perform in this automatic manner, which were not at one time
difficult, requiring attention, and liable to repeated failure, our
volition failing to command obedience from the members which should
carry its purposes into execution?

If so, analogy will point in the direction of thinking that other
acts which we do even more unconsciously may only escape our power of
self-examination and control because they are even more familiar--
because we have done them oftener; and we may imagine that if there
were a microscope which could show us the minutest atoms of
consciousness and volition, we should find that even the apparently
most automatic actions were yet done in due course, upon a balance of
considerations, and under the deliberate exercise of the will.

We should also incline to think that even such an action as the
oxygenisation of its blood by an infant of ten minutes' old, can only
be done so well and so unconsciously, after repeated failures on the
part of the infant itself.

True, as has been already implied, we do not immediately see when the
baby could have made the necessary mistakes and acquired that
infinite practice without which it could never go through such
complex processes satisfactorily; we have therefore invented the
words "hereditary instinct," and consider them as accounting for the
phenomenon; but a very little reflection will show that though these
words may be a very good way of stating the difficulty, they do
little or nothing towards removing it.

Why should hereditary instinct enable a creature to dispense with the
experience which we see to be necessary in all other cases before