Payton Spence

“ Between the states of the greatest and the least contraction of any muscle of the body, there are, of course, an infinite number of degrees of contraction. In order, however, that we may not seem to exaggerate the difficulties of the child's task, we will suppose that a muscle is susceptible of only three degrees of contraction, and that, therefore, three experiments, at most, would ultimate in the production of the sound of A, supposing it to depend upon the proper contraction of only one muscle. But how many muscles are engaged in the production of that one sound? ”

“ The how of their use is our vast organized inheritance; and it is this which gives even the child, as he matures, that sure, unerring tendency to the right movement to attain any desired end, and soon teaches him that he can do what he wills to do, thus obviating a resort to that infinitude of experiments which, as we have shown, would otherwise be absolutely necessary. It is the organized inheritance which takes the lead, and teaches the child that he can make the required voluntary movements, and not the child which teaches the organization how to make them. ”

“ But the truth is, the importance of the mind as a factor in the movements of the body is vastly overrated. It never really learns how to work even the limited portion of the organization which the current theories assign to it. When a child or even a man makes a certain voluntary movement for the first time, and practises it until he can execute it with ease and rapidity, has he learned how to do it? ”

“ It is easy to understand, therefore, that if the molecular action which generates the nervous force that causes a reflex movement could be symbolized in consciousness, that symbol could not be called anything but a volition—a mandate for the movement. As many reflex movements are movements which were once voluntary, and have become reflex by a withdrawal of them from the sphere of consciousness, to relate them again to consciousness would be to make them again voluntary. ”

“ Again, it is not only difficult, but impossible, simply by a voluntary effort, or by any amount of practice, to roll one eye up and one down at the same time, or to turn both outward at the same time, beyond the parallelism of their axes. ”

“ To the superficial observer, a human being, during the interval between birth and adult life, seems to learn a great deal; but, if he did really learn all that he seems to learn, it would be marvelous in a degree wholly beyond the power of the human mind to conceive of, and far beyond the power of human language to express. ”

“ How insignificant, however, is the successful pronunciation at will of one letter, when we reflect that the child ultimately attains the voluntary control of, not merely one of the billions of possible combinations of 20 muscles, but that he attains the absolute voluntary command of all the 450 voluntary muscles of his body, individually and collectively, in all their possible combined, as well as isolated, contractions! ”

“ The current ideas of the growth of voluntary motion and the will are based upon an ill-defined notion that the muscular and nervous systems were first developed, like a piece of complex machinery, and then the mind somehow came into rapport with it, or happened to be there, just at the right time, and commenced to learn how to work a certain part of it—for it is admitted that the rest can get along without the mind. ”

“ It is evident that the fact that the child has learned that he can make the movement does not contribute to the success, for the first success was made before he had learned that he could; and the knowledge that he can does not contribute to a future success, because it does not contribute in the least to a knowledge of how to do it. ”

“ The newly-born babe is helpless and capable of making only a few instinctive or automatic movements, not for want of education and experience, but for want of organic maturity; and, hence, we see that some animals which are more matured at birth, or when hatched, than the human infant, walk, run, swim, or fly, as soon as they are born, or as soon as they escape from the egg; and the butterfly and those insects which emerge from the chrysalis fully matured need no experience or education whatever to enable them to command at will all their voluntary muscles ”

“ While it is very easy to understand how a reflex movement might thus be converted into, or restored back to, a voluntary movement, it is an actual fact that by dislocating consciousness from its connections with voluntary movements we at once make them reflex or automatic, as is the case, for example, in many habitual or oft-repeated movements, such as the fingering of the keys of a piano when the music is known by heart. ”

“ An apparent objection to our conclusions is met with in the fact that the child does not use his 450 muscles, at birth, with the same ease, precision, and freedom, that he does in after-years; but, from the helplessness of the babe, which can scarcely be said to make a single voluntary movement, there is a gradual advance in the variety and extent of his control over his voluntary muscles, until we may say that, by the time he reaches adult life, he is completely master of his voluntary muscular system. ”

