AN ENQUIRY INTO THE FOEMATION OP HABIT IN MAN. 159 



all are perfectly of ore mind on this matter — that really the body 

 is the nursery of the mind ; that the brain is tbe school of the 

 mind, and that they must be together in this human nature at any 

 rate, whatever may be the case in any other state of being. 



In the present day much is said about automatic action and 

 matters of habit, but when you examine an automatic machine you 

 find it is simply condensed mind. There is all the mind there, only 

 by mechanical processes the mind is reduced to a small compass 

 and the automatic machine is the embodiment of the mind. I 

 suppose if any human being or animal performs an automatic 

 action, all we mean is that he does what he does unwittingly. The 

 mind is there, only it is not the mind of the automatic agent, but 

 somebody else's mind, and so in the case of an automaton of any 

 kind ; and the great question which concerns us is, whose is the 

 mind in the univei'se that causes so many things to be done so 

 uniformlj' witliout any apparent physical agency at all ? 



Then in regax'd to the question of instinct which, has been so 

 much discussed by Dr. Romanes and others, I see the idea is 

 suggested on page 144 of the paper, " that instinct is partly due to 

 lapsed intelligence." I remember a little book, by Isaac Tayloi*, 

 The World of Mind, in which he says the distinction between 

 human intelligence and instinct is that human intelligence is 

 free reason, and instinct is fixed reason, and I think that fits in with 

 what has been said here ; but I think in the case of lapsed intelli- 

 gence, too, you cannot tell how it begins. 



I rather desiderate, through the paper, the use of the word 

 deliberate instead of voluntary. I think there is a great distinction 

 between things being done ivith your will and by your will. 

 Deliberate action is a gTeat deal more than voluntary action. At 

 page 145 of the paper we read, towards the middle of it, " What 

 we have now to consider is how, in the evolution of higher 

 intellectual life, we have the power at will to change voluntary 

 into involuntary action." 1 should prefer to say " change 

 deliberate action into automatic action" — for it is the very 

 deliberateness of the action which makes it supci-ior to other 

 actions which gradually become more and more automatic. On 

 the same page the question is asked — " are the vgyj laws of 

 motion " (I suppose of the physical world generally) " the 

 result, originally, of habit ? " But, by the definition of habit 

 given above, it cannot be so, for habit is said to be the result of 



