482 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



force; and from his style ou 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, whose muscles of hand and eye, when he reaches 

 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. In 

 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, JSIewton, when a boy, was weakly, and he 



