Note 753 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

In a recent work of distinguished merit, an instance is given of the loose manner in which he took for granted that certain phenomena were ultimate, in order that, instead of analyzing them, he might reason from them. ‘Dr. Reid has no hesitation in classing the voluntary command of our organs, that is, the sequence of feeling and action implied in all acts of will, among instincts. The power of lifting a morsel of food to the mouth, is, according to him, an instinctive or pre-established conjunction of the wish and the deed; that is to say, the emotional state of hunger, coupled with the sight of a piece of bread, is associated, through a primitive link of the mental constitution, with the several movements of the hand, arm, and mouth, concerned in the act of eating. This assertion of Dr. Reid's may be simply met by appealing to the facts. It is not true that human beings possess, at birth, any voluntary command of their limbs whatsoever. A babe of two months old cannot use its hands in obedience to its desires. The infant can grasp nothing, hold nothing, can scarcely fix its eyes on anything.’ … ‘If the more perfect command of our voluntary movements implied in every art be an acquisition, so is the less perfect command of these movements that grows upon a child during the first year of life.’ Bain on the Senses and the Intellect, London, 1855, pp. 292, 293.