Faculty of Speech and Speech-Centers
be accomplished through duration in time by concentrated and specific effort. It would hardly do to call the process automatic. If any process may be imputed to the will, certainly this one may be. Besides, it easily is demonstrable that until some modification of gray matter is effected, the process of learning to read does not take place.
The principle underlying the mastery of a language is exemplified in the well-known reaction of nerve to a stimulus. Usually the nerve-substance is only slightly disturbed at first; that is to say, the reaction is feeble and brief; but a continual repetition of the stimulus increases the disturbance, intensifies the reaction until through habit, or what not, a permanent alteration is brought about in the nerve-substance. A new function follows the alteration; the function becomes more and more nearly constant under successive acts of stimulation.
It is only through the “spirit’s plastic stress” and a corresponding susceptibility of
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