68o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wonder that we really find time for. all the acts involved in the exer- 

 cise of even our ordinary work. The condition of the brain and nerv- 

 ous apparatus at large might at first sight appear to represent that of 

 an overworked signal-box at an important railway junction. Ques- 

 tions of commissariat, of threatening danger, of demands for informa- 

 tion, of difficulties to be cleared away, are perpetually presenting 

 themselves to the nervous apparatus for solution. Yet it is plain 

 that many complex acts, the knowledge of which costs us a deal of 

 trouble to acquire in early life, are not only performed correctly in the 

 absence of all that we may name conscious thought or attention, but 

 are discharged the more efficiently because they are so unthinkingly 

 performed. What we term " automatic " action in human and in lower 

 animal life is only another name for an economical dispensation of 

 bodily work and of the time that work demands for its performance. 

 Reading and writing do not " come by nature," but require to be taught, 

 and from the " A-B-C" stage of the one, the "pothooks-and-hangers" 

 stage of the other, both demanding thought and care, we work our way 

 slowly upward to a phase when we neither need to think about our 

 " p's " and " q's " in writing or our syllables or sounds in reading. In 

 other words, the intellectual operations of early life have become the 

 " automatic acts " of adult existence. The immense saving of nerve- 

 power or at least of the highest powers we may collectively name 

 " thought " involved in such an arrangement may readily be under- 

 stood. We have not even to waste brain-work in the conduct of our 

 steps in walking. We avoid our neighbors and the lamp-posts without 

 concerning ourselves about either. How large a part of our life is 

 automatically ordered, a superficial glance at the history of the nerv- 

 ous system will disclose. The digestion of food, the circulation of the 

 blood, breathing, and many other functions on the due performance 

 and nervous regulation of which the continuity of life depends, are 

 all discharged in this automatic manner. 



There is implied herein a large saving of that vital wear and tear 

 of which we have already spoken. Life would indeed be far too short 

 for the safe and satisfactory discharge of the duties of even the hum- 

 blest life to say nothing of the performance of merely physical duties 

 of existence had we to "mark, learn, and inwardly digest" every act 

 in our daily round of labor. We may grumble as we please at over- 

 work, and criticise rightly the evil effects of overstrain ; but we should 

 also bear in mind that the nature we own has saved us many a worry 

 and many a pang by the exercise of that system of rigid economy which 

 is traceable, in one form or another, in well-nigh every phase of the 

 life universal. Longman's Magazine. 



