GENERAL SUMMARY. 649 







suggestions excite being determined by the mental constitution and habits of 

 thought of the individual), so long must the actions proceeding from them be 

 considered as manifestations of the "reflex" power of the Cerebrum, and conse- 

 quently as no less automatic in their character, than are those which result from 

 the reflex power of the Cranio-Spinal axis. Those actions which proceed from 

 simple ideas, without any excitement of feeling, may be designated as ideo-motor ; 

 whilst those which spring from a passion or emotion may be termed emotional. 

 The automatic nature of the purely emotional actions can scarcely be denied; 

 when the passions are strongly excited, their impulses even acquire the mastery 

 over the strongest exertion of the Will; and it is in individuals in whom the 

 habitual control of the will is the weakest, that we observe the emotions to act 

 most powerfully on the bodily frame. 



684. The dominant power of the Will, not only over every act of the nervo- 

 muscular apparatus which is not immediately concerned in the maintenance of 

 the vital functions, but over the course of purely psychical action, is probably 

 the most distinctive attribute of the Human mind in its highest phase of deve- 

 lopment; and it is that which gives to each individual the freedom of action, 

 which every one is conscious to himself that he is capable of exerting. Not- 

 withstanding the evidences of rationality which many of the lower animals present, 

 and the manifestations which they display of emotions that are similar to our 

 own, there is no ground to believe that they have any of that controlling power 

 over their psychical operations which we possess : on the contrary, all observa- 

 tion seems to lead to the conclusion, that they are under the complete domina- 

 tion of the ideas and emotions by which they are for the time possessed, and 

 have no power either of repressing these by a forcible act of Will, or of turning 

 the attention, by a like voluntary effort, into another channel. In this respect, 

 then, their condition resembles that of the dreamer, the somnambule, or the 

 insane patient, in all of whom this voluntary control is suspended, and who 

 (when their minds are susceptible of external impressions) may be so " played 

 upon" by the suggestion of ideas, that any respondent action consistent with 

 the habitual mental state of the individual, may be evoked by an appropriate 

 stimulus; just as we see in the case of animals that are trained to the performance 

 of particular sets of movements, which are executed in respondence to certain 

 promptings conveyed to them through their sensorium. Now between the com- 

 plete want of this controlling power of the Will, and the most perfect possession 

 of it, every intermediate gradation is presented by the several individuals which 

 make up the Human species ; some persons being so much accustomed, in con- 

 sequence of the weakness of their Will, to act directly upon intellectual or emo- 

 tional suggestions, that they can scarcely be said to be voluntary agents; and 

 others allowing certain dominant ideas or habitual feelings to gain such a mastery 

 over them, as to exercise that determining power which the Will alone ought to 

 exert. This gradation may be perfectly traced in children, in whose education 

 the development of the faculty of " self-control" should be a leading object; and 

 it is also displayed in some of those phases of mental Imbecility, which result 

 from a deficiency of the power of fixing the attention upon any object of con- 

 sciousness, and of withdrawing it from external objects that tend to distract the 

 mind by suggesting new ideas and trains of thought. On this power of self- 

 direction, indeed, all the higher developments of intellectual power almost essen- 

 tially depend ; and we shall hereafter see how largely it is concerned in that 

 progressive exaltation of the Moral nature, which, even more than Intellectual 

 capacity, tends to bring the Human soul into relation with its Creator. 



685. This directing power of the Will seems to be most strongly exerted, 

 however, over those actions which are most closely connected with psychical 

 changes, and which are exclusively Cerebral in their seat. It has been already 

 pointed out, that the Cranio-spinal axis not merely serves as the channel for the 



