rocal equilibrium between opposite motor forces is the
result of prolonged exercises, of _ancient habits_ within us; we no
longer have any sense of effort in performing these, we no longer
require the support of reason and knowledge to accomplish them; these
acts have almost become reflex. And yet the acts in question are by no
means reflex actions; it is not Nature but habit which produces all
this. We know well how the person who has not been brought up to
observe certain rules, but has been hastily instructed in the
knowledge of them, will too often be guilty of blunders and lapses,
because he is obliged to "perform" there and then all the necessary
coordination of voluntary acts, and there and then direct them under
the vigilant and immediate control of the consciousness; and such a
perpetual effort cannot certainly compete with the "habit" of
distinguished manners. The will stores up its prolonged efforts
outside the consciousness, or at its extreme margin, and leaves the
consciousness itself unencumbered to make new acquisitions and further
efforts. Thus we cease to consider as _evidences of will_ those habits
in which we nevertheless see the consciousness, as it were, hanging
over and watchful of each act, that it may accord with the perfect
rule of an external code of manners. An educated man who acts thus is
merely a man _in himself_, merely a man of "healthy mind."

It is, in fact, only disease which can disintegrate the personality
organized upon its adaptations, and induce a man of society to cease
to act in a becoming manner; it is well known that a neurasthenic
subject who begins to show the first symptoms of paranoia, may at
first seem to be merely one who fails in good breeding.

But he, on the other hand, who remains within the limits of good
breeding, is nothing more than a _normal man_. We will not venture to
call him "a man of will"; the consciousness of such a man is always
being put to the test, and the mechanisms stored up in the margin of
consciousness no longer possess a "volitive value."

But the child is making his first trial of arms, and his personality
is a very different thing from that just described. In comparison with
the adult, he is an unbalanced creature, almost invariably the prey of
his own impulses and sometimes subject to the most obstinate
inhibitions. The two opposite activities of the will have not yet
combined to form the new personality. The psychical embryo has still
the