Chap. I. SERVICEABLE ASSOCIATED HABITS. 30 



or not the danger is real. After one violent start, when 

 he is excited and the blood flows freely through his 

 brain, he is very apt to start again; and so it is, as I have 

 noticed, with young infants. 



A start from a sudden noise, when the stimulus is 

 conveyed through the auditory nerves, is always accom- 

 panied in grown-up persons by the winking of the eye- 

 lids. 13 I observed, however, that though my infants 

 started at sudden sounds, when under a fortnight old, 

 they certainly did not always wink their eyes, and I be- 

 lieve never did so. The start of an older infant appar- 

 ently represents a vague catching hold of something to 

 prevent falling. I shook a pasteboard box close before 

 the eyes of one of my infants, when 114 days old, and 

 it did not in the least wink; but when I put a few 

 comfits into the box, holding it in the same position as 

 before, and rattled them, the child blinked its eyes 

 violently every time, and started a little. It was ob- 

 viously impossible that a carefully-guarded infant could 

 have learnt by experience that a rattling sound near its 

 eyes indicated danger to them. But such experience 

 will have been slowly gained at a later age during a 

 long series of generations; and from what we know 

 of inheritance, there is nothing improbable in the 

 transmission of a habit to the offspring at an earlier 

 age than that at which it was first acquired by the 

 parents. 



From the foregoing remarks it seems probable that 

 some actions, which were at first performed consciously, 

 have become through habit and association converted 

 into reflex actions, and are now so firmly fixed and in- 

 herited, that they are performed, even when not of the 



13 Miiller remarks (' Elements of Physiology,' Eng. tr. 

 vol. ii. p. 1311) on starting- being" always accompanied 

 by the closure of the eyelids. 



