Artificial Reflex Actions may be Acquired

Or, to take Huxley’s way of putting the case :–

“By the help of the brain we may acquire an infinity of artificial reflex actions; that is to say, an action may require all our attention and all our volition for its first, second, or third performance, but by frequent repetition it becomes, in a manner, part of our organization, and is performed without volition or even consciousness.

“As every one knows, it takes a soldier a long time to learn his drill – for instance, to put himself into the attitude of ‘attention’ at the instant the word of command is heard.  But after a time the sound of the word gives rise to the act, whether the soldier be thinking of it or not.  There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out ‘Attention!’ whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter.  The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man’s nervous structure.

“The possibility of all education (of which military drill is only one particular form) is based upon the existence of this power which the nervous system possesses, of organizing conscious actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex, operations.  It may be down laid as a rule, that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the one of them will suffice to call up the other, and that whether we desire it or not.”[1]