1852. ] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, 153 
own train of thought, that he does not perceive the objects around 
them, although his movements are obviously guided by the impres- 
sions which they make upon his sensorium. And he adverted to a 
very remarkable case, in which the functional activity of the Cere- 
brum seemed to have been almost entirely suspended for nearly a 
twelvemonth, and all the actions of the individual presented the 
automatic characters of consensual and reflex movements. 
On the same grounds, it seems reasonable to suppose that when 
ideas do not go on to be developed into emotions, or to excite intel- 
lectual operations, they, too, may act (so to speak) in the transverse 
direction, and may produce respondent movements, through the 
instrumentality of the Cerebrum; and this will of course be most 
likely to happen, when the power of the Will is in abeyance, as has 
been shown to be the case in regard to the direction of the thoughts, 
in the states of Electro-biology, Somnambulism, and all forms of 
Dreaming and Reverie. Here the movements express the ideas that 
may possess the mind at the time; with these ideas, emotional states 
may be mixed up, and even intellectual operations may be (as it 
were) automatically performed under their suggestive influence. But 
so long as these processes are carried on without the control and 
direction of the Will, and the course of thought is entirely deter- 
mined by suggestions from without, (the effects of which, however, 
are diversified by the mental constitution and habits of thought of the 
individual) such movements are as truly automatic, as are those more 
directly prompted by sensations and impressions, although origina- 
ting in a more truly psychical source. But the automatic nature of 
the purely emotional actions can scarcely be denied; and as it is in 
those individuals in whom the intellectual powers are the least ex- 
ercised, and the controlling power of the Will is the weakest, that 
the Emotions exert the strongest influence on the bodily frame, so 
may we expect Ideas to act most powerfully when the dominance of 
the Will is for the time completely suspended. 
Thus the ideo-motor principle of action finds its appropriate place 
in the physiological scale, which would, indeed, be incomplete without 
it. And, when it is once recognized, it may be applied to the 
explanation of numerous phenomena which have been a source of 
perplexity to many who have been convinced of their genuineness, 
and who could not see any mode of reconciling them with the known 
laws of nervous action. The phenomena in question are those which 
have been recently set down to the action of an ‘‘ Od-force,” such, 
for example, as the movements of the ‘divining-rod,’ and the 
vibration of bodies suspended from the finger; both which have been 
clearly proved to depend on the state of expectant attention on the 
part of the performer, his Will being temporarily withdrawn from 
control over his muscles by the state of abstraction to which his 
mind is given up, and the anticipation of a given result being the 
stimulus which directly and involuntarily prompts the muscular 
movements that produce it, 
[W. B. C.] 
