If he has been playing the violin, he may have
done all the above, and may also have been walking about. Herr Joachim
would unquestionably be able to do all that has here been described.
So complete may be the player's unconsciousness of the attention he is
giving, and the brain power he is exerting, that we may find it difficult
to awaken his attention to any particular part of his performance without
putting him out. Indeed we cannot do so. We observe that he finds it
hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary consciousness of what he has
once learnt so thoroughly that it has passed, so to speak, into the
domain of unconsciousness, than he found it to learn the note or passage
in the first instance. The effort after a second consciousness of detail
baffles him--compels him to turn to his music or play slowly. In fact it
seems as though he knows the piece too well to be able to know that he
knows it, and is only conscious of knowing those passages which he does
not know so thoroughly.
At the end of his performance, his power of recollecting appears to be no
less annihilated than was his consciousness of attention and volition.
For of the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both the one and
the other, which he has done during the five minutes, we will say, of his
performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over.
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