ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS. 7 



our memories must revert (with an intensity too rapid 

 for our perception) to many if not to all the occasions 

 on which we have ever written the same letter pre- 

 viously — the memory of these occasions dwelling in our 

 minds as what has been called a residuum — an un- 

 consciously struck balance or average of them all — 

 a fused mass of individual reminiscences of winch no 

 trace can be found in our consciousness, and of which 

 the only effect would seem to lie in the gradual 

 changes of handwriting which are perceptible in most 

 people till they have reached middle-age, and some- 

 times even later. So far are we from consciously re- 

 membering any one of the occasions on which we have 

 written such and such a letter, that we are not even 

 conscious of exercising our memory at all, any more 

 than we are in health conscious of the action of our 

 heart. But, if we are writing in some unfamiliar way, 

 as when printing our letters instead of writing them 

 in our usual running hand, our memory is so far 

 awakened that we become conscious of every character 

 we form ; sometimes it is even perceptible as memory 

 to ourselves, as when we try to remember how to 

 print some letter, for example a g, and cannot call to 

 mind on which side of the upper half of the letter we 

 ought to put the link which connects it with the 

 lower, and are successful in remembering ; but if we 

 become very conscious of remembering, it shows that 

 we are on the brink of only trying to remember, — 

 that is to say, of not remembering at all. 



As a general rule, we remember for a time the sub- 

 stance of what we have written, for the subject is 



