Essays on Life 



which are acquisitions peculiar to the human 

 race, always acquired after birth, and not 

 common to ourselves and any ancestor who 

 had not become entirely human. 



II. That we are less conscious of and have 

 less control over eating and drinking [pro- 

 vided the food be normal], swallowing, breath- 

 ing, seeing, and hearing which were acquisi- 

 tions of our prehuman ancestry, and for which 

 we had provided ourselves with all the neces- 

 sary apparatus before we saw light, but which 

 are still, geologically speaking, recent. 



III. That we are most unconscious of 

 and have least control over our digestion and 

 circulation powers possessed even by our in- 

 vertebrate ancestry, and, geologically speaking, 

 of extreme antiquity. 



I have put the foregoing very broadly, but 

 enough is given to show the reader the gist 

 of the argument. Let it be noted that dis- 

 turbance and departure, to any serious extent, 

 from normal practice tends to induce resump- 

 tion of consciousness even in the case of such 

 old habits as breathing, seeing, and hearing, 

 digestion and the circulation of the blood. So 



it is with habitual actions in general. Let a 



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