ACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH WHICH ARE COMMONLY CONSIDERED INSTINCTIVE.



What is true of knowing is also true of willing. The more intensely
we will, the less is our will deliberate and capable of being
recognised as will at all. So that it is common to hear men declare
under certain circumstances that they had no will, but were forced
into their own action under stress of passion or temptation. But in
the more ordinary actions of life, we observe, as in walking or
breathing, that we do not will anything utterly and without remnant
of hesitation, till we have lost sight of the fact that we are
exercising our will.

The question, therefore, is forced upon us, how far this principle
extends, and whether there may not be unheeded examples of its
operation which, if we consider them, will land us in rather
unexpected conclusions. If it be granted that consciousness of
knowledge and of volition vanishes when the knowledge and the
volition have become intense and perfect, may it not be possible that
many actions which we do without knowing how we do them, and without
any conscious exercise of the will--actions which we certainly could
not do if we tried to do them, nor refrain from doing if for any
reason we wished to do so--are done so easily and so unconsciously
owing to excess of knowledge or experience rather than deficiency, we
having done them too often, knowing how to do them too well, and
having too little hesitation as to the method of procedure, to be
capable of following our own action without the utter derangement of
such action altogether; or, in other cases, because we have so long
settled the question, that we have stowed away the whole apparatus