294 NATURE AND MAN. 



The only difference between the case of the reader-aloud 

 and that of the telegraph-clerk, is that the words whose visual 

 pictures have fallen on the retina, are expressed in the one case 

 by acts of vocalization, in the other by a special kind of finger- 

 language. So, the case of the musical performer who continued 

 to play quadrilles in her sleep, is analogous to that of the ambula- 

 tory thinker ; a previously acquired succession of movements, 

 once initiated, going on without conscious direction ; each move- 

 ment being suggested by that which preceded it, and itself 

 suggesting the next. 



The same explanation seems to me to be legitimately ap- 

 plicable to the case of the French sergeant, on which great stress 

 is laid by Professor Huxley {loc. cit. p. 568) as indicating that 

 what we are accustomed to call voluntary action in ourselves is 

 really automatic. For, as a consequence of a wound in the head 

 received at Gravelotte, this man frequently passed spontaneously 

 into a state closely resembling that of the artificially-induced 

 hypnotism, whose phenomena are described in the latter part 

 of this treatise. The essential peculiarity of this state is the 

 suspension of the directing and controlling power of the Will ; 

 so that the whole course of action is determined automatically 

 by suggestion. And its phenomena, so far from affording 

 any evidence that the same is the case in our normal state, 

 and that what we call Will is only the " symbol in conscious- 

 ness "of a material change which would equally take place without 

 it, seem to me to testify exactly the contrary. For we cannot help 

 recognizing a marked difference between the normal and the 

 abnormal states of such subjects ; and, as I think I have demon- 

 strated in my discussion of these and of allied states, that 

 difference essentially consists in the suspension in the latter 

 state of that volitional power, which in the former directs and 

 controls the successions of thought and action. And on the 

 recognition of this difference will depend our appreciation of the 

 relative moral " responsibility " of the subjects of these states, for 

 the same actions performed in the normal and in the abnormal con- 

 ditions respectively. Thus we should hold the French sergeant 

 fully "responsible" for any theft he might commit when in full 

 possession of his wits; and yet for the very same action per- 



