"How To Develop Positive Thinking, Right and Wrong Thinking & Their Results..."

We may not call it automatic, because when the will 10 walk is wanting we do not move, but when we have once set out to walk or to make a journey, we may go on for a long time without reflecting in the least that we are walking. . . .Many have experienced such extreme fatigue that they have slept while walking.

There are endless phenomena proving that movements that at first cost a great effort of the will, become at length so habitual that we perform them without being aware of it."

1 The " will to walk," which is thinking, sets in motion that series of mind actions which results in walking, and the mind goes on controlling and directing the machinery of the body without the thinker's active consciousness.

Mosso's words here quoted would apply with equal exactness to any series of complicated actions. The writer does not consciously think how he shall form his letters and words as he traces them; his conscious thought is engaged with the idea he wishes to express; but thoughts he is not aware of are continuously directing the motions of the many muscles which move the pen aright.

Lack of continuity of sense excitation has been recognized by most people.

When the hand is placed in contact with any object, there is, through the sense of touch, an immediate and definite consciousness of certain conditions.

If the hand remains in the same position, simply resting there without effort, the consciousness of these conditions gradually disappears.

Though the course of activity flows in the opposite direction, yet it is clearly recognized that the mind itself affects the physical activities very much in the same way that the sense excitations affect the mind. In the sense excitations, continuous action results in their disappearance from the mental horizon.

May not the elements of consciousness which are aroused by mental action fade out of sight in a similar way though the mental activity be as constantly present as the physical conditions under the hand? If so, this presents sufficient explanation of the disappearance from consciousness of those thoughts which have been made habitual by frequent repetition, and it also explains many, if not all, of those actions which are called reflex or automatic.

All this shows that "one thought of a movement," or the impulse to begin," which is the mental intention to perform certain actions, is that which sets in motion the complicated machinery of the body, and its action could not occur without it.