42 DR. HILL, FROM REFLEX ACTION TO VOLITION. 



upon it particularly because it is a pure reflex allying us to 

 the jelly fish, and sweeping away, if properly understood, 

 several fancied, distinctions between the mode of action of 

 the nervous system in ourselves as compared with lower 

 animals. It is a pure reflex. It is carried out in the complete 

 absence of consciousness. The movement has no representa- 

 tion in consciousness. It occurs with equal readiness in 

 waking and sleeping, in persons upon whom it has often been 

 tried before, and in those who have no idea of the result 

 likely to follow upon the tap. 



Let us use the knee-jerk as the starting point for an 

 analysis of action. The knee-jerk is an unconscious reflex. 

 From this, as zero, in the scale of consciousness, it is easy to 

 construct a table of actions in which the power of control plays 

 an increasingly important part, although all rest equally 

 upon a reflex basis. The foot when trodden upon is inevitably 

 withdrawn. In a choleric person the impulse travels along 

 longer routes, overflowing perhaps into violent action which 

 is equally irresistible. It is easy to picture to oneself the 

 paths in the network as lines of varying resistance, and to 

 imagine the nerve current as choosing the route which offers 

 least opposition to its flow. In its first origin the nervous 

 system is like an open moor, equally easy and equally difficult 

 of passage in all directions. The nervous system as we 

 inherit it is a labyrinth of paths, the depth and breadth of 

 each of which is a measure of the number of impulses which 

 have in our ancestors', as well as in our own lives, passed that 

 way. Practice means the beating down of paths. The facility 

 which comes with practice depends upon the ease with which 

 impulses pass, and this is true not only of simple and obvious 

 reflex actions, but also of such movements as often appear at 

 first sight voluntary rather than reflex ; the deftness with 

 which an engraver reproduces a picture on his box-wood 

 block ; the astonishing rapidity with which the musician 

 translates certain black spots upon the paper into movements 

 of the fingers ; the naturalness with which a cultivated and 

 kindly man answers the needs of his friend with sympathetic 

 glance and courteous action. There is no epoch in life's 

 history at which path-making ends. And here, although not 

 necessary for my argument, I must assert my belief that the 

 nerve network inheritedbythe individual isa labyrinth of paths 

 which his ancestors have beaten down. Training and cir- 

 cumstance modify the ancestral pattern, so that the network 

 transmitted to our offspring has the form which choice, self- 



