THE CEREBRUM, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 769 



emotional excitement will thus in great degree depend upon the intellectual 

 constitution which the individual may happen to possess. For if he have a 

 considerable power of abstraction and concentration, and a full conviction that 

 he has selected the best or the only means to accomplish his end, the intensest 

 fear of the consequences of failure will only increase the force of the motive 

 which prompts the effort; and the whole energy of which his nature is capable 

 will display itself in the attempt. In a man of this temperament, the most 

 joyous anticipation of success will produce no abatement of his efforts, no dis- 

 traction of his attention; but will rather tend to keep him steady to his purpose 

 until it shall have been accomplished; and then only does he dare to abandon 

 himself to the current of ideas which rolls in upon his consciousness, so soon as 

 his attention is free to entertain them. But the mind which is deficient in the 

 power of concentrativeness is lamentably deranged by any kind of emotional 

 excitement in the performance of any voluntary effort. For the fear of failure 

 is constantly suggesting to him new distresses, weakens his confidence in any 

 method suggested for his action, and makes him direct his attention, not to 

 some fixed plan as the best or the only feasible one, but to any and every means 

 that may present a chance of success, or may even serve to avert his thoughts 

 from the dreaded catastrophe; whilst, on the other hand, the joyous anticipation 

 of success leads him to allow his thoughts to direct themselves towards all its 

 agreeable consequences, instead of fixing his intellectual and volitional energy 

 upon the means by which success is to be attained. 



800. If this be the true solution of the mode in which the Emotions chiefly 

 affect the exercise of our Volitional powers, we should expect that similar effects 

 might be induced, without any Emotional excitement, by means which affect 

 the Intellectual consciousness alone ; and that thus an action otherwise impos- 

 sible to the individual may be performed by him, if (1) his mind be possessed 

 with a full assurance of success, and (2) his entire motor energy be concentrated 

 in the single exertion ; whilst, on the other hand, an action which can be or- 

 dinarily performed with the greatest facility may become absolutely impossible 

 to him, if (1) his mind be entirely possessed with the idea of its impossibility, 

 or even (2) if, while his judgment entertains doubts of success, his attention be 

 distracted by a variety of objects, so that he cannot bring it to bear upon the one 

 effort which may alone be needed. Now experience shows that such is really the 

 case; but as this experience is the most remarkable in regard to certain states of 

 the mind in which these two modes of operation may be worked in combination, it 

 will be sufficient to refer to them for the demonstration ( 822, 825). And 

 having now sufficiently considered the physiological conditions of the purely 

 Emotional actions which, in regard alike to the state of consciousness wherein 

 they originate, and to the share which the Sensorial centres have in generating 

 that state, may be considered as most nearly allied to the Consensual we pass 

 on to those Psychical operations, of which the Cerebrum must be regarded as 

 the exclusive instrument. 



801. Though it is now universally admitted among Psychologists that the 

 mind does not come into existence with thoughts ready formed, or u innate ideas," 

 yet there are few who will deny that we are born with such tendencies to thought, 

 that, when these are called into activity, certain results are sure to follow ; and 

 further, that whilst there is a certain fundamental similarity in these tendencies 

 to thought, among all minds of ordinary constitution so that, when excited 

 to action in the same manner, the same results shall be evolved yet that there 

 is such a diversity in the relative degree of these tendencies in different indi- 

 viduals, as of itself becomes a source of different habits of thought. But the 

 habits of thought are also determined in great degree by the influence of the 

 emotions ; for, whilst we are disposed to give ourselves up to the contemplation 

 of subjects with which pleasurable feelings are connected, we are equally prone 



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