Miscellanea. 357 
pletely 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 which 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 zdeas 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 pro- 
duce 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, Somnambulism, 
and all forms of Dreaming and Reverie. Here the movements express the 
ideas that may possess the mind at the time; with these ideas, emotional 
states may be mixed up, and even intellectual operations may he (as it 
were) automatically performed under their suggestive influence. But so 
long as these processes are carried on without the control and direction of 
the Will, and the course of thought is entirely determined by suggestions 
from without, (the effects of which, however, are diversified by the mental 
constitution and habits of thought of the individual), such movements are 
as truly automatic as are those more directly prompted by sensations and 
impressions, although originating in a more truly psychical source. But 
the automatic nature of the purely emotional actions can scarcely be 
denied ; and as it is in those individuals in whom the intellectual powers 
are the least exercised, and the controlling power of the Will is the 
weakest, that the Emotions exert the strongest influence on the bodily 
frame, so may we expect Ideas to act most powerfully when the dominance 
of the Will is for the time completely suspended. 
Thus the ideo-motor principle of action finds its appropriate place in the 
physiological scale, which would, indeed, be incomplete without it. And, 
when it is once recognized, it may be applied to the explanation of nume- 
rous phenomena which have been a source of perplexity to many who 
have been convinced of their genuineness, and who could not see any mode 
of reconciling them with the known laws of nervous action. The phe- 
nomena in question are those which have been recently set down to the 
action of an ‘“ Od-force,” such, for example, as the movements of the 
“ divining-rod,” and the vibration of bodies suspended from the finger ; 
both which have been clearly proved to depend on the state of expectant 
attention on the part of the performer, his Will being temporarily withdrawn 
from control over his muscles by the state of abstraction to which his mind 
is given up, and the anticipation of a given result being the stimulus which 
directly and involuntarily prompts the muscular movements that produce it. 
W. B.C. 
