xiv.] ON DESCARTES &quot; DISCOURSE.&quot; 293 



action, ever plays any other part than that of Descartes 

 engineer, sitting in his office, and turning this tap or the 

 other, as he wishes to set one or another machine in motion, 

 but exercising no direct influence upon the movements of the 

 whole. 



Our voluntary acts consist of two parts : firstly, we desire to 

 perform a certain action ; and, secondly, we somehow set a-going 

 a machinery which does what we desire. But so little do we 

 directly influence that machinery, that nine-tenths of us do not 

 even know its existence. 



Suppose one wills to raise one s arm and whirl it round. 

 Nothing is easier. But the majority of us do not know that 

 nerves and muscles are concerned in this process ; and the best 

 anatomist among us would be amazingly perplexed, if he were 

 called upon to direct the succession, and the relative strength, 

 of the multitudinous nerve-changes, which are the actual causes 

 of this very simple operation. 



So again in speaking. How many of us know that the voice 

 is produced in the larynx, and modified by the mouth ? How 

 many among these instructed persons understand how the voice 

 is produced and modified ? And what living man, if he had 

 unlimited control over all the nerves supplying the mouth and 

 larynx of another person, could make him pronounce a sentence ? 

 Yet, if one has anything to say, what is easier than to say it ? 

 We desire the utterance of certain words : we touch the spring 

 of the word-machine, and they are spoken. Just as Descartes 

 engineer, when he wanted a particular hydraulic machine to play, 

 had only to turn a tap, and what he wished was done. It is be 

 cause the body is a machine that education is possible. Education 

 is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organi 

 zation upon the natural organization of the body ; so that acts, 

 which at first required a conscious effort, eventually became 

 unconscious and mechanical. If the act which primarily 

 requires a distinct consciousness and volition of its details, 

 always needed the same effort, education would be an 

 impossibility. 



