Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/506

 494 EDMUND GUBNEY : nervous discharges which, if allowed to pass on in the normal way, would result in the mental picture of an action, to the place of the nervous discharges immediately asso- ciated with the performance of that action. But while it is important to note the facts to which this hypothesis will apply, and in which ideation and volition apparently play no part, it is of still greater importance to avoid mistaking this limited portion of the field for the whole. It is no doubt convenient for the theory to conceive the inhibition of directive and volitional power as accom- panied by inhibition of consciousness ; but the positive grounds on which the sweeping assertion of the uncon- sciousness rests are so flimsy that, but for the high authority of those who are opposed to me, I should almost have thought it waste of time to discuss them. The most thorough-going statement of the doctrine in question appears, I regret to say, in a book which for general acuteness and comprehensiveness of treatment is superior to any_other on the subject with which I am acquainted the Etude scientifique sur le Somnambulisme of Dr. Despine, which in 1879 obtained its author a medal from the Medico- Psychological Society of Paris. The acuteness, it is true, is not unfailing. When a man concludes that the highest psychic manifestations may take place without conscious- ness, from the fact that the complicated vital functions of the animal and vegetable creation, while seeming to demand a capacity at least equal to that of an intelligent man, never- theless take place unconsciously, and that the highest human intellect could not construct a butterfly's wing, we may defer our answer till a stomach or a tree begin to reason, or a butterfly's wing to decide knotty points. Popular argu- ments, moreover, are sometimes caught at in a manner fatal to consistency. Thus an appeal is made to the well-known ability of somnambulists to keep their balance in dangerous places and at giddy heights ; which may reasonably be con- nected with unconsciousness of danger, and so far might pass muster as an argument for the temporary abolition of all psychic function. But on Despine's own principles, how should the somnambulist be any the safer for his uncon- sciousness ? If cerebration, even its most subtle and com- plicated forms, can go on just as usual without any psychic correlative, why are we to except the particular cerebration that would normally be accompanied by fear, giddiness, and loss of balance ? What is to prevent that in the given con- ditions from functioning in the normal way, and so pro- ducing a fall ? So far from affording a proof of true auto-