, and i

quotation, but further than this I cannot and will not go. Also I am happy to find that in the end the boy o

ous apprehension of the performer himself, who only becomes conscious when a difficulty arises which taxes even his abnormal power. Such a case, therefore, confirms rather than militates against our opinion that consciousness of knowledge vanishes on the knowledge becoming perfect-the only difference between those possessed of any such remarkable special power and the general ru

d not extract roots when he was an embryo of three weeks' standing. It is true we can seldom follow the process, but we know there must have been a time in every case when even the desire for information or action had not been kindled; the forget

rgetfulness; for we are unconscious of knowing, willing, or remembering, either from not yet having known or willed, or from knowing and willing so well and so intensely as to be no longer conscious of either. Conscious knowledge and v

cious knowledge and unconscious volition are never acquired otherwise than as the result of experience, familiarity, or habit; so that whenever we observe a person able to do any complicated action u

erfect knowledge; earlier still, we find him well aware that he does not know nor will correctly, but trying hard to do both the one and the other; and so on, back and back, till both difficulty and consciousness become little more than a sound of going in the bra

rting on an Atlantic steamer, our rest is hindered by the screw; after a short time, it is hindered if the screw s