482 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
force; and from his style on such occasions it is to be 
inferred that the ganglia of this Apostle of the Under- 
standing are sometimes the seat of a nascent poetic thrill. 
It is a fact of supreme importance that actions, the 
performance of which at first requires even painful effort 
and deliberation, may, by habit, be rendered automatic. 
Witness the slow learning of its letters by a child, and the 
subsequent facility of reading in a man, when each group 
of letters which forms a word is instantly, and without 
effort, fused to a single perception. Instance the billiard- 
player, wliose muscles of hand and eye, when he readies 
the perfection of his art, are unconsciously co-ordinated. 
Instance the musician, who, by practice, is enabled to fuse 
a multitude of arrangements, auditory, tactual and mus- 
cular, into a process of automatic manipulation. Combin- 
ing such facts with the doctrine of hereditary transmission, 
we reach a theory of Instinct. A chick, after coming out 
of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs about, picks up 
food, thus showing that it possesses a power of directing 
its movements to definite ends. How did the chick learn 
this very complex co-ordination of eyes, muscles, and beak? 
It has not been individually taught; its personal experience 
is nil; but it has the benefit of ancestral experience. Jji 
its inherited organization are registered the powers which 
it displays at birth. So also as regards the instinct of the 
hive-bee, already referred to. The distance at which the 
insects stand apart when they sweep their hemispheres and 
build their cells is "organically remembered." Man also 
carries with him the physical texture of his ancestry, as 
well as the inherited intellect bound up with it. The defects 
of intelligence during infancy and youth are probably less 
due to a lack of individual experience, than to the fact 
that in early life the cerebral organization is still incom- 
plete. The period necessary for completion varies 
with the race, and with the individual. As a round shot 
outstrips the rifled bolt on quitting the muzzle of the gun, 
so the lower race, in childhood, may outstrip the higher. 
But the higher eventually overtakes, the lower, and 
surpasses it in range. As regards individuals, we do not 
always find the precocity of youth prolonged to mental 
power in maturity; while the dullness of boyhood is some- 
times strikingly contrasted with the intellectual energy of 
after years. Newton, when a boy, was weakly, and he 
