452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to revolve them both at once in the same direction ; but the puzzle is 

 to revolve them both at the same time, but in opposite directions, the 

 points of the fingers facing each other. Much practice may enable one 

 to execute it slowly, defectively, and awkwardly ; never, however, with 

 the same ease, freedom, and dexterity, with which we revolve either 

 finger alone, or the two fingers together in the same direction. Again, 

 it is not only difficult, but impossible, simply by a voluntary effort, or 

 by any amount of practice, to roll one eye up and one down at the same 

 time, or to turn both outward at the same time, beyond the parallelism 

 of their axes. The muscular combination or co5rdination required in 

 such movements is not organically possible, and no amount of educa- 

 tion can make it so ; otherwise, education would be a substitute for 

 evolution and maturation. 



The current ideas of the growth of voluntary motion and the will 

 are based upon an ill-defined notion that the muscular and nervous sys- 

 tems were first developed, like a piece of complex machinery, and then 

 the mind somehow came into rapport with it, or happened to be there, 

 just at the right time, and commenced to learn how to work a certain 

 part of it for it is admitted that the rest can get along without the 

 mind. But the truth is, the importance of the mind as a factor in the 

 movements of the body is vastly overrated. It never really learns 

 how to work even the limited portion of the organization which the 

 current theories assign to it. When a child or even a man makes a 

 certain voluntary movement for the first time, and practises it until he 

 can execute it with ease and rapidity, has he learned how to do it ? If 

 so, he can tell how it is done. But, the fact is, he has learned nothing 

 at all about the mechanism w r hich he seems to handle so dexterously, 

 and can give no account whatever as to how he does it that is some- 

 thing which has staggered the most capable and profound students of 

 voluntary motion and the will. Look at it. A child reaches out after 

 a bright object and misses it. Does it know how or why it happened 

 to miss it ? It keeps reaching, fumbling, and trying, and now it grasps 

 it. Does it know how or why ? Does it know that now it opens an 

 outlet or a valve of nervous discharge which then was closed ; or, that 

 it shuts one which it had left open ; or, that it opens three instead of 

 two or one ; or, that it opens them one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in- 

 stead of full flood ? Does it learn any of these things, and then treas- 

 ure them up in the memory consciously or intentionally, so as to be able 

 to do it again, next time, without balk or failure ? The growth of a 

 voluntary movement is an organic procedure, not such a mechanical 

 process as that. That would, indeed, make the organization a machine 

 for the mind to manipulate, instead of the mind being (as we think we 

 can easily show) but a symbolical representation in consciousness of the 

 workings of certain parts of the organization the braiii. Then, when 

 we have mastered a voluntary movement, all that we have really learned 

 is that we can make it. 



