GENERAL RECAPITULATION, PATHOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. 833 



whilst we have an almost unlimited power of turning to the best account the 

 endowments we possess, by strengthening our intellectual powers, expanding 

 our higher emotional tendencies, and bringing the lower under wholesome 

 restraint, we cannot, by any effort of the Will, introduce new elements into our 

 psychical nature. 1 



VI. The power of the Cerebrum to call forth muscular movements is entirely 

 exerted through the intermediation of the Cranio-Spinal Axis upon which it is 

 superimposed ; no motor fibres directly issuing from the Cerebrum itself. These 

 movements, when directly determined by the Will, may be designated as Voli- 

 tional ; when they are involuntarily excited by states of passion, feeling, &c., of 

 which they are the external expressions, they are distinguished as Emotional ; 

 and when they are prompted, in the absence of any volitional exertion, by domi- 

 nant ideas, they may be termed IdeationaL In each case the nerve-force trans- 

 mitted downwards from the Cerebrum appears to produce the very same state 

 of activity in the Sensori-motor apparatus as that which may be directly excited 

 in it by impressions transmitted from the Organs of Sense ', and thus the same 

 instrumentality serves for all classes of movements, voluntary and involuntary ; 

 the difference in their character being solely referable to the diversity of their 

 primal source. 



vii. The Cerebrum being the instrument of all psychical activity, we must 

 regard its action as disordered in every state in which that activity is perverted. 

 The first degree of departure from the normal state is usually shown in the 

 want of Volitional control over the sequence of thought ; and this may exist 

 merely to the extent of giving the reflex power of the organ too great a predomi- 

 nance, so that trains of thought and states of feeling succeed each other automa- 

 tically, and all the actions of the individual are simply the expressions of these. 

 Such is the mental state which exists in Reverie and in Somnambulism, natu- 

 ral or induced ; the principal varieties in these states being traceable to the rela- 

 tive degree of influence of ideas already fixed in the mind, and of external sug- 

 gestions, in determining the course of thought. It is to be remarked, in regard 

 to these conditions, however, that they are generally characterized by a some- 

 what inactive state of the Cerebrum, so that the changes in the state of con- 

 sciousness are not rapid, but such as do occur are coherent. 3 In Dreaming, 

 Delirium, and the artificial Delirium of Intoxication, on the other hand, with a 

 like absence of the directing and restraining power of the Will, there is a 

 greater and more irregular activity in the Cerebral operations, the ideas pre- 



1 No one has ever acquired the creative power of genius, or made himself a great artist 

 or a great poet, or gained by practice that peculiar insight which characterizes the original 

 discoverer ; for these gifts are mental instincts or intuitions, which may be developed and 

 strengthened by due cultivation, but which can never be generated de novo. It not unfre- 

 quently happens, however, that the gift lies dormant, until some appropriate impression 

 excites it into activity. Such is especially the case with regard to the higher Moral Feel- 

 ings, which are too often so completely repressed by the degrading influences under 

 which the youthful mind expands itself, that they might be considered as altogether want- 

 ing. Though dormant, however, they are rarely extinct, and may be called into activity 

 by appropriate management. It has been by faith in this principle, and by skill in its 

 application, that those have achieved the greatest success who have recently devoted them- 

 selves to the much-needed work of Juvenile Reformation. (See " Reformatory School," by 

 Mary Carpenter.) 



2 In most forms of induced Somnambulism, it appears as if the mental activity is only 

 sustained by external prompting, all spontaneous activity being suspended; for the "sub- 

 ject" continually relapses into a state of unconsciousness, and does not pass from one sub- 

 ject to another unless induced to do so by "leading questions." In some cases of this 

 kind, however, as well as in all those forms of natural Somnambulism in which the individual 

 acts on the spontaneous promptings of his own thoughts, the mental state is one of con- 

 tinuous activity ; but it is obvious that its operations are slow, and are very limited in 

 their nature. 



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