Essays on Life 



result of long practice ? If, then, wherever we 

 can trace the development of automatism we 

 find it to have taken this course, is it not 

 most reasonable to infer that it has taken the 

 same even when it has risen in regions that 

 are beyond our ken ? Ought we not, when- 

 ever we see a difficult action performed, 

 automatically to suspect antecedent practice ? 

 Granted that without the considerations in 

 regard to identity presented above it would 

 not have been easy to see where a baby of a 

 day old could have had the practice which 

 enables it to do as much as it does uncon- 

 sciously, but even without these considerations 

 it would have been more easy to suppose that 

 the necessary opportunities had not been want- 

 ing, than that the easy performance could have 

 been gained without practice and memory. 



When I wrote " Life and Habit " (originally 

 published in 1877) I said in slightly different 

 words : 



" Shall we say that a baby of a day old 

 sucks (which involves the whole principle of 

 the pump and hence a profound practical 

 knowledge of the laws of pneumatics and 



hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its blood 



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