SUGGESTION AND MOVEMENT. 171 



Now if that ordinary 71 p7v a rd comsQ of external impressions — 

 whereby they successively produce sensations, ideas, emotions, 

 and intellectual processes, the will giving the final decision upon 

 the action to which they prompt — be anywhere interrupted, the 

 impression will then exert its power in a transverse direction, and 

 a "reflex" action will be the result. This is well seen in cases 

 of injury to the spinal cord, which disconnects its lower portion 

 from the sensorium without destroying its own power : for im- 

 pressions made upon the lower extremities then excite violent 

 reflex actions, to which there would have been no tendency if the 

 current of nervous force could have passed upwards to the cere- 

 brum. So, if sensations be prevented by the state of the cerebrum 

 from calling forth ideas through its instrumentality, they may 

 react upon the motor apparatus in a manner in which they would 

 never do in its state of complete functional activity. This the 

 Lecturer maintained to be the true account of the mode in 

 which the locomotive movements are maintained and guided in 

 states of profound abstraction, when the whole attention of the 

 individual is so completely concentrated upon his own train 

 of thought that he does not perceive the objects around him, 

 although his movements are obviously guided by the impressions 

 whicli they make upon his sensorium. And he adverted to a 

 very remarkable case, in which the functional activity of the 

 cerebrum seemed to have been almost entirely suspended for 

 nearly a twelvemonth, and all the actions of the individual 

 presented the automatic characters of consensual and reflex 

 movements. 



On the same grounds, it seems reasonable to suppose that 

 when ideas do not go on to be developed into emotions, or to 

 excite intellectual operations, they, too, may act (so to speak) in 

 the transverse direction, and may produce respondent movements 

 through the instrumentality of the cerebrum ; and this will of 

 course be most likely to happen when the power of the will is in 

 abeyance, as has been shown to be the case in regard to the 

 direction of the thoughts, in the states of electro-biology, somnam- 

 bulism, and all forms of dreaming and reverie. Here the move- 

 ments express the ideas that may possess the mind at the time ; 

 with these ideas, emotional states may be mixed up, and even 



