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Experiments on Thought. By a Correspondent. 



There is a very common prejudice respecting the rapidity 

 of thought, which is imagined by many to be almost unU- 

 mited : and the opinion is very worthily illustrated by a refer- 

 ence to the oriental tale of a man's being bcAvitched into the 

 belief that he had passed through a period of seven years 

 duration, and full of the most striking vicissitudes ; all in the 

 time that he employed in dipping his head in a pail of water. 

 Now there is no doubt that we often dream of a period of 

 many years while we are only sleeping an hour ; that is, we 

 dream of an impression of a long continued existence, or 

 perhaps of some detached fact scattered through such a 

 period: but if any person will write down all that he can 

 possibly recollect, of the separate imaginations that have 

 passed through his mind in the dream, he will find that he will 

 be able to read them over with ease in less than five minutes. 



It is probable that there may be a considerable diversity in 

 the rapidity of thought in different persons, as there is in that 

 of muscular motions: but there is no reason to think the 

 diversity greater. A healthy young man can run a mile in 

 five minutes : a good pedestrian in four ; but no man ever ran 

 a mile in three minutes ; and perhaps no horse in two. There 

 is reason to think the rapidity of thought does not differ more 

 materially than this in different individuals. 



The rapidity of thought seems, however, more intimately 

 connected with that of muscular motion than by analogy only : 

 for they appear in some cases to be absolutely identical. 

 . I have often been able to count ten in a second, in audible 

 English words ; not distinctly, indeed, but so as to assure my- 

 self that I do hear the ten words in their proper order ; and to 

 repeat the sounds for several consecutive seconds. If I say 

 the words to myself only, that is, if I think them over, I 

 cannot repeat them ten times in less than about nine seconds : 

 I can never, for example, keep pace with my pulse, though it 

 sometimes beats as slowly as seventy in a minute : nor can 

 I, by any effort, think over the numbers from one to twenty in 

 two seconds. 



If I say to myself the first lines of Milton or Virgil, or 



