a muscular operation, the actions of singing must be subject to the
same physiological and psychological laws which govern all other
voluntary muscular actions. What are these laws? How do we guide and
control our muscular movements? At first sight, this seems a simple
question. We know what we want to do, and we do it. But the important
point is, how are we able to do the things we want to do? You wish to
raise your hand, for example, therefore you raise it. How does your hand
know that you wish to raise it? Does the hand raise itself? Not at all;
it is raised by the contraction of certain muscles in the arm, shoulder,
and back. That is, when you wish to raise your hand, certain muscles
contract themselves. But these muscles are not part of the hand. What
leads these muscles in the shoulder and back to contract, when you will
to raise your hand? Normally you are not even aware of their
contraction. Yet in some way these muscles know that they are called on
to contract, in response to the wish to raise the hand. This takes
place, even though you know nothing whatever of the muscles in question.
The process is by no means so simple, when looked at in this light.

A complicated psychological process is involved in the simplest
voluntary movements. This is seen in the following analysis:

"To move any part of the body voluntarily requires the following
particulars: (1) The possession of an educated reflex-motor mechanism,
under the control of the higher cerebral centers which are most
immediately connected with the phenomena of consciousness; (2) certain
_motifs_ in the form of conscious feelings that have a tone of pleasure
or pain, and so impel the mind to secure such bodily conditions as will
continue or increase the one, and discontinue or diminish the other; (3)
ideas of motions and positions of the bodily members, which previous
experience has taught us answer more or less perfectly to the _motifs_
of conscious feeling; (4) a conscious fiat of will, settling the
question, as it were, which of these ideas shall be realized in the
motions achieved and positions attained by these members; (5) a central
nervous mechanism, which serves as the organ of relation between this
act of will and the discharge of the requisite motor impulses along
their nerve-tracts to the groups of muscles peripherally situated."
(_Elements of Physiological Psychology_, Geo. T. Ladd, New York, 1889.)

Let us again consider the action of raisin