while the physiological function they consequently accomplish by no means increases in an equal proportion. Thus it is that in this congestive period the normal process of the evolution of personality is exaggerated in so characteristic a manner. At this period, indeed, the personality of the individual is raised several degrees above its normal pitch. It extends, enlarges,* swells out, with the morphological elements upon which it lives, and the patient, hurried into that fatal cycle, feels himself richer, greater, stronger than he was before. He speaks of himself, his physical health, which is splendid, of the riches he has accumulated, of his social importance, which is immense--he has become a king, an emperor, a pope, etc.

Under contrary conditions, when the plexuses of the sensorium no longer receive a sufficient quantity of blood, as regards their assimilative properties, inverse phenomena are produced.

The elements of the sensorium are affected with a species of general torpor which causes their vital energies to sink below their normal pitch, and they accordingly exhibit that general condition of diffused languishing of the mental forces, in which the processes of personality are only manifested in a dull, vague, and diffuse manner. The patients, then a prey to certain forms of melancholy with stupor, present a more or less complete passivity, an apathy and profound indifference for all that comes in contact with them; and usually this torpid condition is only the return effect of a sort of anesthesia of the central regions

* I have seen a patient, in the congestive stage of general paralysis, who assured me every morning that he had grown a foot higher.

which goes hand in hand with that of the peripheral · regions.*

There is still another series of morbid phenomena in which the notion of personality, and consciousness of the external world may be suddenly suspended by the effect of a momentary arrest of the circulation in the plexuses of the sensorium.

We now know, thanks to the labours of modern physiology, that intra-cephalic circulatory disturbances are frequent in epileptics, and that at the moment of the attack the loss of consciousness is produced by a spasm of the vessels, which interferes with the course of the blood through the cerebral substance. It sometimes happens that these circulatory disturbances, far from taking place throughout all the extent of the regions of the sensorium, as at the moment of the great epileptic attacks with complete loss of consciousness, exercise their influence only within limited regions of the cerebral substance. There are then local arrests of circulation in certain cell-territories, which are for the moment in a state of collapse-true partial ischaemias while in others the cerebral activity continues its function in an independent manner. We see individuals, as if in a state of somnambulism, act unconsciously, commit extravagant actions, even crimes, without having any conscious idea of the things of the external world; and at the end of several hours, or even of several days, emerge from this condition of

* In a patient affected with melancholia with prolonged stupor ending in death, I succeeded in discovering a most characteristic condition of anæmia of the cerebral substance, which was as it were washed clean and deprived of sanguine materials.

partial stupor of their sensorium, quite astonished and stupified by the words they have pronounced and the deeds they have done during this period of interregnum of their conscious personality (unconscious alienations).* Finally, we may remember that the notion of our personality, which in its constitution and its very existence is under the jurisdiction of the organic machinery in the midst of which it lives, is regularly eclipsed every twelve hours, when the cerebral cells relapse into the condition of sleep.

The cerebral cell, in fact, like the peripheral cell (sensorial cells of the retina), becomes fatigued at the end of a certain period of activity; its sensibility becomes more or less rapidly dulled. It is fatigued, and perforce falls into a state of collapse, which is nothing but physiological sleep. At this period it ceases to attract blood to it, the circulation slackens, and in proportion as the period of sleep becomes better and better marked, and loss of consciousness of surrounding circumstances occurs, the notion of our personality at the same time grows dull, and finally becomes extinct, and this in a more or less complete manner, according to the temperament and habits of each person.

* See the cases of transitory mania reported in my work on the "Cerebral Reflex Actions," p. 137.

BOOK II.

PHASE OF PROPAGATION OF THE PROCESSES OF

CEREBRAL ACTIVITY.

CHAPTER I.

DISSEMINATION OF SENSORIAL IMPRESSIONS IN THE PLEXUSES OF THE PSYCHO-INTELLECTUAL SPHERE. GENESIS OF IDEAS.

WE have already seen that sensorial impressions, once received into the different regions of the cortical periphery, become dispersed in the plexuses of the sensorium, which constitutes for them a vast field of projection, and that, pursuing their course from this point onwards, they enter into particular relations, some with the sphere of psychical, others with that of purely intellectual, activity. In these cerebral regions they find the last stage of their long migrations through the organism. There they are concentrated and transformed, and, under new forms, having become intellectualized excitations of the psycho-intellectual sphere, they constitute the fundamental elements of all the phenomena of cerebral life.

There, in fact, these same sensorial excitations, incarnated in the living cell, become perpetuated as persistent excitations; to become, as it were, durable memorials of the first impression that gave birth to them. There they repose, in those infinite labyrinths of the psycho-intellectual sphere where they live, always alert, always brilliant, like faithfully-kept archives of the past of our intellect and emotions. There they form that common fund of ancient memories, accumulated from our earliest years, which gives birth to those fundamental-ideas which we always carry within us, and which are but radiations from the external world, that have previously been impressed upon us. They have lived with us for long years, and have assumed in a manner an independent existence, like foreign grafts implanted in our substance. The ideas and emotions which are nearest to us are, then, only direct reflexions and prolonged repercussions of the external world that have impressed us during our course through life; and this subtle operation, which commences with the earliest phases of our existence, is perpetuated, and perpetuates itself incessantly, by an incessant participation of the brain's own activity.

Each sensorial impression that affects us leaves a record, a specific memory; and it is this posthumous memory of the absent object that continues to vibrate, that perpetuates, vivifies, reinforces itself by means of excitations of the same pitch, which communicate to it a new freshness when it begins to grow feeble. The origin and permanence of our ideas, as of our emotions, depend upon this daily maintenance of persistent impressions.