THE HISTORY OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 185 



possible to the same control. We learn to walk by a 

 conscious effort to take each step ; afterward we take 

 each step automatically, and think only whither we wish 

 to go. We learn by conscious effort to talk and write, 

 to sing, or play the piano. Afterward we frame each 

 letter or note automatically, and think only of the idea 

 and its expression. 



So also in our moral and spiritual nature.* 

 There has been therefore in the successive forms 

 and stages of animal life a clear sequence of dominant 

 nervous actions. The actions of all animals below the 

 annelid are mainly reflex or automatic, unconscious 

 and involuntary. But in insects and lower vertebrates 



V 



the highest actions at least are instinctive. Conscious- 



* Mr. James Freeman Clarke has stated this better than I can. " We 

 may state the law thus: 'Any habitual course of conduct changes volun- 

 tary actions into automatic or involuntary (i.e., reflex) actions.' By prac- 

 tice man forms habits, and habitual action is automatic action, requiring 

 no exercise of will except at the beginning of the series of acts. The law 

 of association does the rest. As voluntary acts are transformed into auto- 

 matic, the will is set free to devote itself to higher efforts and larger attain- 

 ments. After telling the truth a while by an effort, we tell the truth 

 naturally, necessarily, automatically. After giving to good objects for 

 a while from principle, we give as a matter of course. Honesty becomes 

 automatic ; self-control becomes automatic. We rule over our spirit, re- 

 press ill-temper, keep down bad feelings, first by an effort, afterwards as a 

 matter of course. 



"Possibly these virtues really become incarnate in the bodily organization. 

 Possibly goodness is made flesh and becomes consolidate in the fibres of the 

 brain. Vices, beginning in the soul, seem to become at last bodily diseases ; 

 why may not virtues follow the same law ? If it were not for some such 

 law of accumulation as this, the work of life would have to be begun for- 

 ever anew. Formation of character would be impossible. We should be 

 incapable of progress, our whole strength being always employed in bat- 

 tling with our first enemies, learning evermore anew our earliest lessons. 

 But by our present constitution he who has taken one step can take an- 

 other, and life may become a perpetual advance from good to better. And 

 the highest graces of all Faith, Hope, and Love obey the same law." 

 See James Freeman Clarke, Every-Day Religion, p. 132. 



