chapter iii

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[466] Professor A. Bain (Senses and Intellect, pp 336-48) and Dr. W. B. Carpenter (Mental Physiology, chap. vi) give examples in abundance.

[467] For a full account, by an expert, of the 'willing-game,' see Mr. Stuart Cumberland's article: A Thought-reader's Experiences in the Nineteenth century, xx. 867. M. Gley has given a good example of ideo-motor action in the Bulletins de la Société de Psychologie Physiologique for 1889. Tell a person to think intently of a certain name, and saying that you will then force her to write it, let her hold a pencil, and do you yourself hold her hand. She will then probably trace the name involuntarily, believing that you are forcing her to do it.

[468] I abstract here from the fact that a certain _intensity_ of the consciousness is required for its impulsiveness to be effective in a complete degree. There is an inertia in the motor processes as in all other natural things. In certain individuals, and at certain times (disease, fatigue), the inertia is unusually great, and we may then have ideas of action which produce no visible act, but discharge themselves into merely nascent dispositions to activity or into emotional expression. The inertia of the motor parts here plays the same rôle as is elsewhere played by antagonistic ideas. We shall consider this restrictive inertia later on, it obviously introduces no essential alteration into the law which the text lays down.

[469] I use the common phraseology here for mere convenience' sake. The reader who has made himself acquainted with