on the idea. This same tendency frequently manifests
itself even in the adult. As one thinks intently of some favourite game,
he may suddenly find himself taking a bodily position used in playing
that game. It is by the same law also that the impulsive man tends to
act out in gesture any act that he may be describing in words. Such a
type of action is described as ideo-motor action.

=B. Deliberate Action.=--Because the child in time gains ideas of
various movements and an ability to fix his attention upon them, he thus
becomes able to set one motor image against another as possible lines of
action. One image may suggest to slap; the other to caress; the one to
pull the weeds in the flower bed; the other, to lie down in the hammock.
But attention is ultimately able, as noted in the last Chapter, so to
control the impulse and resistance in the proper nervous centres that
the acts themselves may be indefinitely suspended. Thus the mind becomes
able to conceive lines of action and, by controlling bodily movement,
gain time to consider the effectiveness of these toward the attainment
of any end. When a bodily movement thus takes place in relation to some
conscious end in view, it is termed a deliberate act. One important
result of physical exercises with the young child is that they develop
in him this deliberate control of bodily movements. The same may be said
also of any orderly modes of action employed in the general management
of the school. Regular forms of assembly and dismissal, of moving about
the class-room, etc., all tend to give the child this same control over
his acts.

=Action versus Result.=--As already noted, however, most of our
movements soon develop into fixed habits. For this reason our bodily
acts are usually performed more or less unconsciously, that is, without
any deliberation as to the mere act itself. For this reason, we find
that when bodily movements are held in check, or inhibited, in order to
allow time for deliberation, attention usually fixes itself, not upon
the acts themselves, but rather upon the results of these acts. For
instance, a person having an axe and a saw may wish to divide a small
board into two parts. Although the axe may be in his hand, he is
thinking, not how he is to use the axe, but how it will result if he
uses this to accomplish the end. In the same way he considers, not how
to use the saw, but the result of using the saw. By inhibiting the motor
impulses which would le