HABIT. 117 



down the bowels. The intellectual perception at the end 

 is indicated in the diagram by the effect of G being repre- 

 sented, at G', in the ideational centres above the merely 

 sensational line. The sensational impressions, a, b, c, d, e,f, 

 are all supposed to have their seat below the ideational 

 lines. That our ideational centres, if involved at all by a, 

 b, c, d, e,/, are involved in a minimal degree, is shown by 

 the fact that the attention may be wholly absorbed else- 

 where. We may say our prayers, or repeat the alphabet, 

 with our attention far away. 



" A musical performer will play a piece which has become familiar 

 by repetition while carrying on an animated conversation, or while con- 

 tinuously engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought; the 

 accustomed sequence of movements being directly prompted by the 

 sight of the notes, or by the remembered succession of the sounds (if 

 the piece is played from memory), aided in both cases by the guiding 

 sensations derived from the muscles themselves. But, further, a higher 

 degree of the same ' training ' (acting on an organism specially fitted to 

 profit by it) enables an accomplished pianist to play a difficult piece of 

 music at sight; the movements of the hands and fingers following so 

 immediately upon the sight of the notes that it seems impossible to 

 believe that any but the very shortest and most direct track can be the 

 channel of the nervous communication through which they are called 

 forth. The following curious example of the same class of acquired 

 aptitudes, which differ from instincts only in being prompted to action 

 by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin : 



" ' With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and tactile per- 

 ception, and the precision of respondent movements, which are neces- 

 sary for success in every kind of prestidigitation, Houdin early practised 

 the art of juggling with balls in the air; and having, after a month's 

 practice, become thorough master of the art of keeping up four balls at 

 once, he placed a book before him, and, while the balls were in the air, 

 accustomed himself to read without hesitation. ' This,' he says, ' will 

 probably seem to my readers very extraordinary; but I shall surprise 

 them still more when I say that I have just amused myself with repeat- 

 ing this curious experiment. Though thirty years have elapsed since 

 the time I was writing, and though I have scarcely once touched the 

 balls during that period, I can still manage to read with ease while 

 keeping tJiree balls up.' " (Autobiography, p. 26.)* 



We have called a, h, c, d, e,f, the antecedents of the suc- 

 cessive muscular attractions, by the name of sensations. 

 Some authors seem to deny that they are even this. If not 



* Carpenter's ' Mental Physiology ' (1874), pp. 217, 218. 



