490 PSYCHOLOGY. 



tremble and sink without his being aware of it. He asserted still his 

 ability to keep it up. . . . Passively holding still his fingers did not 

 aflfect him. He thought constantly that he opened and shut his hand, 

 whereas it was really fixed." 



Or we read of cases like this : 



" Voluntary movements cannot be estimated the moment the patient 

 ceases to take note of them by his eyes. Thus, after having made him 

 close his eyes, if one asks him to move one of his limbs either wholly or 

 in part, he does it but cannot tell whether the effected movement is 

 large or small, strong or weak, or even if it has taken place at all. And 

 when he opens his eyes after moving his leg from right to left, for 

 example, he declares that he had a very inexact notion of the extent of 

 the effected movement. ... If, having the intention of executing a 

 certain movement, I prevent him, he does not perceive it, and supposes 

 the limb to have taken the position he intended to give it." * 



Or this : 



"The patient, when his eyes were closed in the middle of an 

 unpractised movement, remained with the extremity in the position it 

 had when the eyes closed and did not complete the movement properly. 

 Then after some oscillations the limb gradually sank by reason of its 

 weight (the sense of fatigue being absent). Of this the patient was not 

 aware, and wondered, when he opened his eyes, at the altered position 

 of his limb." f 



A similar condition can be readily reproduced experi- 

 mentally in many hj^pnotic subjects. All that is needed is 

 to tell a suitably predisposed person during the hypnotic 

 trance that he cannot feel his limb, and he will be quite 

 unaware of the attitudes into which you may throw it.:): 



All these cases, whether spontaneous or experimental, 

 show the absolute need of guiding sensations of some kind 

 for the successful carrying out of a concatenated series of 

 movements. It is, in fact, easy to see that, just as where the 

 chain of movements is automatic (see above, Vol. I. p. 116), 

 each later movement of the chain has to be discharged by 

 the impression which the next earlier one makes in being 



* Landry : Memoire sur la Paralysis du Sens Musculaire, Gazette des 

 Hopitaux, .1855, p. 270. 



f Takacs : Ueber die Verspittung der Emptindungsleitung, Archiv ffir 

 Psychiatrie, Bd. x. Heft 2, p. 533. Concerning all such cases see there 

 marks made above on pp. 205-6. 



i. Proceedings of American Soc. for Psychical Research, p. 95. 



