Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/475

ROUTINE PROCESS. 461 motion. That was done so as not to prejudge the problem which we are about to consider. Let a man imagine himself walking along a lane, playing with a ring on his finger, scanning the scenery around him r and mentally rehearsing a tune. When he first endeavoured to repeat the tune (or a tune) could he have repeated it as easily as now ? Not if he was a normal individual. Some practice was necessary, equivalent to that we laid bare in the analysis of writing, before the tune could be repeated with so- little effort that there was not even an awareness of rehears- ing it. We meet here with a routine act, similar to that of writing. An important new element is this. The immediate stimulus and the reaction are both present in the mind. The tune proceeds within. One thing within the mind suggests^ or is followed by, another in the mind. When we first thought of rehearsing a tune inaudibly we could not help remembering irrelevant, unessential, and erroneous topics. By a process previously explained these are eliminated. We encounter here also development, and the tune, as we might expect, runs smoothly, without interruption, and without much demand upon the attention. Organic quality is still more clearly evinced in arithmetical practice. When I am asked "What are five times five?" I answer without delay " twenty-five ". So, in adding up columns of figures, not only is there no hesitancy, but I add three or four figures at once with a like ease. When I was a child, things did not proceed so smoothly. I employed my fingers, my buttons, etc., to assist me in performing a simple sum, and even then I was more often wrong than right. Immense effort yielded little satisfaction then ; but to-day little effort harvests immense results ; for every possible instance of a certain type has been memorised. When I want to know what 1 and 1 are, I do not cast about for a reply, I answer forthwith, 2. Similarly with rales referring to mathematics generally. Solutions of often-met difficulties- become matters of organic memory. We saw that in a bodily trend we do not always obtain so elementary a solution as we desire. The same thing happens, and is of special import to us, in matters mental. Suppose a man is asked "What are 18 times 19?" (We will assume that he does the sum mentally.) He starts " 10 times 18, 180 ; 9 times 10, 90 ; are 270 ; 9 times 8, 72 ; are 342 "; or "20 times 18, 360 ; - 18, are 342 ". Though the answer is reached circuitously, the successive steps are yet rigidly connected. Every move in the total act is remembered like the moves in any common bodily routine process. There