624 THE CEREBRAL RELATIONS OF 



either occurred to Mm spontaneously, or when they were slowly and 

 loudly repeated to him. He strenuously exerted himself to speak, 

 but an unintelligible kind of murmur was all that could be heard. 

 The effort he made was violent, and terminated in a deep sigh. On. 

 the other hand, he could read aloud with facility. If a book or 

 any written paper were held before his eyes, he read so quickly 

 and distinctly that it was impossible to observe that there was the 

 slightest fault in his organs of speech. But if the book or paper 

 were withdrawn he was then totally incapable of pronouncing one 

 of the words which he had read the instant before. I tried this 

 experiment with him repeatedly, not only in the presence of his 

 wife, but of many other people: the effect was uniformly the 

 same." 



Here it would appear that Words could not properly be 

 revived in the Auditory Centres by * volitional ' incitations, 

 and, consequently, that ' outgoing ' stimuli could not be 

 made to pass over from them to the motor centres con- 

 cerned in Speech. His difficulty in repeating words 

 (implying sluggishness of response of the Auditory Word- 

 Centre to direct ' sensory ' impressions) makes this case 

 hard to understand. The view that the molecular mobility 

 of this Centre itself was lowered, or that its emissive fibres 

 were damaged, is not in accord with the fact that it ap- 

 peared still to respond well to strong impulses coming to 

 it from the Visual Centre. And evidence will subsequently 

 be given, tending to show that in ' reading aloud ' the 

 Auditory Word- Centre is called into play, so that it 

 then acts as in ordinary Speech (p. 641). But there may 

 be exceptions to this rule. Both this case and the one 

 which follows would be more explicable if we might sup- 

 pose that motor incitations could, in some well practised 

 persons, pass over, in Reading, from the Visual Word- 

 Centre to the portions of the Kinaesthetic Word-Centre 

 in association with Speech-movements, without previously 

 passing through the Auditory Word-Centre. By analogy 

 it would seem quite possible that this may occur, 



