12 LIFE AND HABIT. 



with more unconsciousness of attention than we write. 

 We find it more difficult to become conscious of any 

 character without discomfiture, and we cannot arrest 

 ourselves in the middle of a word, for example, and 

 hardly before the end of a sentence ; nevertheless it is 

 on the whole well within our control. 



Walking is so early an acquisition that we cannot 

 remember having acquired it. In running fast over 

 average ground we find it very difficult to become 

 conscious of each individual step, and should possibly 

 find it more difficult still, if the inequalities and 

 roughness of uncultured land had not perhaps caused 

 the development of a power to create a second con- 

 sciousness of our steps without hindrance to our 

 running or walking. Pursuit and flight, whether in the 

 chase or in war, must for many generations have played 

 a much more prominent part in the lives of our ancestors 

 than they do in our own. If the ground over which 

 they had to travel bad been generally as free from 

 obstruction as our modern cultivated lands, it is pos- 

 sible that we might not find it as easy to notice our 

 several steps as we do at present. Even as it is, 

 if while we are running we would consider the action 

 of our muscles, we come to a dead stop, and should 

 probably fall if we tried to observe too suddenly ; for 

 we must stop to do this, and running, when we 

 have once committed ourselves to it beyond a certain 

 point, is not controllable to a step or two without loss 

 of equilibrium. 



We learn to talk, much about the same time that we 

 learn to walk, but talking requires less muscular effort 



