THE CEREBRUM, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 797 



in ordinary Reverie, a state to which some persons are peculiarly prone ; the 

 characteristic of which is, that whilst, as in Dreaming, the succession of thought 

 is entirely automatic, it is in no small degree influenced by external impressions, 

 especially such as arise from the various phenomena of Nature. It is in minds 

 in which the emotional and imaginative elements predominate, that we usually 

 find the greatest tendency to reverie ; and the sequence of thought, if subse- 

 quently analyzed, will be found to have been chiefly determined by these tend- 

 encies. Now this sequence may conduct us to notions altogether inconsistent 

 with our most familiar experience ; and yet we accept them as realities, not- 

 withstanding this incongruity, because the ideas to which they are opposed are 

 not present to our minds at the time, and the dormant state of our Will prevents 

 us from making the slightest effort to bring them before the consciousness. The 

 state of Abstraction, or " absence of mind/' is essentially the same with that of 

 reverie ; the chief difference being, that in true Abstraction the mind is at work 

 ratiocinatively, a certain train of thought being followed out by the intellectual 

 operations to its logical conclusion ; it being the Philosopher who is most prone 

 to abstraction, as the Poet is to reverie. Now it is one of the most curious 

 phenomena of this state, that external impressions, if received by the conscious- 

 ness at all, are very often wrongly perceived, being interpreted in accordance 

 with the ideas which happen to be dominant in the mind at the time, instead of 

 giving rise to those new ideas which ordinarily connect themselves with them, 

 in virtue of the individual's habitual experience. The records of " absence of 

 mind" are full of amusing instances of such misinterpretation. Nothing seems 

 too strange for the individual to believe, nothing too absurd for him to do under 

 the influence of that belief. Thus of Dr. Robert Hamilton, a well-known Pro- 

 fessor at Aberdeen, who was the author of many productions distinguished for 

 their profound and accurate science, their beautiful arrangement, and their clear 

 expression, we are informed that, u In public, the man was a shadow; pulled 

 oft' his hat to his own wife in the streets, and apologized for not having the 

 pleasure of her acquaintance ; went to his classes in the college on the dark 

 mornings with one of her white stockings on the one leg, and one of his own 

 black ones on the other ; often spent the whole time of the meeting in moving 

 from the table the hats of the students, which they as constantly returned ; 

 sometimes invited them to call on him, and then fined them for coming to insult 

 him. He would run against a cow in the road, turn round, beg her pardon, 

 call her l Madam/ and hope she was not hurt. At other times, he would run 

 against posts, and chide them for not getting out of his way/' 1 



825. A state may be artificially induced in many individuals, by a continued 

 fixed gaze at an object at a moderate distance, which is the same as that of 

 Reverie and Abstraction in regard to the complete suspension of the directing 

 power of the Will over the current of thought, but which differs from these in 

 the readiness with which the mind may be possessed with ideas suggested to it 

 through the medium of language. This state has been commonly known by 

 the name Electro-Biological, from the mode in which its induction was originally 

 practised ; 2 but it is now more frequently designated by the very inappropriate 



1 See "New Monthly Magazine," vol. xxviii. p. 510. The Author has heard from an old 

 pupil of Dr. Hamilton an anecdote so singularly illustrative of this peculiar condition, that 

 he cannot refrain from here introducing it. The Professor, walking one day along the 

 High Street with the front of his breeches open (no very unusual occurrence with him), 

 chanced to encounter a woman in a white apron ; and apparently mistaking this apron for 

 his own shirt, he laid hold of it, and began to push it into the situation which his shirt 

 should occupy ! 



2 The "Electro-Biologists," as they term themselves, at first maintained that a wonderful 

 virtue resided in the little disk of copper with a zinc centre, to which they directed the 

 gaze of their " subjects." It is now universally admitted, however, that any object which 



