The next year the boy no longer snorted, and he played with
his fingers only; the year after that he seemed hardly to know
whether he was playing or not, it came so easily to him. I know no
exception to this rule. Where is the intricate and at one time
difficult art in which perfect automatic ease has been reached
except as the result of long practice? If, then, wherever we can
trace the development of automatism we find it to have taken this
course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken the
same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken?
Ought we not, whenever we see a difficult action performed,
automatically to suspect antecedent practice? Granted that without
the considerations in regard to identity presented above it would
not have been easy to see where a baby of a day old could have had
the practice which enables it to do as much as it does
unconsciously, but even without these considerations it would have
been more easy to suppose that the necessary opportunities had not
been wanting, than that the easy performance could have been gained
without practice and memory.
When I wrote "Life and Habit" (originally published in 1877) I said
in slightly different words:-
"Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the
whole principle of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledge
of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its
blood--millions of years before any one had discovered oxygen--sees
and hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the
facts concerning optics and acoustics compared with which the
conscious discoveries of Newton are insignificant--shall we say that
a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and so
regularly without being even able to give them attention, and yet
without mistake, and shall we also say at the same time that it has
not learnt to do them, and never did them before?
"Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience of
mankind.
Pages:
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258