80 CEREBRAL FORCES. [r. 



healthy persons. Consequently, they are not peculiar to an 

 unnatural condition of animal bodies, but occur in the natural. 

 149. It will be worth the while to consider more closely the 

 origin of imperfect external sensations. A strongly sensational 

 conception makes a forcible impression in the brain, at the point 

 of origin of a certain nerve (144, 26). This is propagated 

 along the nerve to its terminating fibrils, which are thereby 

 stimulated and erected (147). This action imparts an external 

 impression to the fibrils, just as if they had been acted upon 

 from without, which is returned to the brain, and becomes an 

 imperfect external sensation (148). But inasmuch as the real 

 external circumstance is wanting, the question arises, what is 

 really felt imperfectly ? The answer is as follows : The sen- 

 sational conception from which the whole delusion arises, pos- 

 sesses the sub-impressions (merkmale) of a past or future ex- 

 ternal sensation (66), and their material ideas also partly excite, 

 at the origin of the nerve which they impress, the corresponding 

 material external sensation. This, which is a movement at the 

 cerebral origin of the nerve (43), and is now, in fact, its impres- 

 sion (121), is transmitted downwards to the terminal fibrils, and 

 there makes the baseless external impression, which is returned 

 to the brain, to the same point of the nerve whence it came. 

 The imperfect material external sensation thus excited is a 

 movement at the origin of the nerve, which is partly the same 

 as would have originated if the actual external thing, of which 

 the sensational conception contains sub-impressions, had made 

 an external impression on the terminal fibrils, and which is 

 only defective in that which the external impression alone can 

 supply, to render it a true external sensation. Now, since a 

 true external impression takes place, although without the 

 impression of a real external object, the imperfect external 

 sensation is thereby rendered more similar and equal to a true 

 external sensation, than it previously was by the sensational 

 conception alone. Further, the apparent object of the imperfect- 

 external sensation is always the object of that external past or 

 future sensation, which was already the basis of the con- 

 ception that constitutes the first element of the delusion. 

 Consequently, the maniac, the drunkard, the dreamer, the 

 soothsayer, the enamoured, the scorner, &c., each according 

 to their delusion, feel what their imaginations, foreseeings, 



