7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



quite correct as it stood, and, if the two processes by which the writer 

 was correcting verbal errors and following the sense of the passage 

 had been really continuous processes of thought, unquestionably the 

 passage would have been left alone. If the passage had been erroneous 

 and had been simply left in that condition, the case would have been 

 one only too familiar to those who have had occasion to correct proofs. 

 But what the writer actually did was deliberately to make nonsense of 

 the passage while improving the balance of the second sentence. He 

 made it run, " The first is less than the second, but the square of the 

 first is plainly greater than the square of the second," the absurdity of 

 which statement a child would detect. If the first proof in its correct 

 form, with the incorrect correction carefully written down in the mar- 

 gin, had not existed, when, several months later, the error was pointed 

 out in the " Quarterly Journal of Science," the writer would have felt 

 sure that he had written the words wrongly at the outset. For blun- 

 ders such as this are common enough. But, that he should deliberately 

 have taken a correctly worded sentence and altered it into utter absurd- 

 ity, he could not, but for the evidence, have believed to be possible. 

 The case plainly shows that not only may two things be done at once, 

 when the mind, nevertheless, is thinking only of one, but that some- 

 thing may be done which suggests deliberate reflection, when in reality 

 the mind is elsewhere or not occupied at all. For in this case both the 

 processes on which the writer was engaged were manifestly carried on 

 without thought, one being purely mechanical, and the other, though 

 requiring thought if properly attended to, being so imperfectly effected 

 as to show that no thought was given to it. 



To return to Sir Walter Scott. It is known but too well that during 

 the later years of his life there came with bodily prostration a great but 

 not constant failure of his mental powers. Some of the phenomena 

 presented during this part of his career are strikingly illustrative of 

 abnormal mental action occurring even at times when the mental power 

 is on the whole much weakened. " The Bride of Lammermoor," though 

 not one of the best of Scott's novels, is certainly far above such works as 

 " Count Robert of Paris," " The Betrothed," and " Castle Dangerous." 

 Its popularity may perhaps be attributed chiefly to the deep interest of 

 the " ower true tale " on which it is founded ; but some of the characters 

 are painted with exceeding skill. Lucy herself is almost a nonentity, 

 and Edgar is little more than a gloomy, unpleasant man, made interest- 

 ing only by the troubles which fall on him. But Ailsie Gourlay and 

 Caleb Balderstone stand out from the canvas as if alive ; they are as 

 lifelike and natural, yet as thoroughly individualized, as Edie Ochiltree 

 and Meg Merrilies. The novel neither suggested when it first appeared, 

 nor has been regarded even after the facts became known, as suggesting 

 that Scott, when he wrote it, was in ill health. Yet it was produced 

 under pressure of severe illness, and when Scott was at least in this sense 

 unconscious, that nothing of what he said and did in connection with 



