corresponding muscular action. Yet the uniformity of our
handwriting, and the manner in which we almost invariably adhere to
one method of forming the same character, would seem to suggest that
during the momentary formation of each letter our memories must
revert (with an intensity too rapid for our perception) to many if
not to all the occasions on which we have ever written the same
letter previously--the memory of these occasions dwelling in our
minds as what has been called a residuum--an unconsciously struck
balance or average of them all--a fused mass of individual
reminiscences of which no trace can be found in our consciousness,
and of which the only effect would seem to lie in the gradual changes
of handwriting which are perceptible in most people till they have
reached middle-age, and sometimes even later. So far are we from
consciously remembering any one of the occasions on which we have
written such and such a letter, that we are not even conscious of
exercising our memory at all, any more than we are in health
conscious of the action of our heart. But, if we are writing in some
unfamiliar way, as when printing our letters instead of writing them
in our usual running hand, our memory is so far awakened that we
become conscious of every character we form; sometimes it is even
perceptible as memory to ourselves, as when we try to remember how to
print some letter, for example a g, and cannot call to mind on which
side of the upper half of the letter we ought to put the link which
connects it with the lower, and are successful in remembering; but if
we become very conscious of remembering, it shows that we are on the
brink of only trying to remember,--that is to say, of not remembering
at all.

As a general rule, we remember for a time the substance of what we
have written, for the subject is generally new to us; but if we are