Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/403

. 4.] and the sensations produced by the speech-movements which they stimulate. The pathological state called paraphasia is duplicated sometimes temporarily in cases of severe sick headache; one intends to mention one object (chair) and really speaks another (spoon) without detecting the mistake. I have myself had this experience; being quite unable to name correctly an object seen until someone else has spoken the word with emphasis–yet all the while allowing the incorrect word spoken to pass, and feeling astonishment that others have not understood my meaning. Similar are those cases in which patients take their own words for those of some one else, declaring, when questioned, that they themselves did not speak them. Reflection leads us to the view that in these cases there is a direct flow from the auditory or visual center to the motor speech center, the kinaesthetic speech center being perhaps temporarily inhibited. The same kind of antagonism is also seen, from the other side, when there is ‘exaltation’ of the kinaesthetic center, or what is called uncontrollable ‘verbal impulse.’ The patient speaks certain words or phrases in spite of himself–against his utmost effort to speak something else.

This conception of the case–not to dwell upon other points of evidence –seems to harmonize well with the doctrine of nervous function now becoming more and more current. According to this doctrine, the brain is a series of centers of