LUTION.
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, pro gressively, 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 phenome non is an immediate translation of external impres sions, 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 sen sitive 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 person ality that expands spontaneously, without artifice or premeditation. It reacts with its native and even frank characteristics, as though we had to do with physio logical 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 excita tion, 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, des tined 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 ?* On this point, the controversies of philosophers and metaphysicians, which have been taking place from time immemorial, have succeeded in arriving at but one thing—the expression in sonorous language of their ignorance, more or less complete, of the fundamental characters of psychical life. We must, indeed, pene trate into the inmost essence of the activity of cerebral life, into the complex phenomena in which it reveals itself, to arrive at a comprehension of the evolution of any voluntary act whatsoever, and the natural manner in which it expresses itself through the organism.