4+ 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before he "would hit upon the right one, would be just one-half of 

 3,113,884,401, which is 1,556,942,200. Supposing, therefore, that the 

 child makes 100 experiments in a minute, it would take him within 

 a fraction of thirty years to attain the first successful utterance of the 

 letter A. 



But the child's task is not yet accomplished when he has succeeded 

 in pronouncing the letter once. He must pronounce it again and again, 

 before it is so completely within the reach of his will that he can pro- 

 nounce it immediately, making automatically all the required muscular 

 contractions of the combination the instant the volition calls for the 

 letter. It is evident that, in the absence of all knowledge of those 20 

 muscles, and of all organic tendencies in the right direction (which 

 could only be acquired b}' repeated successful experiments), it would 

 be almost as difficult for the child to hit upon the right combination the 

 second and the third time as the first ; and, therefore, only after many 

 successes would the required combination become automatic, and the 

 utterance of the letter A really be so completely brought under the do- 

 minion of the will as to be classed among the voluntary movements. If, 

 therefore, we again under-estimate the difficulties of the case, as we 

 have done all along, and suppose that only 10 successful experiments 

 would be necessary to accomplish the result that is, to agglutinate 

 into a unitary movement the required group or combination of mus- 

 cular contractions, so that the group should be instantaneously and 

 automatically adjusted the moment a volition is made for the letter 

 A we find that the child's lesson, the learning to joronounce a single 

 letter at will, is a task which would require for its accomplishment 300 

 years of steady work, night and day, at the rate of 100 experiments 

 every minute ! 



How insignificant, however, is the successful pronunciation at will 

 of one letter, when we reflect that the child ultimately attains the vol- 

 untary control of, not merely one of the billions of possible combinations 

 of 20 muscles, but that he attains the absolute voluntary command of 

 all the 450 voluntary muscles of his body, individually and collectively, 

 in all their possible combined, as well as isolated, contractions ! In some 

 of the combinations of muscular contractions which the child ultimately 

 becomes capable of executing, nearly every one of the 450 voluntary 

 muscles of the body participates ; as, for example, in the throwing of a 

 stone ; and yet the wonderful combination is made and the movement 

 executed with as much precision and promptness as the crooking of his 

 finger. We have no hesitation in saying that, if all this had to be 

 learned by the child, it would require a lifetime of many millions of 

 years ; and, as we know that the requisite knowledge or capacity is not 

 a miraculous donation to the child, but must be the accumulated acqui- 

 sitions of a slow process of experience of some kind, and at some time 

 or other, we should be appalled by the magnitude of our own figures, 

 did we not know that man is not the creature of to-day, but the child 



