AUTOMATIC MENTAL ACTION. 25 
acuteness. Yet, without consciousness, he is said to go through his daily routine - 
of movements with automatic regularity. All those accustomed actions he per- 
forms through the medium of the spinal cord and the other motor centers, inde- 
pendently of the brain. 
Primary reflex mental action constitutes the innate and fundamental provision 
in the human organism for the maintenance of life. The conditions of life require 
that there shall be something from which to start at the time that the animal sets 
up an independent existence, in order that the organism shall be, to a certain ex- 
tent, in harmony with environing relations. This primitive and innate provision 
for action is called Instinctive, because it is original and unacquired, and exists in 
its full power previous to experience and instruction. . Man, at birth, begins a 
life without knowledge and experience. In this condition, his only guide is in- 
stinctive reflex action, until intelligence and volition become developed. Hence, 
instinctive reflex action forms the basis upon which all subsequent mental develop- 
ment and education take plaee. 
The organism of man is arranged in harmony witha fixed and preéstablished 
system of nature. ‘To render the development of the organic and mental life pos- 
sible, the rudimentary psychical nature must begin in unconsciousness, or reflex 
action, in harmony with the conditions imposed by external relations. As intel- 
ligence and will become developed, the mind rises into a consciousness of this 
preéstablished harmony which from the beginning has rendered the developmen; 
of life, both mental and organic, possible. Thus the mind grows and develops from 
simple reflex action—which presents psychical phenomena in their lowest typical 
form—into conscious volition, in which the intelligence adjusts itself to the com- 
plex relations of space and time. We thus recognize simple reflex action as the 
germ out of which will is developed. Hence, to understand the nature of will,we © 
must study it in its genesis as related to reflex action. It is also by studying 
primary reflex action that we become prepared to understand the nature of sec- 
ondary reflex, or automatic action. 
Secondary automatic mental action is one of the important contributions of 
modern psychology to mental science. Even after this doctrine had been stated 
and received as the only theory which could explain a certain class of mental 
phenomena, it was stoutly opposed by the metaphysical school of thinkers. Sec- 
ondary automatic mental action belongs to that class of psychical activities which 
have, by the force of habit, assumed the form of aptitudes, and which go on with- 
out an effort of the will. Actions which, at first, require all one’s attention, may, 
after many repetitions, become automatic, and go on, of their own accord, through 
the operation of the lower nerve centers, without a conscious effort of mind. The 
larger part of our daily mental actions which constitute the efficient machinery of 
life, is of this character, such as walking and reading aloud while the mind 
follows the thoughts of the author. If all the actions and mental processes which 
the necessities of our daily life impose upon us had to be brought under the review 
of consciousness, it would be burdened down with the weight of complex details. 
