THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 273 



often happened to myself, that, having previously intended to take 

 some special direction, I have found myself in the track which I 

 hive been for years accustomed to follow for six days in the week, 

 through having committed myself to the guidance of my btte as 

 Xavicr de Maistre calls it, whilst my ame was otherwise engaged. 

 Now in these and similar cases, do we see, or do we not sec the 

 objects whose impressions upon our retinae excite those molecular 

 changes in our nerve-centres which direct our muscular action ? I 

 find it difficult to conceive that they act except through my con 

 sciousness, however faintly and transiently excited ; but I would 

 by no means assert it to be impossible. It is very important, 

 however, to bear in mind the distinction between seeing and 

 noticing, as also between hearing and apprehending. That we 

 see and hear a great many things of which we take no distinct 

 cogni/ance at the time for want of attention to them, is indicated 

 by the fact that the remembrance of them surges up at some sub 

 sequent date, not unfrequently in dreams. And it seems to me 

 more philosophical to regard the guiding action of visual impressions 

 as exerted through the consciousness, however faintly it may be 

 awakened, than to assert without a tittle of evidence that a bee 

 does not see the flower or the entrance to its hive towards which 

 it flies in a direct line, or that the chicken does not see the grain 

 or insect at which it pecks. That the sensation may be &quot; sur 

 plusage &quot; where it prompts no higher psychical action, and that 

 the physical change would equally take place without it, is doubt 

 less an arguable proposition as regards the actions of animals 

 whose life is purely automatic ; but where the like actions (as in 

 the case of man) have had to be learned by experience, it seems 

 to me inconceivable that such experience can be gained except 

 consciousiy. The child learning to walk, who (as Paley says) is 

 &quot; the greatest posture-master in the world,&quot; is vividly conscious of 

 the sense of loss of balance to which he is unaccustomed ; and it 

 is under the guidance of that sense that his movements are directed 

 to the recovery of his equilibrium. But by the habitual recurrence 

 of similar experiences, a &quot;mode of motion&quot; comes to be established 

 in his nervous mechanism, which shapes that mechanism (according 

 to the physiological law of nutrition) in accordance with it ; and 

 thus the adult, who has acquired the art of shifting his weight 



