THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 489 



and writes a letter. During the occupation she quite loses sense of 

 time and condition, and having finished her writing, raises the desk 

 to be confronted with the unfamiliar contents thereof. I have also 

 from another source a tale — possibly mythical, but in regard to the 

 individual concerned most plausible — of a mathematician who, bent 

 upon the solution of an intricate problem while walking in the street, 

 becomes aware of a black surface before him that suggests to his ab- 

 sorbed mind the familiar and convenient blackboard; he begins to 

 chalk some formula upon it, when it moves off, for it is the back of a 

 carriage that has been waiting for its occupant. In such wise do 

 slumbering habits reassert themselves and take control of our actions 

 when the attention is momentarily diverted ; while the lapse is favored 

 by the presence of a familiar external situation — one that arouses an 

 easy, ' at home ' kind of mood, one that may be responded to by the 

 half-attention adequate to well-established bits of conduct. 



A further indication of the readiness with which motor habits assert 

 themselves in the absence of intentional initiative appears in instances 

 in which such action persists and fails to recognize the new situation, 

 or persists automatically by the mere inertia of a group of centers ' set ' 

 to a particular line of conduct. I have before me an anecdote that is 

 quite as instructive, whether literally exact or not, relating that a 

 tourist, reading the papers in a Berlin cafe, was repeatedly disturbed 

 by men entering and tumbling violently over the door-sill. Seven 

 times within an hour did the accident occur. His curiosity aroused, 

 he made inquiries and found that these seven men were habitues of the 

 place, gathering almost daily for a game of ' skat ' ; and further, that 

 the worn-out door-sill had just been replaced by a new one, in the unex- 

 pected height of which lay the cause of the series of mishaps. Haec 

 fdbula docet that we cross an unaccustomed threshold with sufficient 

 and yet not apparent attention to our going to guide ourselves with 

 tentative steps safely over any slight irregularity that may be encoun- 

 tered; but that for the several entrances and exits, literal as well as 

 figurative, that enter into our daily walks, we have ready a decidedly 

 more subconscious, inattentive response that may in the event of meet- 

 ing new conditions set pitfalls in our path. Ordinarily such motor 

 habits are exercised to meet situations the factors whereof are or may 

 be — in the early stages of the acquisition doubtless were — realized in 

 terms of visual and other sensory recognitions. To illustrate: the 

 seven companions each originally learned to enter the cafe with a step 

 appropriate to the worn-out door-sill, and did this by noticing visually 

 the position of the sill, quite as I have learned with very slight attention 

 to strike the several keys of my typewriter, to release the carriage, re- 

 verse the ribbon, engage the paper and advance it, by originally noting 

 consciously and attentively how these mechanisms are set in operation. 



