ABSTRACT
The study of mental diseases shows us, indeed, in a precise manner, that in a great number of cases the regions of intellectual activity may be spared when the purely emotional regions, the regions of the sensorium, are profoundly disturbed. The sphere of psycho-intellectual activity then exhibits all its natural riches, all the stores of its awakened sensibility, It is suddenly thrown into agitation, reacts, and thus develops the marvellous capacities with which it is fundamentally endowed. When once the external excitation is disseminated through the plexuses of the cortical substance, and incorporated in the sensorium, developing in it the specific energies of the cerebral cells that have received it, this new medium itself comes into play, and reacts in the direct line of its latent capacities.
