AUTOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 165 



that the cerebrum does not directly transmit any fibres to the 

 muscular system ; but that its operations are exerted through those 

 fibres which pass between the surface of the hemispheres and the 

 chain of ganglionic centres at the base of the cranium that con- 

 stitutes the summit of the automatic apparatus. And thus, as the 

 sensorium plays (so to speak) upon the cerebrum, sending to it 

 sensations in order to call forth its activity as the instrument of 

 the purely mental operations, so does the cerebrum, in its turn, 

 play downwards upon the motor portion of the automatic ap- 

 paratus, sending it volitional impulses, which excite its motorial 

 activity. Thus, even what we are accustomed to consider our 

 volufitary movements, are in their immediate and essential nature 

 automatic ; their peculiar character being, that whereas the ordi- 

 nary automatic movements are excited by external stimuli, im- 

 pressional or sensational, conveyed by the afferent nerves, the 

 volitional movements are excited by a stimulus proceeding from 

 the cerebrum, and conveyed along what Reil, with great sagacity, 

 termed the nerves of the internal senses. 



The views which we have advanced as to the really automatic 

 character of voluntary movements, and the inclusion of the 

 sensorial centres in the automatic, rather than in the cerebral, 

 division of the apparatus, appear to us to be in most singular 

 harmony with the phenomena of those movements which were 

 not unaptly designated by Hartley as " secondarily automatic," 

 having been voluntary in the first instance, but having been 

 brought by habit into more or less complete independence of 

 the will. Such actions, in fact, take the place in man of those 

 which are primarily and purely automatic in many of the lower 

 animals. Take, for example, the movements of progression. In 

 the first instance they are performed in sole respondence to the 

 will. Whilst the child is learning to walk, every single effort has 

 a voluntary source ; but still its immediate dependence on the 

 automatic mechanism is evident in the necessity for attention to 

 the guiding sensations as the regulators of the voluntary effort 

 As the habit of movement becomes more and more established, 

 however, we are able to withdraw both the attention and the 

 voluntary effort, to such a degree that at last it is only necessary 

 for the will to start or commence the actions, and to permit their 



