Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/198

 vulgar and artificial; and to singing, with its modes. I will add a few words concerning stammering and the loss of speech by palsies.

Stammering seems generally to arise from fear, eagerness, or some violent passion, which prevents the child’s articulating rightly, by the confusion which it makes in the vibrations that descend into the muscular system; so that, finding himself wrong, he attempts again and again, till he hits upon the true sound. It does not begin therefore in general, till children are of an age to distinguish right from wrong in respect of pronunciation, and to articulate with tolerable propriety. A nervous disorder of the muscles of speech may have a like effect. When the trick of stammering has once begun to take place in a few words, it will extend itself to more and more from very slight resemblances, and particularly to all the first words of sentences, because there the organs pass in an instant from inactivity to action; whereas the subsequent parts of words and sentences may follow the foregoing from association; just as, in repeating memoriter, one is most apt to hesitate at the first word in each sentence.

A defect of memory from passion, natural weakness, &c. so that the proper word does not occur readily, occasions stammering also. And, like all other modes of speaking, it is caught, in some cases, by imitation.

A palsy of the organs of speech may be occasioned in the same manner as any other palsy; and yet the muscles of the lips, cheeks, tongue, and fauces, may still continue to perform the actions of mastication and deglutition sufficiently well, because these actions are simpler than that of speech, and are also excited by sensations, which have an original influence over them.

A defect of memory may also destroy the power of speaking, in great measure, though the organs be not much affected in a paralytical way. Thus a person who plays well upon a harpsichord, may by some years’ disuse become unable to play at all, though the muscles of his hands be in a perfect state, merely because his memory, and the associations of the motions of his fingers, with the sight of notes, with the ideas of sounds, or with one another, are obliterated by distance of time, and disuse.

The suspension of an action may be performed two ways, as before-mentioned; viz. either by putting the muscles concerned in it into a languid inactive state, or by making the antagonists act with vigour. In the first case, the whole limb is put into a state of relaxation, and extreme flexibility; in the last, into a state of rigidity. The voluntary power of the first kind is obtained by associations with the languor that arises from fatigue, heat, sleepiness, &c. that of the last from the general tension of the muscles, which happens in pain, and violent emotions of mind. Children improve in both these kinds of voluntary power