386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mally there would be a continuity of concepts beginning with, 

 the commission of a breach of discipline, followed by correction 

 from the teacher, and ending in improved conduct on the part of 

 the scholar. But frequently this chain is broken. The child fails 

 to recognize the connection between these component parts, or 

 certain parts are obliterated and others exaggerated, or the im- 

 pression is cross-currented or side-tracked, with the result that 

 the final impression and account of the matter may be widely 

 divergent from the original facts. The conclusion usually is that 

 the child has been willfully lying. Again, the child may see two 

 dogs playing together, and, being subject to abnormal mental 

 processes, comes to his mother with a tale of a horrible struggle 

 between ferocious bears, with imminent danger to himself. The 

 startling element in the matter is that usually the parents either 

 smile indulgently, remarking that the child has a vivid imagi- 

 nation, or on the other hand they will punish him for an attempt 

 at causeless and vicious deceit. 



However, I should consider this explanation problematical if 

 it had no further basis than an obscure mental condition. But as 

 soon as one looks carefully at the matter one is strongly im- 

 pressed by the number of additional conditions which may act in 

 similar ways. Indeed, the matter becomes so plain that we may 

 say, broadly, that any cause which makes for intellectual tenuity 

 has a tendency to bring about this state of things. Recently we 

 have named this psychical trauma, a morbid nervous condition 

 caused by repeated injurious impressions ; and it is a fact that 

 beyond distinct mental disorders codified as diseases some of the 

 lower emotional and mental activities may in the same way be 

 markedly injured. We have evidence of this from such signs as 

 nervous digestive disorders, hysterical attacks, loss of sleep other- 

 wise inexplicable, disturbances of flushing and pallor, all of which 

 may be results of psychical effects repeated again and again. 

 These symptoms should not be called diseases, or in any way pri- 

 mary disorders ; they are merely natural results which flow from 

 natural causes, just like the loss of self-control in fright or breath- 

 lessness from the shock of cold water. The continued repetition 

 of them wears, as it were, a rut in the brain, so that any impulse 

 approaching it slips out of its ordinary path in the direction at 

 once of least resistance and utter distortion. Again, the very 

 faulty methods of our teaching by rote, of mechanical repetition 

 and memorizing, which seems to be the basis of our school sys- 

 tem, must necessarily lean toward psychical poverty; and the 

 more these vicious stimuli are repeated, the greater must be the 

 effect toward an unfortunate end. 



Still, there are other causes, of a purely physical nature, which 

 doubtless will appeal more strongly to most readers. It is well 



