20 Thaddeus L. Bolton and Elconora T. Miller 



of strength.. Every movement which is not purely hereditary 

 and perfectly inborn requires some exercise before it can be per- 

 formed easily, gracefully, regularly, and with the highest degree 

 of efficiency. Our muscles do not under normal circumstances 

 act separately. The middle finger is accustomed to contracting 

 synchronously with the other fingers of the hand and so with all 

 other muscles. Their movements are bound up in hereditarily 

 coordinated groups which must be broken up, when any new 

 movement is tried, and the activities associated with the activities 

 of other muscles that act hereditarily in other groups. A muscle 

 may be isolated and made to act more or less independently, but 

 very few, if any, muscles do so naturally. This requires con- 

 siderable practice. The movement employed on the ergograph 

 is comparatively simple, and yet it is probably not accomplished, 

 as Mosso alleged, by a single isolated muscle even when the 

 greatest precautions are taken to prevent the contractions of 

 other muscles. Much skill is required to make the contraction 

 of the finger most efficient in raising the weight. The efficiency 

 is the essential point. That means the application of the force 

 to the point and in the way that it will lift the weight with the 

 least waste of energy. This highest efficiency is not so easily 

 attained. Neither reagent seemed to have attained it fully until 

 the third series, when the greatest practice gains began to be 

 made. Consciously it is felt as ease and smoothness of contrac- 

 tion, with a minimum of accessory movement. The perfectly 

 coordinated movement is made without strain or undue mani- 

 festation of effort. When the experiment began every contrac- 

 tion was executed only with great demonstration of effort. All 

 the fingers of the hand contracted simultaneously and the trunk 

 and face joined sympathetically- The body was bowed well for- 

 ward with each contraction and the opposite hand vigorously 

 clenched. After a time these demonstrations grew less obvious, 

 and at the beginning of an observation a number of contractions 

 could be made with no apparent sympathetic movement. How- 

 ever, as the exhaustion point was approached, the effort grew 

 more and more strenuous and the number of accessory move- 

 ments increased until finally the whole organism was involved, 



Qg 



