Note 6 — MR RUSKIN'S WORKS.

It is seldom any action of a limb is performed without the concurrence of several muscles; and, if the action is at all energetic, a number of muscles are brought into play as an equipoise or balance; the infant, therefore, would be sadly puzzled amongst its muscular sensations, supposing that it had them. Besides, it seems clear that those movements we see an infant make with its arms and legs are, in the first instance, as little voluntary as the muscular movements it makes for the purpose of respiration. There is an animal life within us, dependent on its own laws of irritability. Over a portion of this the developed thought or reason gains dominion; over a large portion the will never has any hold; over another portion, as in the organs of respiration, it has an intermittent and divided empire. We learn voluntary movement by doing that instinctively and spontaneously which we afterwards do from forethought. We have moved our arm; we wish to do the like again, (and to our wonder, if we then had intelligence enough to wonder,) we do it.