448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of mental acquisitions which is embraced under the term voluntary 

 motion, yet it must be admitted that we seem to learn how to use 

 our muscles, and it seems as if all our voluntary control over them 

 were acquired by education and experience. It is but seeming, how- 

 ever ; and, instead of our learning how to use our muscles, we simply 

 learn that we can use them, in all the endless varieties of isolated and 

 combined contractions of which they are capable. The hoio of their 

 use is our vast organized inheritance ; and it is this which gives even 

 the child, as he matures, that sure, unerring tendency to the right move- 

 ment to attain any desired end, and soon teaches him that he can do 

 what he wills to do, thus obviating a resort to that infinitude of experi- 

 ments which, as we have shown, would otherwise be absolutely neces- 

 sary. It is the organized inheritance which takes the lead, and teaches 

 the child that he can make the required voluntary movements, and not 

 the child which teaches the organization how to make them. The 

 newly-born babe is helpless and capable of making only a few instinc- 

 tive or automatic movements, not for want of education and experience, 

 but for want of organic maturity and, hence, we see that some ani- 

 mals which are more matured at birth, or when hatched, than the 

 human infant, walk, run, swim, or fly, as soon as they are born, or as 

 soon as they escape from the egg ; and the butterfly and those insects 

 which emerge from the chrysalis fidly matured need no experience or 

 education whatever to enable them to command at will all their volun- 

 tary muscles ; their organic maturity alone giving them at once full 

 control over that department of their nature. 



In the case of the child, it is impossible, either by observation or 

 experiment, to separate the results of the maturation of the organiza- 

 tion from the results of education and experience, for the obvious 

 reason that the maturing of the child's nervous and muscular system 

 proceeds, at a very rapid rate, simultaneous with its education and ex- 

 perience ; and, therefore, were the point not already settled by the 

 estimate which we have just made, it would be impossible to form even 

 an approximate estimate as to how much of the child's progress is de- 

 pendent upon his own acquisitions, and how much upon the ripening of 

 an inherited organization. It is not possible, experimentally or other- 

 wise, to isolate these two factors and their results from each other so 

 as to ascertain, in that way, which factor is the largest and most im- 

 portant. The child's muscular education, the progress which he makes 

 in his voluntary control over his muscles, and the maturing of his 

 organization, all proceed simultaneously and inseparably together. 

 Nevertheless, facts do occasionally crop out, here and there, confirma- 

 tory of the calculations already made, and the inferences drawn from 

 them, if they needed confirmation. If our voluntary control over our 

 muscles is not an educational acquirement, but is the result of the 

 ripening of our organic inheritance, we would naturally expect an 

 occasional exhibition of muscular agility, precision, and dexterity, and 



