und on trial that we are able to
pronounce more than a thousand letters in a minute. That is, during
every minute that we are reading aloud, we perform between one and two
thousand distinct muscular movements, and by necessity a like number of
antecedent acts of the will, to say nothing of those other acts, not
less numerous in the case of a speaker, connected with the general
movement of the body in earnest gesticulation. Yet after the hour's
performance, what does the speaker or the reader remember of all these
countless volitions? Nothing but the one general purpose to please,
instruct, or persuade an audience.

The conclusion, toward which these illustrations point, is objected to
by some writers, on the ground of the incredible rapidity which it
attributes to our intellectual operations. Is it possible, it is asked,
that we can crowd into such a space of time so many acts of the will,
and that we are, at the moment when each happens, conscious of its
presence? Is it not more probable that these rapid muscular actions are
resolvable, in some way, into the law of habit? May they not become in
some sense mechanical and automatic, so as to require no intervention of
the will? Take for example, the case of a person learning to play upon a
musical instrument. The first step is to move the fingers from key to
key with a slow motion, looking at the notes, and exerting an express
act of volition at every note. By degrees, however, the motions somehow
cling to each other, and to the impressions of the notes, in the way of
associations, the acts of volition all the while growing less and less
express, until at last they become quite evanescent and imperceptible.
An expert will play from notes or from memory, and with a rapidity of
motion that is perfectly bewildering, while at the same time he himself
is carrying on quite a different train of thoughts in his mind, or even
perhaps holding a conversation with another. Hence, it is concluded, by
the writers referred to, that in these cases there is really no
intervention of that idea or state of the mind called will.

The authorities for this hypothesis are among the highest that can be
named in the history of intellectual science. Let us see how far the
hypothesis explains the facts of the case. The most rapid performer, it
is obvious, can at any time retard his execution, until his movements
become so slow that each one may be made, as originally it was made, the
subject of s