“ We will begin by endeavoring to ascertain how much a child would have to acquire in simply learning to pronounce the letter A, at will, supposing that none of the movements, or combinations of movements, which are made in the utterance of that one sound, are organic and inherited, but that they all have to be acquired or learned by practice and experience. ”

“ Whatever voluntary muscular movements we may make, therefore—be they ever so new and wonderful to ourselves or to others—we make because we can; because they are already accomplished facts packed up in our inherited organization. The truth of this proposition makes its converse also true, and the proposition itself receives additional confirmation from the truth of the converse, namely, whatever muscular movements are beyond our voluntary control are so because they are not accomplished facts in our inherited organization. ”

“ The child's muscular education, the progress which he makes in his voluntary control over his muscles, and the maturing of his organization, all proceed simultaneously and inseparably together. Nevertheless, facts do occasionally crop out, here and there, confirmatory of the calculations already made, and the inferences drawn from them, if they needed confirmation. ”

“ Omitting, at present, that immense domain of the mind which is embraced under the terms sensation, emotion, and intellection, we will endeavor to make a comparative estimate as to how much we seem to learn, but do not learn, and how much we do really learn, in that limited department of the will which is covered by the term voluntary motion. ”

“ The essential physiological phenomena of a voluntary movement are, an impression upon a peripheral surface, conducted thence along certain nerves to a nervous centre which is thereby excited to a peculiar kind of molecular action, and that action generates what is called a nervous force, which is discharged through another set of nerves upon certain muscles, causing them to contract. ”

“ All these things, which are so numerous and complicated in that one movement, and which constitute the whole of the mechanism, are purely automatic, being not in the least dependent upon the mental part—the volition—although wholly dependent upon that organic activity of which the volition is a symbol in consciousness. ”

“ Take, for example, the familiar, schoolboy, muscular puzzle, which seems to be a very simple movement, and very easy of execution; yet we doubt whether it has ever been really mastered, even after the most protracted efforts, so that it could be executed with the automatic ease and dexterity with which we execute our voluntary movements. It is easy enough to extend the forefinger of the right hand, and revolve it rapidly so as to describe a cylinder as it moves ”

“ But, the fact is, he has learned nothing at all about the mechanism which he seems to handle so dexterously, and can give no account whatever as to how he does it—that is something which has staggered the most capable and profound students of voluntary motion and the will. Look at it. A child reaches out after a bright object and misses it. ”

“ The evolution of the power of voluntary motion considered as an organic procedure in the entire animal kingdom, by which it was developed from its earliest genesis up to its highest capabilities in man, as the result of such changes in the faculty, from any cause whatever, as were transmissible and transmitted by inheritance. ”

“ It will generally be found, however, that the abnormal, simply from the fact that it is abnormal—an outlaw to all that is now considered fixed and established in science—is the key to a higher law and a broader generalization. ”

“ This expectation is frequently realized in individuals when under the dominion of exalted emotions, in insane persons, and in persons when in mesmeric, somnambulic, trance, and other abnormal conditions, who often perform feats of agility, dexterity, and wonderful freedom and precision in the combined contractions of a great many muscles of the body, equaling the nimbleness and mobility of the ballet-dancer, the surefootedness of the rope-walker, and the consummate skill of the trained acrobat, although they had no special training calculated to qualify them for the performance of such feats. ”

“ Much practice may enable one to execute it slowly, defectively, and awkwardly; never, however, with the same ease, freedom, and dexterity, with which we revolve either finger alone, or the two fingers together in the same direction. ”

“ The muscular combination or coördination required in such movements is not organically possible, and no amount of education can make it so; otherwise, education would be a substitute for evolution and maturation. ”

“ He must pronounce it again and again, before it is so completely within the reach of his will that he can pronounce it immediately, making automatically all the required muscular contractions of the combination the instant the volition calls for the letter. It is evident that, in the absence of all knowledge of those 20 muscles, and of all organic tendencies in the right direction (which could only be acquired by repeated successful experiments) , it would be almost as difficult for the child to hit upon the right combination the second and the third time as the first ”