If we saw any self-consciousness on the baby's part about its
breathing or circulation, we might suspect that it had had less
experience, or profited less by its experience, than its neighbours--
exactly in the same manner as we suspect a deficiency of any quality
which we see a man inclined to parade. We all become introspective
when we find that we do not know our business, and whenever we are
introspective we may generally suspect that we are on the verge of
unproficiency. Unfortunately, in the case of sickly children, we
observe that they sometimes do become conscious of their breathing
and circulation, just as in later life we become conscious that we
have a liver or a digestion. In that case there is always something
wrong. The baby that becomes aware of its breathing does not know
how to breathe, and will suffer for his ignorance and incapacity,
exactly in the same way as he will suffer in later life for ignorance
and incapacity in any other respect in which his peers are commonly
knowing and capable. In the case of inability to breath, the
punishment is corporal, breathing being a matter of fashion, so old
and long settled that nature can admit of no departure from the
established custom, and the procedure in case of failure is as much
formulated as the fashion itself in the case of the circulation, the
whole performance has become one so utterly of rote, that the mere
discovery that we could do it at all was considered one of the
highest flights of human genius.

It has been said a day will come when the Polar ice shall have
accumulated, till it forms vast continents many thousands of feet
above the level of the sea, all of solid ice. The weight of this
mass will, it is believed, cause the world to topple over on its
axis, so that the earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by a