ultimate period of an anterior operation of the judgment, constituted as we have already explained.

The human personality is seized upon by the arrival of the excitation emanating from the external world. It enters into participation and becomes associated with this; and from this intricate connection results a true intra-cerebral automatic radiation, which produces the apparition of a series of agglomerated secondary ideas. But the matter does not stop here; this inner personality having been thus seized upon, its sensibility having been touched in any manner whatever, has reacted by virtue of the vital forces that vibrate in it in a latent conditionit has been affected in the direction of its most profound affinities, and necessarily this reactionary period betrays itself by an unconscious desire for such or such a definite object, and by a repulsion from such or such another.

Desire, attraction, aversion, repulsion, are therefore new conditions of the sensorium which necessarily result in the natural course of things, and which thus become the primordial elements destined to constitute a process of voluntary activity.

2. The psychic operation which is to be resolved into an act of will is, then, in itself only the second bar of a movement already begun. It is only the regular expression of the human personality, seized on, and impressed by an old or recent excitation from the external world, and carrying back to the external world the different states of its sensibility in emotion, in the form of motor manifestations.

Hence, as a natural consequence, we come to the conclusion that the act of voluntary motion which is developed in the psychic regions, is nothing but a

subordinate fact, a secondary phenomenon, the direct resultant of the shock of the sensibility in emotion and the spontaneous reaction of the sensorium. Motor power is then, physiologically, nothing but sensibility transformed. The voluntary excitation comes to life in that subtle process in which the impressed human personality is aroused. From this reaction of the sensibility it emerges as a natural consequence, like a vital force in evolution; it is like an excito-motor process radiating from the sensitive regions of the spinal axis towards the anterior regions, which progresses motu proprio, develops, amplifies, perfects itself infallibly through the whole length of its journey, and expands in its last period into co-ordinated motor manifestations, the faithful dependents of the sensitive excitations that have given it birth.

CHAPTER II.

TRUE PERIOD OF EMISSION OF THE PROCESSES WHICH
PRODUCE VOLUNTARY MOTION. SPONTANEOUS

REACTION OF THE SENSORIUM. MOTIVED RESO-
LUTION.

LET us now see how the different periods of voluntary activity are connected one with another, and how the physiological operation pursues its course.

The process of external emission of the emotivity of the sensorium manifests itself externally, sometimes in a rapid and instantaneous manner, sometimes slowly, progressively, and after a greater or less period of time; this extrinsic revelation taking place either in the oral or graphic form, or in the shape of gestures more or less expressive, and varied attitudes.

In the first case, when the voluntary motor phenomenon is an immediate translation of external impressions, the human personality, aroused and vibrating, rapidly responds to the impressions that affect it. It outwardly expresses itself directly, now in the form of connected articulate sounds, which are appropriate answers to the interrogations that excite it, now in current conversations, in injunctions of all kinds, prolonged discourses, in writings, expressive movements, etc., etc. It expends the stores of emotivity that are

vibrating within it, and thus reflects the various sensitive currents that have set it vibrating.

Sensibility, therefore, underlies every motor act of the organism; and when we immediately answer to demands, when we let ourselves act upon the natural impulses of our sensibility, and, as it is called, do things on the spur of the moment, it is our personality that expands spontaneously, without artifice or premeditation. It reacts with its native and even frank characteristics, as though we had to do with physiological phenomena in natural evolution; for in these circumstances our words express our sentiments in an off-hand manner, and the compromises of meditation, and diplomatic reflection have not yet crossed our path to mask our natural spontaneity.

In a number of other cases the discharge does not take place in a rapid and immediate manner; there is, as it were, a cold maceration of the incident impression in the tissue of the sensorium, by which this impression is matured and modified by the mere action of the medium in which it remains.

When, in fact, we have to reflect, to mature a project, before coming to a resolution, the primitive idea, the first excitation, in arriving in the sensorium awakens a crowd of related reactions. It has been perceived in the form of sensorial vibrations, and these vibrations radiate to a distance into the different cell-territories. These latter, on being impressed, excite the automatic activity of those of the neighbourhood, and at the same time arouse related ideas and associated memories formerly registered; so that at the end of a period of sojourn in the sensorium, variable according to individual

temperament, this primitive impression has proliferated and slowly produced effects that reverberate to a distance.

More than this, the ideas of others, in the form of oral counsels, written advice, and auditory and optic impressions interpreted by the intellect, have come to join in, to group themselves around the primary excitation, and add a new weight to the operation in process of development.

Those reflections which either proceed from ourselves, or are inspired by the surrounding medium, are then converted into agglomerated motives or thoughts, destined to influence the direction of the voluntary process and direct its route.

Things being thus disposed, a delicate phase occurs in the cerebral operation that is being accomplished. The motives being all confronted with one another, with their intrinsic and extrinsic characters, the shades which characterise them, their relative value, what route will the process take? Under what form will it reveal itself; and in what manner will the conscious personality pronounce itself? *

* This delicate moment of the operation, by virtue of which the sensorium, when seized upon, reacts spontaneously and carries outwards the different conditions of its impressed sensibility, does not occur in some individuals without certain difficulties.

There are a great many persons, indeed, whose hesitation is the dominant note of their character. At the moment of making a resolution they dare not decide, but turn about in a persistent indecision, and remain in suspense when action is necessary. In more pronounced cases, where this psychological condition is still more distinctly marked, we find individuals thus affected recounting all the anxieties that besiege them when they are on the point of coming to a decision. They hesitate, tormented by a series of uncertainties, and if they have to speak or take up their pen to affix a signature, or perform any spou

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