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Others are prompted to action by instinct. Take the act of suckling the infant. The nipple is placed in the mouth of a new-born child, then a complicated series of movements takes place and continues, not till the desire for food is satisfied, for the child as yet has no desire, but till the stomach is full.

Others are set in motion by the will, guided by intelligence. The process here is equally automatic, as in the former case. For, when we rise to the plane of voluntary action, we find the will not operating directly upon the immediate agencies by which the results are accomplished. The will only sets the appropriate train of mechanism agoing.

Thus the intelligence knows nothing of the machinery of articulate sounds. The intelligence knows nothing of the individual muscles to be brought in play to preserve equilibrium in standing alone or in walking. in fact, knows nothing of the immediate agencies by which any of its desires and results are attained.

Experience in infancy and childhood teaches what direction volition should take, what mechanism is to be started to accomplish any purpose. Habit operates to increase the facility by which this is done. Habit establishes new combinations and co-ordinations where associated exercise of simpler mechanism is required.

In normal childhood inborn spontaneousness is ceaselessly active in finding out the keys, in learning to play upon this "harp of a thousand strings."

It is to be noticed, further, that movements once instinctively performed become voluntary. In which case it is through the fact that the parts are supplied with the nerves of voluntary movement, and the change takes place when the intelligence is developed.

Take the illustration already cited, -- the act of nursing. When once begun the process continues till repletion is the result. No sounds or other means of attracting the child's attention have any effect to interrupt it. At a later period when some power of observation has been attained, and a definite appetite has been developed, the child ceases to nurse when the appetite is satiated, or when its attention is attracted otherwise.

On the other hand, movements that are at first voluntary, in time, through habitual exercise, take on the characteristics of automatic or instinctive acts.

When we rise a step higher, to the nerves of special sensation, the nervous apparatus is still more complicated, their ganglionic centres still more intimately related to the gray matter of the brain. Though the distinction of automatic and voluntary is here also quite manifest, -- the former being sometimes termed sensori-motor, -- yet the correlation between these two modes of action is quite intimate. The passive sense of feeling (automatic) in time becomes the active sense of touch, and tiny hands go groping about to satisfy an inborn curiosity as to form and size and parts.

From the confusion of noise that perpetually rings in the child's ears there is evolved the manifold distinctions of sound, articulate and inarticulate. The glare of light-emitting and reflecting objects is resolved the same innate faculty into the varied and definite features of the world of sight. Through the sensory organs the function of these ingoing impressions is to excite the spontaneous activity of the senses, to awaken consciousness, and to establish relations with it and the outer world. In time, as in the case of the reflex mechanisms, the voluntary and acquired use of the senses becomes secondarily automatic. For example in the one case the eye, taught by experience, closes automatically at approaching danger; or again, in one trained in the art of fencing, under similar threatenings, is automatically only the more open and alert.

The tendency all the while is towards a subserviency of the lower functions to the higher in human life. By this acquired and secondary automatism the individual is enabled to do several things at the same time. Thus I can be reading this paper aloud, with all the necessary articulations and emphasis, each one of which required conscious direction from the will at first. I can follow the train of thought that I had when writing it, and at the same time be watching my audience to see how my thoughts impress them.

These physiological details will help us to understand some of the difficulties in the way of developing the intelligence and the capabilities of idiots, and even the reformation of their habits. They will serve to suggest the means to adopt and obviate these difficulties, as also the order to be followed in applying these means.

It is the nervous system, in part or in whole, that is primarily at fault. It may be from want of development, organic change, or even hypertrophy of the brain. It may be from undue pressure upon these organs, from defect in the relation or connection of parts; it may be from impaired condition of the nervous tissue, either in the white or gray matter. The complicated nervous mechanism that makes up the human system is not in a proper working state. The failure of functions associated with these organisms is equally varied.