6o MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



true character of volitional as distinguished from automatic 

 action. It involved a free surrender of the earlier deter- 

 minism. From this time he ceased to teach that all human 

 actions were " the results of the operation of circumstances 

 " upon the mental constitution of each individual according 

 " to fixed laws." He recognized the share which each man 

 may take in the formation of his own character. This 

 thought grew in importance as his observation and ex- 

 perience extended. He studied the type of spontaneous 

 activity presented by the musical genius of Mozart, in 

 whom the creative energy was at its height while the will 

 was weak and impulse strong ; and he took the keenest 

 interest in the mental action of Coleridge, whose life he 

 regarded " as a sort of waking dream, in regard to the 

 " deficiency of that self-determining power which is the pre- 

 " eminent characteristic of every great mind." Convinced 

 that the true nature of volitional action would be best 

 understood by the examination of those states in which the 

 will is completely in abeyance, he set himself to investigate 

 the condition in which the courses of thought were entirely 

 determined by the influence of suggestions upon the mind, 

 and to compare this with the habitual control and direction 

 exerted in the formation of a decision between various 

 plans of action. This line of inquiry was in part physio- 

 logical and in part psychological : its base lay in the 

 nervous system, from which it was carried up into the 

 operations of the consciousness. A few passages from an 

 article on " The Physiology and Diseases of the Nervous 

 System," published in his Review for January, 1850,* will 

 show the progress which he was making in the interpreta- 

 tion of the mechanism of action and its relation to feelings 

 and ideas ; his doctrine, that the will determines the result, 

 while the automatic apparatus of the body supplies the 



* See below, p. 164. 



