This habit of abstraction--properly a complete _passivity_ of the
mind--after a while developed another habit, in which I now see the root
of that peculiar condition which made me a Medium. I shall therefore
endeavor to describe it. I was sitting, one Sunday, just as the minister
was commencing his sermon, with my eyes carelessly following the fingers
of my right hand, as I drummed them slowly across my knee. Suddenly, the
wonder came into my mind,--How is it my fingers move? What set them
going? What is it that stops them? The mystery of that communication
between will and muscle, which no physiologist has ever fathomed, burst
upon my young intellect. I had been conscious of no intention of thus
drumming my fingers; they were in motion when I first noticed them: they
were certainly a part of myself, yet they acted without my knowledge or
design! My left hand was quiet; why did its fingers not move also?
Following these reflections came a dreadful fear, as I remembered Jane,
the blacksmith's daughter, whose elbows and shoulders sometimes jerked
in such a way as to make all the other scholars laugh, although we were
sorry for the poor girl, who cried bitterly over her unfortunate,
ungovernable limbs.
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