tion must be very firm in order to operate in the inverted order. But on some chance occasion, after repeated urgency, the spontaneity comes round, and it being preceded by the characteristic sensation, the associating link is strengthened according to the imitative order; and very soon the adhesion is complete. This process is gone through with several other articulations, and in the meantime, the voice becomes more ready to burst out at the hearing of articulate sounds, so that the trials are multiplied; the correcting power being the felt coincidence with the sound proposed for imitation. The child told to say to, will perhaps say na, ma; at this period, however, it understands the tones of dissatisfaction expressed by others, if not aware of the discrepancy between its own performance and the model. After a time, it will become alive to the success of the coincidence. The primordial stimuli of pleasure and pain, are still the agency at work; spontaneity must precede; association in time completes the connexion; and an entirely new and distinct means is gained for determining specific actions.

The imitation of Pitch, the groundwork of the art of singing, goes through the same routine. A note spontaneously uttered impresses the ear with its pitch; and an association is commenced between the special tension of the vocal muscles and that sensation; which association goes on strengthening until the sound heard brings on the muscular effect. How rapid and complete this acquirement shall be, depends on the endowment of the ear, and on other circumstances already described.

The imitation of Movements at sight comprises a large part of our early voluntary education. The course is still the same. Movements, from natural spontaneity,-of the arms, hands, fingers, and other visible parts,-must occur and be seen; the active muscular impulses are united with the visible or ocular appearances; eventually, the appearances (as manifested by others) can evoke the active impulses. If any pleasure attends the feeling of successful coincidence, or if any pain is made to go along with the insufficient reproduction of the model, there is an appeal to the fundamental motives, for continuing the successful, and abandoning the unsuccessful acts. The child is urged to clap hands; some movements are made, but not the proper ones; the depression of ill-success leads to their cessation. Perhaps no others take their place on that occasion; at another time, a more successful attempt is made, and the coincidence is agreeable; the bent is sustained,

and an associating lesson given, under the stimulus (so favourable to contiguous adhesion) of a burst of the elation of

success.

The volitional links, constituted in the acquirements of Imitation, are very numerous. They should have to be reckoned by hundreds, if not by thousands. A certain amount of Imitativeness belongs to animals. The young of many species are guided by the old in their early attempts. The characteristic of gregariousness follows the imitative power; there could be no community of action without this aptitude.

7. A farther extension of the voluntary acquirements leads to the power of Acting upon the Wish to move.

We can rise up, stretch forth the hand, sound a note, from the mere wish to perform these acts, without the consideration of any ultimate end of pleasure sought or pain avoided. Not that such movements occur without some reference to the final ends of human action. We do not go through the process called wishing, unless instigated by some motive, that is, in the last resort, some pleasure or pain. Moreover, we very seldom perform movement merely for the sake of moving; we may show our ability to any one denying it, and then the motive is either the pleasure of power or the pain of humiliation-both highly efficacious as springs of action. usually when we move to a wish, it is the wish to gain some end, the action being the means; as when thirsty, and passing a spring of water, we will or wish to perform the movements for drinking.

Most

The link of association formed in order to confer voluntary power in this particular form, is the link between our idea of the movement and the movement itself; between the idea of raising the hand, and the act of raising it, there being a motive or urgency towards some end. The growth of this link is a step in advance of the imitative acquirement, and precisely in the same direction; imitation supposes a connexion between a movement and the sight of that movement performed by another person, as the drill-master; acting from a wish to move is to perform the movement on the thought, idea, or recollection or the appearance of the movement; the guiding circumstance is the coincidence of the actual movement as seen with the ideal picture of it; when we raise the hand to a certain height, we know that we have conformed to the idea given in our wish.

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This further acquisition, the following out of imitation, involves a large stock of ideal representations of all possible movements, gained during our own performance of these movements, and our seeing others perform them. We have ideas of opening and closing the hand, spreading the fingers, grasping and letting loose; of putting the arms in all postures, and through varying degrees of rapidity. In acquiring those ideas we acquire also the links or connexions between them and the actual putting forth of the movements themselves; and but for these acquired links, voluntary power in its most familiar exercise would be entirely wanting. We have ideas also of the motions of our legs and feet; we form the wish to give a kick, and the power to fulfil the wish implies a link of association between the idea of the action, as a visible phenomenon, and the definite muscular stimuli for bringing the movement to pass. If no observation had ever been bestowed on the lower extremities, so as to arrive at this piece of education, the wish formed would be incompetent to create the act, notwithstarding the existence of a motive.

