ON CER TAIN A CQ UIRED HABITS. 5 



He finds it difficult to remember even the diffi- 

 culties he experienced in learning to play. A few may 

 have so impressed him that they remain with him, but 

 the greater part will have escaped him as completely 

 as the remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on 

 his clothes, this day ten years ago ; nevertheless, it is 

 plain he remembers more than he remembers remem- 

 bering, for he avoids mistakes which he made at one 

 time, and his performance proves that all the notes 

 are in his memory, though if called upon to play such 

 and such a bar at random from the middle of the 

 piece, and neither more nor less, he will probably say 

 that he cannot remember it unless he begins from the 

 beginning of the phrase which leads to it. Very com- 

 monly he will be obliged to begin from the beginning 

 of the movement itself, and be unable to start at any 

 other point unless he have the music before him ; and 

 if disturbed, as we have seen above, he will have to 

 start de noro from an accustomed starting-point. 



Yet nothing can be more obvious than that there 

 must have been a time when what is now so easy as 

 to be done without conscious* effort of the brain was 

 only done by means of brain work which was very 

 keenly perceived, even to fatigue and positive distress. 

 Even now, if the player is playing something the like 

 of which he has not met before, we observe he pauses 

 and becomes immediately conscious of attention. 



We draw the inference, therefore, as regards piano- 

 forte or violin playing, that the more the familiarity or 

 knowledge of the art, the less is there consciousness of 

 such knowledge; even so far as that there should 



