VOLUNTARY MOTION. 491 



moveable part. In another sense all voluntary motions are in- 

 stinctive, because, on the occurrence of certain wishes, of a cer- 

 tain strength, we perform certain motions : a person who dances, 

 dances because his wish is at a certain height ; a man who makes 

 a machine, cuts and arranges its parts through the same cause. 

 But some sensations, some states, cause us and brutes to 

 will certain motions without habit or experience ; and yet the 

 occurrence of will is just as clear. The teat in the young 

 animal's mouth causes it directly it is born to will suction. The 

 only difference in this case is one of time: the particular sens- 

 ation or state is, without habit or circuitous circumstances, at 

 once followed by the action. To depress the head, when passing 

 on the top of a coach under a low arch, is just as instinctive : 

 and the action of any muscle may be so willed, or any com- 

 bination of muscles. 



Secondly as to our being forced to inspire. If you cause 

 strong pain or titillation in a person, he will be compelled, what- 

 ever restraint he may attempt upon himself, to cry out or laugh, 

 and to make an effort to remove it by motion of some part, 

 quite as forcibly as he is compelled to remove the uneasiness 

 in the chest by inspiration; and while history records innu- 

 merable examples of persons, whether Christians or heathens, so 

 resolute as to remain motionless and silent, by the force of their 

 faith or innocence or their contempt for their persecutors* 1 , in 

 the midst of fire till they were consumed, and we ourselves* 

 know the resolution of Hindoo widows every day to perish on 

 the funeral pile of their husbands, we read of suicides so deter 

 mined as to have accomplished their purpose by merely holding 

 their breath, when deprived of access to instruments of de- 

 struction. 6 Thus, though some have regarded the muscles of 



d See Lord Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1. iv. cap. 1. Among other in- 

 stances of resolution he mentions that, in his day, a murderer of Burgundy, 

 " when beaten with iron rods and torn with red-hot pincers, did not utter a 

 groan, and, seeing something break and fall accidentally on the head of a by- 

 stander, the rascal laughed in the midst of his torments while being burnt, 

 though he had just before cried at having his curly hair cut off." 



e " Servus barbarus, cum vehement! ira concitatus, mortem sibi consciscere 

 decrevisset, prostratus humi, respirationeque cohibita, longo tempore immobilis 

 erat; postea ver6 paululum volutatus, hoc pacto mortuus est." (Galen, De Nat. 

 Muse. lib. ii. c. 6.) 



A robber named Coma, when taken before the consul Rupilius, is said by 



