In the same manner as any action may be rendered voluntary, the cessation from any, or a forcible restraint upon any, may be also, viz. by proper associations with the feeble vibrations in which inactivity consists, or with the strong action of the antagonist muscles.
After the actions, which are most perfectly voluntary, have been rendered so by one set of associations, they may, by another, be made to depend upon the most diminutive sensations, ideas, and motions, such as the mind scarce regards, or is conscious of; and which therefore it can scarce recollect the moment after the action is over. Hence it follows, that association not only converts automatic actions into voluntary, but voluntary ones into automatic. For these actions, of which the mind is scarce conscious, and which follow mechanically, as it were, some precedent diminutive sensation, idea or motion, and without any effort of the mind, are rather to be ascribed to the body than the mind, i.e. are to be referred to the head of automatic motions. I shall call them automatic motions of the secondary kind, to distinguish them both from those which are originally automatic, and from the voluntary ones; and shall now give a few instances of this double transmutation of motions, viz. of automatic into voluntary, and of voluntary into automatic.
The fingers of young children bend upon almost every impression which is made upon the palm of the hand, thus performing the action of grasping in the original automatic manner. After a sufficient repetition of the motory vibrations which concur in this action, their vibratiuncles are generated, and associated strongly with other vibrations or vibratiuncles, the most common of which, I suppose, are those excited by the sight of a favourite plaything which the child uses to grasp, and hold in his hand. He ought, therefore, according to the doctrine of association, to perform and repeat the action of grasping, upon having such a plaything presented to his sight. But it is a known fact, that children do this. By pursuing the same method of reasoning, we may see how, after a sufficient repetition of the proper associations, the sound of the words grasp, take hold, &c. the sight of the nurse’s hand in a state of contraction, the idea of a hand, and particularly of the child’s own hand, in that state, and innumerable other associated circumstances, i.e. sensations, ideas, and motions, will put the child upon grasping, till, at last, that idea, or state of mind which we may call the will to grasp, is generated and sufficiently associated with the action to produce it instantaneously. It is therefore perfectly voluntary in this case; and by the innumerable repetitions of it in this perfectly voluntary state, it comes, at last, to obtain a sufficient connexion with so many diminutive sensations, ideas, and motions, as to follow them in the same manner, as originally automatic actions do the corresponding sensations, and consequently to be automatic secondarily. And in the same manner, may all the actions
