832 Dynamic Theory. 



CHAPTER LXXV. 



AUTOMATIC ACTION OF THE CEREBRUM. 



A great many facts which have been presented in former chapters, 

 compel the conclusion that the cerebrum is automatic in its actions, the 

 same as the other ganglionic centers of the brain. The terms volun- 

 tary and automatic, do not describe opposing and contrasted relations 

 between actions. Voluntary actions constitute a rather small subdivision 

 of the whole mass of actions which, taken either together, or sepa- 

 rately, are automatic. The cerebrum, like every other automaton, con- 

 sists of mutually limiting and regulating parts, driven by an energy 

 or energies, supplied from without. Under the same conditions its 

 actions are the same. But the conditions are seldom twice precisely 

 alike, so that the resulting actions differ, and become antecedently un- 

 ascertainable because we cannot see what the conditions are. In fact, 

 men have often been led to think there were no conditions, and so come 

 to the untenable conclusion that a being thus constituted is a sovereign, 

 and free. 



The automatic action of the cerebrum is more readily perceived and 

 admitted in the case of people of genius, whose mental products and 

 physical movements are unusual, and therefore eccentric. They are 

 said to be people deficient in will, because they are liable to unusual 

 stimulations, and to perform actions not common to the general run of 

 mankind; who are supposed to have a will, because their actions plod 

 along after a stereotyped and uniform pattern, not liable to spurts and 

 eccentricities, and therefore of a nature to be predicted and anticipated. 

 The poet Coleridge has been mentioned as a sample genius. One day 

 after reading the account, by Purchas, of the Kahn Kubla and his pal- 

 ace at Xanadu, he fell asleep from the effect of opium he had taken, 

 and in a dream or vision the words of the poem, beginning 

 " In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn 



A stately pleasure dome decree," 



came to him, and he wrote them down as soon as he awoke. This is 

 certainly a plain specimen of automatic cerebral action. Coleridge 

 once sold a poem he had composed and could recite from memory, but 

 had not written down. He got his p&y in driblets, but never could com- 

 mand resolution enough to write it out according to promise. This is 

 quoted as proof of a deficient will, with the false idea that people with 

 deficient wills are more automatic than others. As shown in chapter 

 70, the will is the resultant of motives, which in some cases reinforce, 

 and in Others tend to neutralize each other. In the former case, the 

 will appears strong and positive ; in the latter, weak and vacillating. 



