ABSTRACT
The automatic activity of the cerebral elements, when it has been too strongly over-excited, may reveal itself in certain circumstances in a more intense manner, with more vivid colours; thus assuming a special character without there being, properly speaking, delirium, since the conscious personality still looks on at its morbid condition, like an involuntary spectator. The cerebral automatic activity develops itself also at a distance, passing from one individuality to another by the intervention either of speech, writing, or gestures, which excite the sensorium of the individual addressed; and the excitement, once communicated, is propagated from point to point, through the plexuses of the cortex in a continuous manner, by the mere automatic forces of the nervous elements, which disengage their latent energies. Ordinary language is rich in metaphors which express in appropriate forms what is unalterable and inevitable in this special domain of our mental activity.
