THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 295 



formed in his automatic state, we should be ready to admit the 

 excuse that he had no power of self-control (p. 302). 



Thus, as it seems to me, the cases cited by Professor Huxley 

 are readily explicable by the principle of secotidary or acquired 

 automatism first explicitly laid down by Hartley ; this taking the 

 place in man (save as regards such actions as breathing and suck- 

 ing, which are essential to the life of the infant) of those which 

 are primary or original among the lower animals. And I hold 

 it to be the legitimate inference from the fact that certain actions 

 of the frog, resembling those which man might execute volitionally 

 under like circumstances, are performed automatically, that a 

 provision exists in the inherited structure of the frog, for doing 

 that which man only learns to do by intentional " training," — an 

 inference which all physiological study tends to confirm. For the 

 fullest recognition of automatism in the performances of Goltz's 

 frog does not in the least invalidate the testimony of my own 

 consciousness, that when, being called on to balance my body 

 under some unaccustomed circumstances (as in crossing a stream 

 on a narrow plank, or over a series of stepping-stones), I give my 

 whole attention to the act, the movements of my body are executed 

 under my intentional direction. Again, the fact that various 

 actions have become so familiar to me by habit as to be performed 

 automatically, affords no real contradiction to the testimony of 

 my own conciousness, that when I was first trained (or was 

 training myself) to execute them, my will issued the mandates 

 which were carried into effect by my muscles. I cannot believe 

 that a piece of delicate handiwork, such as a minute dissection, 

 or the painting of a miniature — requiring constant visual guidance, 

 and trained exactness of muscular response — can be executed 

 without a distinct volitional direction of each movement. And I 

 find myself quite unable to conceive that when I am consciously 

 attempting, whether by speech or by writing, to excite in the minds 

 of my readers the ideas which are present to my own conscious- 

 ness at the moment, it is not my mind which is putting my lips or 

 my hand in motion, but that (as Professor Huxley maintains) it is 

 my body which is moving of itself, and simply keeping my mind 

 informed of its movements. 



If this doctrine were true, not only of particular cases, but of 



