336 PHYSICAL EXPEESSION. 



of an established law of nature, and independent 

 of consciousness. The actions of instinct and those 

 of volition, nevertheless, run imperceptibly into 

 each other, so that what was at first instinctive 

 may afterwards come to be a matter of deliberate 

 choice. The same muscles are the instruments of 

 both, and they differ from the muscles obeying the 

 internal stimuli, such as the heart, in this respect, 

 that they are liable to fatigue, and thereby concur 

 with the exercise of sensation and of thought, in 

 rendering sleep necessary. There are no muscles, 

 except those of respiration, of which the constant 

 action is necessary to life, and which are void of 

 consciousness in their ordinary exercise, but which 

 are occasionally under the control of the will. The 

 principal end answered by this power of the will 

 over the muscles of respiration in man, is to form 

 and regulate the voice. 



"But though instinctive motions are in some 

 cases convertible into those which are voluntary, 

 we should be so far from confounding them, that the 

 former are even compatible with the want of con- 

 sciousness and sensation ; for those animals which 

 are destitute of brain and nerves, are capable of 

 actions analogous to the instinctive. There is 

 something very similar to this even in vegetables, 

 as in the case of tendrils and creeping plants being 

 stimulated by the contact of other bodies, to cling 

 round them in a particular direction " (p. 260). 



Blane (p. 258) taught that will and thought 

 could not be subjects of scientific inquiry, because 

 they could not be submitted to experimentation. 



