The best golf-player does not think, as he plays his stroke, of the hundred-and-one muscular contractions which, accurately co-ordinated, result in his making a fine drive or a perfect approach; nor does the pianist examine the order of movement of his fingers. His “sub-liminal self,” his “unconscious cerebration,” attends to these details without his conscious intervention, and all the better for the absence of what the nerve-physiologists call “cerebral inhibition”—that is to say, the delay or arrest due to the sending round of the message or order to the muscles by way of the higher brain-centres, instead of letting it go directly from a lower centre without the intervention of the seats of attention and consciousness. The sneezing caused in most people by a pinch of ordinary snuff can be rendered impossible by “cerebral inhibition,” set up by a wager with the snuff-taking victim that he will fail to sneeze in three minutes, however much snuff he may take. His attention to the mechanism of the anticipated sneeze, and his desire for it, inhibit the whole apparatus. So long as you can make him anxious to sneeze and fix his attention on the effort to do so, by a judicious exhortation at intervals, he will not succeed in sneezing. When the three minutes are up, and you both have ceased to be interested in the matter, he will probably sneeze unexpectedly and sharply. I was set on to this train of thought by a recent visit to an exhibition of photographs.

There were many very interesting illustrations of the application of photography to scientific investigation. Among others I saw a fine enlarged photograph of the common millipede (Julus terrestris), and my desire was renewed to have a bioscopic film-series of the movements of this creature’s legs. Some years ago I attempted to analyse, and published an account of, the regular rhythmic movement of the legs of millipedes. I found that the “phases” of forward and backward swing are presented in groups of twelve pairs of legs, each pair of legs being in the same phase of movement as the twelfth pair beyond it. But instantaneous photography would give complete certainty about the movement in this case, and in the case of the even more beautiful “rippling” movement of the legs of some of the marine worms. Some kindly photographer might take up the investigation and prepare a series of films. The problem is raised and the effects of “cerebral inhibition” described in a little poem which I am told we owe to the author of “Lorna Doone.” As it is not widely known, I give it here as a record of “cerebral inhibition”:

The point, of course, is that she could execute the complex movement of her legs well enough until her brain was set to work and her conscious attention given to the matter. Then “cerebral inhibition” took place and she broke down.