8. Voluntary power is consummated by the association of movements with the idea of the Effect to be produced.

When we direct our steps across the street to a certain house, the antecedent in the mind is the idea of our entering that house. When we stir the fire, the antecedent is the idea of producing the appearance of a blazing mass, together with the sensation of warmth. When we carry the hand to the mouth, it is by virtue of a connexion between the movements and the idea of satisfying hunger and thirst. In writing, the idea of certain things to be expressed is connected directly with the required movements of the hand.

Here we have a still more advanced class of associations. In accordance with the usual course of our progressive acquirements, intermediate links disappear, and a bridge is formed directly between what were the beginning and the end of a chain. The thing that we are bent on doing is what properly engages our attention; success in that is the pleasurable motive, failure the painful motive; exertion is continued until we succeed; and an association is formed between the actions producing the end and the end itself. We come to a shut door; the idea in the mind accompanied with the state of feeling that makes the motive, a present want, prospective relief, is the idea of that door open. Instead of thinking first of the movement of the hand in the act of opening, and

proceeding from that to the action itself, we are carried at once from the idea of the open door to execute the movement of turning the handle.

The examples recently dwelt on have been chiefly movements guided by Sight and ideas of sight. It is scarcely necessary to do more than allude to the case of Hearing. Vocal Imitation is the association of sounds heard with movements of the organs of voice. Vocalizing to a Wish involves a sufficient adhesion between a vocal exertion and the idea or recollection of the sound so produced, as when a musician pitches a note and commences an air; or when a speaker gives utterance to words. These adhesions enter into the education of the individual in singing and in speaking, and are necessarily very numerous in a cultivated man or woman. Lastly, these associations are bridged over, and a link formed at once between movements of the voice and the idea of some end to be gained by its instrumentality; as in raising the voice to the shrill point for calling some one distant; or as when, without having in mind the idea of the words 'right face,' the officer of a company gives the word of command merely on the conception of the effect intended.

CHAPTER III

CONTROL OF FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS.

1. As our voluntary actions consist in putting forth muscular power, the control of Feeling and of Thought is through the muscles.

Hitherto we have seen, in the operation of the will, the exerting of definite, select, and, it may be, combined movements for the gaining of ends. We have spoken only of muscular intervention in the attainment of our wishes. We have not even entertained as questions, whether the blood can circulate more or less rapidly, or the digestion accommodate itself, in obedience to pleasure and pain. In an emotional wave, there is a participation of organic change. A shock of pain deranges the organic functions; pleasure, by the Law of Conservation, is accompanied with organic, no less than with

VOLUNTARY CONTROL OPERATES THROUGH MUSCLES. 339

muscular, vigour. So far as concerns the fundamental link expressed by this law, there might be an association of organic, as well as of muscular, changes with states of pleasure and with states of pain; and often to the same good purpose: the augmentation of respiratory or of digestive vigour would directly heighten pleasure and abate pain. Notwithstanding all which facts, the muscular energies are alone selected for those definite associations with states of feeling which constitute the will. The power of movement stands alone in possessing the flexibility, the isolation, the independence, necessary for entering into the multifarious unions above detailed; and when we speak of voluntary control, we mean a control of the muscles. An explanation has, therefore, to be furnished of the stretching out of this control to feeling and to thought, which are phenomena more than muscular.

CONTROL OF THE FEELINGS.

2. The physical accompaniments of a feeling are (1) diffused nerve currents, (2) organic changes, and (3) muscular movements. The intervention of the will being restricted to movements, the voluntary control of the feelings hinges on the muscular accompaniments.

Mascular diffusion being only one of three elements, we have to learn from experience whether it plays a leading, or only a subordinate part. There are various alternative suppositions. The movements may be so essential, that their arrest is the cessation of the conscious state. Or the case may be that the other manifestations are checked by the refusal of the muscles to concur. Lastly, the movements may be requisite to the full play of the feeling, but not to its existing in a less degree, or in a modified form.

Referring to the arbitration of experience, we find such facts as these. First, In a comparatively feeble excitement, the outward suppression leads, not immediately, but very soon, to the cessation of the feeling. There is at the outset a struggle, but the refusal of the muscular vent seems to be the extinction of the other effects. The feeling does not cease at once with the suppression of the movements, showing that it can subsist without these; but the stoppage of the movement being followed soon by the decay of the feeling, we infer that the other accompaniments, and especially the nerve currents, are checked and gradually extinguished under the muscular arrest. A shock of surprise, for example, if not