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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: which commonly effect a useful end may, under the changed circumstances
of disease, do great mischief, becoming even the occasion of violent
suffering and of a most painful death."
It is scarcely credible that the movements of a headless frog,
when it wipes off a drop of acid or other object from its thigh,
and which movements are so well coordinated for a special purpose,
were not at first performed voluntarily, being afterwards rendered easy
through long-continued habit so as at last to be performed unconsciously,
or independently of the cerebral hemispheres.
So again it appears probable that starting was originally acquired
by the habit of jumping away as quickly as possible from danger,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
