138 OF VITAL MOTION. 



continued to do the same, without seeming to be 

 aware of the difference ; but if the question was put 

 to him in German, the answer was in German, there 

 being in this case his same inability to reply in Eng- 

 lish, if wished to do so, as there had been when 

 required to give a German answer to an English 

 question. In this case, therefore, the words would 

 seem to have been dictated by another person rather 

 than by the mind of the speaker, and thus the tongue 

 of the child may be said to test the actual presence of 

 mind beyond the bodily limits in which the impulse 

 originated. 



In part, also, we may suppose an adult to have 

 been affected in the same way, when, in conversation 

 (as not unfrequently happens) he has been irresistibly 

 led to give utterance to words which it would have 

 been prudent to conceal from his companion, and 

 which words, moreover, he had fully resolved to con- 

 ceal. And so in all probability it is with all : for if 

 we examine ourselves, we find it impossible to account 

 for all the words we utter by referring them to the 

 will for their origin. 



It is the same, also, in relation to ideas^ as may be 

 seen in many ways. There is, however, a page in the 

 " Sylva Sylvarum" which shows very clearly the 

 influence of one mind in infixing an idea in another 

 person, and this I shall quote as a better illustration 

 than any I can furnish from my own experience : 



