CHAP. VII.] THE BEUTE. 223 



chanced to alight upon a second somnambulist within reach ; his com- 

 bativeness being thereby excited, the two closed and began to belabour 

 one another with such energy that they were with difficulty separated. 

 Although their passions were at the moment so strongly excited that, 

 even when separated, they continued to utter furious denunciations 

 against each other, yet a little discreet manipulation of their muscles 

 soon calmed them, and put them into perfect good humour.&quot; 



A very singular and complete case of automatism has 

 occurred in France,* where a man who was severely wounded 

 in the head in the late war passes a day or two of each 

 month in a condition in which his consciousness seems 

 entirely to disappear, and every sense but touch is dormant, 

 while his acts are entirely directed through the suggestions 

 offered to him by objects he feels. 



But apart from all abnormality, such actions as walking 

 and talking, or playing the piano, show that wonderful 

 effects may be produced by the sensibility, apart from self- 

 consciousness, and show how wonderfully different is sense- 

 perception from thought. 



Miss Cobbe s remarks on this matter may be here referred 

 to. She says of music-playing : 



&quot; Here we seem not to have one alone, but a dozen. Two different 

 sets of hieroglyphics have to be read at once, and the right hand has 

 to be guided to attend to one of them, the left to another. All the ten 

 fingers have their work assigned as quickly as they can move. The 

 mind or something which does duty as mind interprets scores of 

 A sharps, and B flats and C naturals into black ivory keys and white 

 ones; crotchets and quavers and demisemiquavers, rests, and all the 

 mysteries of music. The feet are not idle, but have something to do 

 with the pedals ; and if the instrument be a double-action harp (or an 

 organ), a task of pushings and pullings more difficult than that of the 

 hands. And all this time the performer the conscious performer is 

 in the seventh heaven of artistic rapture at the results of all this tre 

 mendous business, or perchance lost in a flirtation with the individual 

 who turns the leaves of the music-book, and is justly persuaded she is 

 giving him the whole of her soul.&quot; (See Macmillan s Magazine, No 

 vember 1870, p. 26.) 



We could hardly wish for a stronger instance of how 

 sensations may coalesce and become agglutinated together in 



* See Medical Times for July 28th, 1874. This cr.se was cited by Pro 

 fessor Huxley, at Belfast. See Nature, of September 3rd, 1874, p. 304. 



