HABIT. 119 



and doubtful whether we should advance our leg if we had no sensation 

 of its movement as executed, and not even a minimal feeling of impulse 

 to set it down. Knitting appears altogether mechanical, and the knitter 

 keeps up her knitting even while she reads or is engaged in lively talk. 

 But if we ask her how this be possible, she will hardly reply that the 

 knitting goes on of itself. She will rather say that she has a feeling of 

 it, that she feels in her hands that she knits and how she must knit, and 

 that therefore the movements of knitting are called forth and regulated 

 by the sensations associated therewithal, even when the attention is 

 called away. 



"So of every one who practises, apparently automatically, a long- 

 familiar handicraft. The smith turning his tongs as he smites the iron, 

 the carpenter wielding his plane, the lace-maker with her bobbin, the 

 weaver at his loom, all will answer the same question in the same way 

 by saying that they have a feeling of the proper management of the 

 implement in their hands. 



" In these cases, the feelings which are conditions of the appropriate 

 acts are very faint. But none the less are they necessary. Imagine 

 your hands not feeling; your movements could then only be provoked 

 by ideas, and if your ideas were then diverted away, the movements 

 ought to come to a standstill, which is a consequence that seldom 

 occurs." * 



Again : 



" An idea makes you take, for example, a violin into your left hand. 

 But it is not necessary that your idea remain fixed on the contrac- 

 tion of the muscles of the left hand and fingers in order that the 

 violin may continue to be held fast and not let fall. The sensations 

 themselves which the holding of the instrument awakens in the hand, 

 since they are associated with the motor impulse of grasping, are suf- 

 ficient to cause this impulse, which then lasts as long as the feeling 

 itself lasts, or until the impulse is inhibited by the idea of some antag- 

 onistic motion." 



And tlie same may be said of tlie manner in wliicli the right 

 hand holds the bow : 



"It sometimes happens, in beginning these simultaneous combina- 

 tions, that one movement or impulse will cease if the consciousness 

 turn particularly toward another, because at the outset the guiding 

 sensations mast all be strongly /e?^. The bow will perhaps slip from 

 the fingers, because some of the muscles have relaxed. But the 

 slipping is a cause of new sensations starting up in the hand, so that 

 the attention is in a moment brought back to the grasping of the bow. 



' ' The following experiment shows this well : When one begins to 

 play on the violin, to keep him from raising his right elbow in playing 



* ' Der menschliche Wille,' pp. 447, 448. 



