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In the natural working of the body the stimulus to a muscle is nervous; hence we may appropriately, and often to advantage, speak of neuro-muscular mechanism, the nervous element being as important as the muscular.
The former involves memory of the tone; the latter, memories of former movements. Then, partly as a series of voluntary acts and partly reflexly, according as the student is more or less advanced, or the particular tone new or old in experience, do the various neuro-muscular arrangements pass into orderly action. In this process the ear is the chief guide, always in relation to memories.
Such neuro-muscular movements were racially old and fitted in with man's expressive life, and if it were accepted that the folk-dances really expressed an epitome of man's neuro-muscular history, as distinguished from mere permutation of movements, the folk-dance combinations should be preferred on these biological grounds to the unselected, or even the physiologically selected.
He must use preventions, or inhibitions, as the physiologists term them. Rather is it that he must avoid doing certain things i.e., modify his neuro-muscular processes or reflexes, than form wholly new ones. Were it not for reflexes and habits, learning would be so slow one lifetime would not suffice to make an artist.
In the next chapter some specific applications of the principles discussed in the foregoing pages will be considered. All forms of artistic and other expression imply movements. For a willed or voluntary movement there are required an idea, a neuro-muscular mechanism. Such movements may be relatively simple or highly complex.
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