1 80 On the Relations between Mind and Muscle. 



From the consideration of habit in connection with muscular niotion, we 

 cannot resist the temptation of an easy transition, to offer one or two re- 

 marks upon talent. When a person is observed to be particularly skilful 

 in any art or operation, it is common enough to allege two different causes 

 for his dexterity. In tlie opinion of one speculator it is due to practice or 

 habit; of another, to original power or capability. In some few cases, 

 only one of these opinions may be right ; in the majority they will both be 

 correct. Habit, we have said, is the tendency of certain actions to co- 

 exist or to succeed each other, for no other reason than that they have 

 formerly been co-existent or successive; hence the facility of an often 

 practised movement. Talent is a peculiar constitution of an individual, 

 by virtue of which, a succession of actions which in other persons must 

 have very frequently succeeded each other, in order to be performed 

 readily, do in that individual occur easily at the first effort, or after a very 

 few efforts. A difficult operation is one that with most persons requires a 

 number of oft-repeated desires, or volitions, or attempts (attempts being 

 actions begun and not ended) but which may become perfectly easy after- 

 wards. Yet this operation may to one individual be easy at the first 

 inclination of his mind to perform it, whence he is said to have a gift, a 

 talent, a genius for it. If the action partake of the sublime or beautiful, 

 as in the execution of a fine painting or sculpture, he may even be said to 

 be inspired. But whatever name or expression be annexed to the facility 

 in question, it implies that very little desire or effort is necessary, and that 

 the actions produced by it approach very closely to the instinctive. To 

 instance a talent for drawing. One boy shall upon the first attempt to 

 copy any object on paper, produce a far more correct representation than 

 one who has made twenty attempts. For producing a successful copy two 

 things are necessary — a correct remembrance of form, (for it is impossible 

 to look at that which is to be copied, at the time of using the muscular 

 action which directs the lines) and the occurrence of such muscular move- 

 ments as direct the pencil along an imaginary line on the paper, corres- 

 ponding to the one remembered. The figure, or a part of it, must be 

 imagined on the paper and traced by the hand. A talent, then, for draw- 

 ing, signifies a correct memory of figure, and a facility in executing the 

 requisite movements. The former may be present, but without the latter 

 will never ensure success to the efforts ; nor the latter without the former. 

 The separateness of these facilities may often be noticed in children when 

 learning to write, which is obviously a kind of drawing. One will be able 

 to trace in ink, with great neatness and regularity, characters which have 

 been marked in pencil ; thus shewing that there is no defect in the mus- 

 cular actions ; and yet shall be incapable of tracing them without this 

 assistance. Another, again, may have a sufficiently definite conception of 

 the form, and yet fail in the delineation, from want of muscular readiness* 

 Each, however, after many unsuccessful efforts, will attain his object, and 

 even perform the operation with ease, by help of that principle, the dis- 



