Natural Predispositions.—In this second phase of the cerebral process, which is being accomplished, the human personality is seized on, as we have said, and inevitably associated in its evolution. Here a new peculiarity, which occupies an important place in the phenomena of cerebral life, comes in ; viz., the manner in which that personality is brought into play and the particular mode in which the sensorial excitation has affected it.
We have already insisted (p. 43) upon the curious re lations that exist between the different provinces of the cortical substance and certain centres of the optic thalami with which they are more particularly con nected. We have thus shown that such or such a group of sensorial impressions was more especially distributed to such or such a region of the cerebral cortex ; and we have at the same time made it clear to what an extent the greater or less richness in cells of such or such a cerebral region, and the briskness and impressionability of these cells themselves, may induce certain functional predominances, and become the natural cause of certain dispositions and special aptitudes of the mind.
In applying these data to the evolution of the pro cess of the judgment, we recognize the fact that if the human personality, at the moment it begins to take part in this, finds in one of the regions of excitation a greater number of nervous elements than in such or such another ; if the elements are more impressionable, more vivacious, better co-ordinated in their infernal mechanism, it will be on this account more strongly impressed, and provided with means of expression more rich and more abundant.
Thus, served by the best instruments, it will react in a more complete manner ; will do what others, less richly endowed, could not do ; will see better, hear better, taste better, smell better, etc. It is by means of these natural conditions of organization that certain individuals show themselves superior to others as re gards the operations of the judgment, in the direct ratio of the superiority of their cerebral constitution.
On the other hand it is notorious that, just as all the sensorial organs are not gifted with the same energies in all individuals, and that one is marvellously gifted for music, another for drawing, another for painting, etc., so by reason of that pre-eminence of certain impres sions in the seiesorium, which constitutes in a manner tie cerebral temperament of the individual, it results that in the total of mental faculties whatever cerebral region is best furnished, will be the privileged region in whatever operations of the judgment are the best and most rapidly accomplished. Hence will also arise
partially competent judgments, the individual being better fitted to judge pertinently respecting some one particular subject. Hence, according to our individu alities, those striking contrasts of which we daily see so many examples, where we meet with persons who judge soundly respecting some subject they have thoroughly studied, or which is their "hobby," who are yet com pletely incapable of forming an ordinary judgment re specting a simple question of everyday life. The human mind, limited in its resources, and the tributary of the nervous elements through whose instrumentality it manifests itself, is only capable of isolated and restrained efforts ; and thus it is that in the infinite variety of its manifestations we see what a division of labour man must adopt to concentrate his energies upon a point so as to bring them to bear with regularity, and, in a word, how truly judgment is said to be a most difficult operation —judicium di idle.
3. The process of iudement, when once it has called forth, as it passes, the participation of the different regions of the cerebral cortex, and has associated itself with the human personality, tends more and more to effect its extrinsic manifestation, and to express itself outwardly either in suitable articulate sounds, by which custom has taught us to express the different shades of our sensibility, or in the form of graphic characters which similarly signify our ideas and inmost thoughts.
Henceforth it assumes in the sensorium the form of a conscious resolution, and, from this moment, the spon taneous voluntary act is similarly completed in its essen tial elements since the cerebral operation in which it is essentially embodied, the awakening of the human personality, conscious of what is taking has occurred, and is about to reveal itself externally under the most diverse forms. From this moment the process of judgment, in its • third phase, belongs to the series of the phenomena of voluntary activity, of which it marks the first stage. It then embodies itself in the somatic translation of a voluntary excitation ra diating from the psycho-intellectual regions. We shall now follow it in this last phase, by explaining the action of voluntary motor-power.