6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
fact that the right hand is usually used in writing, as motor 
stimuli would cross over from the left to the right side, according 
to a well-known law or fact. He goes on to say, " Eemarkable 
cases of left-handed people, who have become aphasic through 
lesions of the right hemisphere, are actually recorded." It must 
be remembered that intelligence in other respects is apparently 
unimpaired ; the articulating muscles of mouth and voice are 
not paralysed, and can be used in other acts, as also the writing 
muscles of the hand and arm can be used voluntarily and 
intelligently. 
The illustration occurs to us that it is somewhat like a very 
complex railway junction, connecting a great many different lines, 
but some catastrophe has broken up all the lines, turning- tables, 
and shunting-levers, into a confused marsh of soft clay and broken 
iron ; so that when the trains come in from their separate courses 
they are lost, and can no more issue on the right routes. 
But what would Socrates have said to this — " I am he who 
is talking to you, not that which you will soon see buried "1 
Yet in this case we see that the " he who talks to you is gone 
and yet, at any rate, part of the intelligent being remains with 
his body, which is not yet buried. 
Shakespeare seems to have perceived the fact of there being 
subordinate motor centres. You may remember the scene in 
Macbeth, where he is waiting for the 1 ' time to arrive when he shall 
murder Duncan. The motive centre forms the idea of a dagger, 
which is about to be used ; but as the action cannot yet issue 
forth by the hands and arms, the intense excitement actually 
forces the idea down the optic nerves on to the retina, so that 
Macbeth fancies he sees a dagger in the air before him, and 
commences his soliloquy : 
" Is this a dagger which I see before me V &c. 
Also in Julius Ccesar, where Brutus is contemplating the 
assassination of Caesar. 
"Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : 
The genius and the mortal instruments 
Are then in council ; and the state of man, 
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
The nature of an insurrection." 
