Life and Habit | Page 6

endeavouring to
become conscious. We are no longer, so to speak, under the law, but
under grace.
An ascending scale may be perceived in the above instances.
In playing, we have an action acquired long after birth, difficult of
acquisition, and never thoroughly familiarised to the power of
absolutely unconscious performance, except in the case of those who
have either an exceptional genius for music, or who have devoted the
greater part of their time to practising. Except in the case of these
persons it is generally found easy to become more or less conscious of
any passage without disturbing the performance, and our action
remains so completely within our control that we can stop playing at
any moment we please.
In writing, we have an action generally acquired earlier, done for the
most part with great unconsciousness of detail, fairly well within our
control to stop at any moment; though not so completely as would be

imagined by those who have not made the experiment of trying to stop
in the middle of a given character when writing at fit speed. Also, we
can notice our formation of any individual character without our
writing being materially hindered.
Reading is usually acquired earlier still. We read with more
unconsciousness of attention than we write. We find it more difficult to
become conscious of any character without discomfiture, and we
cannot arrest ourselves in the middle of a word, for example, and
hardly before the end of a sentence; nevertheless it is on the whole well
within our control.
Walking is so early an acquisition that we cannot remember having
acquired it. In running fast over average ground we find it very difficult
to become conscious of each individual step, and should possibly find it
more difficult still, if the inequalities and roughness of uncultured land
had not perhaps caused the development of a power to create a second
consciousness of our steps without hindrance to our running or walking.
Pursuit and flight, whether in the chase or in war, must for many
generations have played a much more prominent part in the lives of our
ancestors than they do in our own. If the ground over which they had to
travel had been generally as free from obstruction as our modern
cultivated lands, it is possible that we might not find it as easy to notice
our several steps as we do at present. Even as it is, if while we are
running we would consider the action of our muscles, we come to a
dead stop, and should probably fall if we tried to observe too suddenly;
for we must stop to do this, and running, when we have once
committed ourselves to it beyond a certain point, is not controllable to a
step or two without loss of equilibrium.
We learn to talk, much about the same time that we learn to walk, but
talking requires less muscular effort than walking, and makes generally
less demand upon our powers. A man may talk a long while before he
has done the equivalent of a five-mile walk; it is natural, therefore, that
we should have had more practice in talking than in walking, and hence
that we should find it harder to pay attention to our words than to our
steps. Certainly it is very hard to become conscious of every syllable or
indeed of every word we say; the attempt to do so will often bring us to
a check at once; nevertheless we can generally stop talking if we wish
to do so, unless the crying of infants be considered as a kind of

quasi-speech: this comes earlier, and is often quite uncontrollable, or
more truly perhaps is done with such complete control over the muscles
by the will, and with such absolute certainty of his own purpose on the
part of the wilier, that there is no longer any more doubt, uncertainty, or
suspense, and hence no power of perceiving any of the processes
whereby the result is attained--as a wheel which may look fast fixed
because it is so fast revolving. {2}
We may observe therefore in this ascending scale, imperfect as it is,
that the older the habit the longer the practice, the longer the practice,
the more knowledge--or, the less uncertainty; the less uncertainty the
less power of conscious self-analysis and control.
It will occur to the reader that in all the instances given above, different
individuals attain the unconscious stage of perfect knowledge with very
different degrees of facility. Some have to attain it with a great sum;
others are free born. Some learn to play, to read, write, and talk, with
hardly an effort--some show such an instinctive aptitude for arithmetic
that, like Zerah Colburn, at eight years old, they achieve results without