ABSTRACT
WHEN we swallow a crumb we do not superintend the details of the process. It takes place, as we say, automatically, and so with coughing and sneezing, and closing our eye when something threatens to strike it, or drawing away our finger from a hot cinder. These, as we noticed in an earlier study, are called reflex actions, and they depend on linkages between certain nerve-cells and certain muscle-cells—linkages which are part of our inherited bodily structure. They are born in us. If we cross one leg over the other at the knee, and then get some one to strike the dangling leg firmly with the edge of his hand a little below the knee, our foot is jerked forcibly forwards and upwards. This “knee-jerk,” which is used as a test by doctors, is a good example of a reflex action. But we must not overlook the fact, that, automatic as the action may seem, we are aware of it. This means that a message has been sent to our brain, our conscious attention is aroused, and we know what our foot has done. We did not will the movement of our foot, or control it, or attend to it, but we may be conscious of it; and in this awareness there is a little glimmer of our “mind.”
