772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



conscious life. I will describe a few of the results of my own self-ex- 

 amination in respect to associated ideas. 



It was after many minor trials that one afternoon I felt myself in a 

 humor for the peculiar and somewhat severe mental effort that was re- 

 quired to carry through a sufficiently prolonged experiment as follows : 

 I occupied myself during a walk from the Athenaeum Club, along Pall 

 Mall to St. James's Street, a distance of some 450 yards, in keeping a 

 half-glance on what went on in my mind, as I looked with intent scru- 

 tiny at the successive objects that caught my eye. The instant each 

 new idea arose, it was absolutely dismissed, and another was allowed to 

 occupy its place. I never permitted my mind to ramble into any by- 

 paths, but strictly limited its work to the formation of nascent ideas in 

 association with the several objects that I saw. The ideas were, there- 

 fore, too fleeting to leave more than vague impressions in my memory. 

 Nevertheless, I retained enough of what had taken place to be amazed 

 at the amount of work my brain had performed. I was aware that my 

 mind had traveled, during that brief walk, in the most discursive man- 

 ner throughout the experiences of my whole life ; that it had entered 

 as an habitual guest into numberless localities that it had certainly 

 never visited under the light of full consciousness for many years ; and, 

 in short, I inferred that my every-day brain-work Avas incomparably 

 more active, and that my ideas traveled far wider afield, than I had 

 previously any distinct conception of. 



My desire became intensely stimulated to try further experiments, 

 and, as a first commencement of them, to repeat the walk under similar 

 circumstances. I purposely allowed a few days to elapse before doing 

 so, during which I resolutely refused to allow my thoughts to revert to 

 what had taken jolace, in order that I might undergo the repetition of 

 the trial with as fresh a mind as possible. Again I took the walk, and 

 again I was aware of the vast number of extremely faint thoughts that 

 had arisen ; but I was surprised and somewhat humiliated to find that 

 a large proportion of them were identical with those that had occurred 

 on the previous occasion. I was satisfied that their recurrence had in 

 only a very few cases been due to mere recollection. They seemed for 

 the most part to be founded on associations so long and firmly es- 

 tablished, that their recurrence might be expected in a future trial, 

 when these past experiments should have wholly disappeared from the 

 memory. 



It now became my object to seize upon these fleeting ideas before 

 they had wholly escaped, to record and analyze them, and so to obtain 

 a definite knowledge of their character and of the frequency of their 

 recurrence, and such other collateral information as the exiDeriments 

 might afford. 



The plan I adopted was to suddenly displa\' a printed word, to allow 

 about a couple of ideas to successively present themselves, and then, 

 by a violent mental revulsion and sudden awakening of attention, to 



