Body and mind : an inquiry into their connection and mutual influence, specially in reference to mental disorders : being the Gulstonian lectures for 1870, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians : with appendix / by Henry Maudsley.
- Maudsley Henry, 1835-1918.
- Date:
- 1870
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Body and mind : an inquiry into their connection and mutual influence, specially in reference to mental disorders : being the Gulstonian lectures for 1870, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians : with appendix / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![X] SECONDARY AUTOMATIC ACTS. tl must be taught, just as the brain must, before it can perform its functions as an organ of animal life; and being much more under the control of the more highly developed brain, feeling and volition commonly mingle largely in its functions, and its independent action cannot be so plainly exhibited. But when its motor centres have been taught, when they have gained by education the power of executing what are called secondary auto- matic acts, it is certain that it can and does habitually execute them independently of consciousness and of will. They become as purely automatic as are the primitive reflex acts of the frog. To the statement, then, that actions bearing the semblance of design may be uncon- scious and automatic we have now to add a second and most weighty proposition—namely, that acts consciously designed at first may, by repetition, become unconscious and automatic, the faculties of them being organized in the constitution of the nerve-centres, and they being then performed as reflex effects of an external stimulus. This law, by which the education of the spinal cord takes place, is, as we shall hereafter see, a most important law in the development of the higher nerve-centres. Let us now go a step further. The automatic acts, whether primary or secondary, in the frog or in the man, which are excited by the suitable external stimulus, may also be excited by an act of will, by an impulse coming downwards from the brain. When this happens, it should be clearly apprehended that the immediate agency of the movements is the same ; it is in the motor centres of the spinal cord 3 the will does not and cannot act](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21694540_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
