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Human Understanding, on the supposition that it acquires, 

 by habit, an acceleration in the succession of ideas, so 

 great as to escape the consciousness. 



After having observed that Mr. Stewart's error consisted, 

 not in his reasoning, but in having failed to observe that his 

 facts are themselves complex results which demand a minute 

 analysis, and having also dwelt upon some elementary errors 

 to which he mainly attributed the entire of Mr. Stewart's the- 

 ory, the author proceeded to a detailed investigation of the 

 several examples brought forward in its support. 



He first stated the case of a player on the harpsichord, 

 whose rapidity of execution is adduced to illustrate the pro- 

 position that so many separate acts of will and attention, as it 

 seems to involve, are so accelerated as to take place without 

 any consciousness of their separate occurrence. On this 

 he observed, that, to a very great extent, the separate acts 

 assumed could have no existence, by reason of the absolute 

 coincidence, in point of time, of the rapid and complex move- 

 ment of the musician's hand ; from which he inferred, that 

 some other law must be sought for to explain the phenomena. 

 To discover this law, the author proceeded to examine the 

 process of the mind in the acquisition of the art by which 

 the complex and simultaneous movements are effected. These 

 are, he observed, first separately attended to and separately 

 executed ; but so long as this separateness continues, it is 

 evident that the required result is not attained. Slowly, 

 however, and by frequent repetition of the same set of ideas 

 presented in combination, this combination itself becomes the 

 object of perception ; and from being separate ideas and 

 movements, they become simultaneous, and assume the new 

 form of a single complex conception, executed by a complex 

 movement. In confirmation of this inlerence, he observed, 

 that the slightest attempt to attend to any of the component 

 parts would disconcert the best skill. He also observed, 

 that Mr. Stewart had been in some degree misled by having 



