ose attendant upon the repetition of some performance by
one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little
prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine
presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote. Surely then
we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more _bona fide_
personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the
part of the infant itself, than meet the eye.

It should be noticed, also that our control over breathing is very
limited. We can hold our breath a little, or breathe a little faster for
a short time, but we cannot do this for long, and after having gone
without air for a certain time we must breathe.

Seeing and hearing require some practice before their free use is
mastered, but not very much. They are so far within our control that we
can see more by looking harder, and hear more by listening
attentively--but they are beyond our control in so far as that we must
see and hear the greater part of what presents itself to us as near, and
at the same time unfamiliar, unless we turn away or shut our eyes, or
stop our ears by a mechanical process; and when we do this it is a sign
that we have already involuntarily seen or heard more than we wished. The
familiar, whether sight or sound, very commonly escapes us.

Take again the processes of digestion, the action of the heart, and the
oxygenisation of the blood--processes of extreme intricacy, done almost
entirely unconsciously, and quite beyond the control of our volition.

Is it possible that our unconsciousness concerning our own performance of
all these processes arises from over-experience?

Is there anything in digestion or the oxygenisation of the blood
different in kind to the rapid unconscious action of a man playing a
difficult piece of music on the piano? There may be in degree, but as a
man who sits down to play what he well knows, plays on when once started,
almost, as we say, mechanically, so, having eaten his dinner, he digests
it as a matter of course, unless it has been in some way unfamiliar to
him or he to it, owing to some derangement or occurrence with which he is
unfamiliar, and under which therefore he is at a loss how to comport
himself, as a player would be at a loss how to play with gloves on, or
with gout in his fingers, or if set to play music upside down.

Can we show that all the acquired actions of childhood and after-life,