 To his critics, notably Reid and the later Coleridge, Hartley’s commitment to “mechanism” impeached the “freedom of the will” and hence moral responsibility. But where such critics were intent on affirming the adult self’s executive control over thought and action, Hartley’s concern is the opposite: he starts with the infant and asks, How does a child gain control of the originally automatic processes present in infancy? Gain motor control of her hands? Learn to walk, and dance? Play a musical instrument? Transform spontaneous burbling and crying into articulate speech? Hartley’s critics accuse him of reducing the human being to a “mere mechanism.” But from a Hartleian perspective, the “mechanism” of “secondarily automatic” actions is an achievement, not a given—and a necessary achievement, if one is to live a complete human life.