494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with such lapses: looking for a handkerchief that is held in the 

 hand, for a pipe that hangs in the mouth, for spectacles reposing on 

 the forehead, for the umbrella grasped under the arm, for the pencil 

 stuck behind the ear, for the package suspended from the hand — these 

 are commonplace, usually of brief duration, but instructive, because 

 of the attitude they present, the important query which they raise, in 

 regard to how and why these sensations, usually sufficiently awarable, 

 fail to qualify for consciousness. The moment of reentry into the 

 conscious field is easier to detect than the manner thereof. The miss- 

 ing article that all along lay within the easy field of vision, seems sud- 

 denly to assume a familiarity that identifies it as the object of search; 

 the vacant stare or bewildered reconnoitering is transformed into the 

 intelligent look of recognition. The instances report little more than 

 the fact that the handkerchief held in the hand, or the pipe in the 

 mouth, or the umbrella under the arm, does suddenly yield the sensa- 

 tion of its presence. I have, however, one incident in which this 

 realization was logically arrived at : the narrator was seeking his glasses 

 which he had begun to use only a few months before; and, observing 

 that he could clearly see the print before him, concluded that he must 

 be wearing his glasses, which proved to be the fact. What is common 

 to these cases is the peculiar and often unaccountable fluctuation in per- 

 meability of consciousness to definite types of stimuli. The failure or 

 omission of perception — both when the mind is not particularly bent 

 upon receiving the impression, and when such is the attitude — expands 

 readily into an erroneous perception, a substitution; and naturally, 

 similarity of observable characteristics favors such mistakes: and this, 

 because of the general principle that minor fluctuations of attention oc- 

 cur more frequently than more pronounced ones, and of the further prin- 

 ciple, that slight confusions, in which the confused objects present many 

 common characteristics, require only a moderate relaxation of attentive 

 oversight, while more serious lapses demand a more pronounced absent- 

 mindedness. Hats and umbrellas and gloves and overshoes and over- 

 coats are the more readily interchanged because of their generic uni- 

 formity. The more variable and distinctive feminine bonnet does not 

 lend itself to such subconscious borrowing. The whisk-broom that is 

 hastily seized for a fan presents some slight tangible resemblance, 

 though we pass quite beyond such resemblance when the chair is 

 handled as a bicycle. Quite pertinent to this relation is the confusion 



situations which may be called negative lapses in that, though it would have 

 been natural and profitable for the subject to awaken to the situation, he fails 

 to do so. The best instance in my collection is that of a young man resigning 

 himself unconcernedly to the manipulations of the barber, with the instruction 

 to have his hair trimmed and his moustache shaved, who becomes aware only at 

 the close of the operation, that through the barber's error he has had his head 

 shaved and his moustache trimmed. 



