rk in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done in
obedience to thought or knowledge was shown by the fact that his dinner
could be at once interrupted by awakening a new train of feeling by a
new external impulse. Put a crooked stick resembling a gun into his
hand, and at once the man was seized with a rage comparable to that
produced in the Strasburg dog by taking hold of his tail. The fury of
conflict was on him: with a loud yell he would recommence the skirmish
in which he had been wounded, and, crying to his comrades, would make a
rush at the supposed assailant. Take the stick out of his hand, and at
once his apathy would settle upon him; give him a knife and fork, and,
whether at the table or elsewhere, he would make the motions of eating;
hand him a spade, and he would begin to dig. It is plain that the
impulse produced by seeing his comrades move to the dining-room started
the chain of automatic movements which resulted in his seating himself
at the table. The weapon called into new life the well-known acts of the
battle-field. The spade brought back the day when, innocent of blood, he
cultivated the vineyards of sunny France.

In both the dog and the man just spoken of the control of the will over
the emotions and mental acts was evidently lost, and the mental
functions were performed only in obedience to impulses from
without--i.e. were automatic. The human brain is a complex and very
delicate mechanism, so uniform in its actions, so marvellous in its
creation, that it is able to measure the rapidity of its own processes.
There are scarcely two brains which work exactly with the same rapidity
and ease. One man thinks faster than another man for reasons as purely
physical as those which give to one man a faster gait than that of
another. Those who move quickly are apt to think quickly, the whole
nervous system performing its processes with rapidity. This is not,
however, always the case, as it is possible for the brain to be
differently constructed, so far as concerns its rapidity of action, from
the spinal cord of the same individual. Our power of measuring time
without instruments is probably based upon the cerebral system of each
individual being accustomed to move at a uniform rate. Experience has
taught the brain that it thinks so many thoughts or does so much work in
such a length of time, and it judges that so much time has elapsed when
it has done so much work. The extraordinary sense of p