842 Dynamic Theory. 



was nothing more than the product of his unconscious cerebration, the 



interacting of his internal senses. 



It is true enough that the elements of this wonderful voice come from 

 our environment and originally are not "of" us. But the meeting of 

 these elements took place in our brain, and for the first time in the uni- 

 verse, by their interactions in our cerebral sense organs, was that voice 

 developed and built up, like our audible voice, with its peculiarities of 

 timbre, its clangs and harmonics, which make it different from any 

 other voice that ever was or ever will be. If anything about us is of us, if 

 the expressions of our faces are ours, then so is that internal voice. 



We are all of us like two persons secretly connected with each other. 

 The one is the small part of our internal senses which is in conscious 

 activity at this moment reinforced and modified by new sensory stimu- 

 lations. The other is the great body of our internal senses which work 

 away in silence. Neither of these remains the same for two consecu- 

 tive minutes. The activities of the first are recognized in a succession 

 of sensations ; those of the last flash into consciousness only upon the 

 stimulation of a special occasion. 



Sometimes when a man does something unusual and unworthy, it is 

 said of him, or by him, that " he was not himself " on that occasion. 

 The fact was, he was one of the selves which constitute his entirety, but 

 not the one he commonly prefers to exhibit. Under the overpowering 

 influence of unworthy external stimuli he may have acted in a manner 

 which gives offense to his inner better sensibilities ; or in the temporary 

 absence of usual worthy external stimuli, the internal bad character has 

 had a momentary chance to assert itself and instigate an improper act. 

 "When a man acts in an insane and outrageous manner, we sometimes 

 say " he is beside himself," as if we instinctively recognize the fact that 

 there are two of him, and that the one "beside" him, freed from usual 

 restraints, is now asserting himself. 



We conclude then that all action of the cerebrum is automatic or re- 

 flex ; the definition, reflex, applying to those actions which involve but 

 little or nothing more than the direct motor apparatus of the cerebrum 

 skipping the modifying influences of most of the cells of memory regis- 

 tration ; and the term automatic properly applying when the action does 

 receive in considerable part the modifying influences of the cells of 

 memory registration. It is obviously difficult to draw the line between 

 the reflex and automatic action of the cerebrum. Both sorts originate 

 at first in sense impressions from the environment. Some of these im- 

 pressions carry their influence into the memory cells, and there it stops 

 in the re-erection of old memories or the differentiation of new ones. 

 Some of them go on to motor action of muscles. The very same sort of 

 an impression may at one time do one of these things and at another 

 time the other one. It may do both. 



