DISCOVERY 



31 



form of neurasthenia, reverts mentally to a younger 

 condition. In the case-records given by NicoU, grown 

 men behaved like boys of five or ten. played childish 

 games, became dependent on their nurses like any 

 child, and actually lived in the world of associations 

 and memories they happened to have grown through 

 in boyhood. 



The most remarkable case of all has not, I believe, 

 been put on record, but has been mentioned in pubhc 

 lectures by Dr. McDougall and Dr. Hadfield. An 

 Australian soldier, already suffering from shell-shock, 

 received a severe fright. As a result, the whole of his 

 adult personality disappeared, and he became an 

 infant — the mind of an infant in the body of a man. 

 He could not talk properly, he could not walk properly, 

 and. most amazing of all, he could not take any food 

 but milk. 



Gradually he grew up again, retracing in a year the 

 mental development of a lifetime, and, on returning 

 to his native country, has become, it appears, a normal 

 adult being again. 



Such mental regression differs of course from the 

 regression of Perophora, in that the physical basis of 

 the mental processes, the nerve-cells and fibres, are 

 not resorbed or dedifferentiated during the backward 

 passage ; they simply lie fallow, rendered somehow 

 unavailable for the passage of nervous activity. But 

 in other ways the processes are essentially the same. 



As new conditions rise and confront the growing 

 mind (and minds may grow throughout life), the will 

 must bend itself to adapting the mind to meet them. 

 We all know what pain and grief this may be, and 

 how readily we turn to distraction, or to memory, or 

 to an ideal or an imaginary future to escape for a 

 time from the struggle. 



\Mien present conditions grow difficult, as in war, 

 or in grief or worry, it becomes harder and harder for the 

 will to accomplish its proper task, more and more 

 tempting for the mind to slip away to its imagined or 

 remembered happiness. But this is differential sus- 

 ceptibility ; and after a time, in people of certain 

 temperaments, the strain on the higher, controlling 

 centres gets greater and greater until at last they are 

 not able to functi^ so well as the alternative system, 

 the approaches to which have been thrown wide 

 by the mind's longing and conscious dwelling upon it. 

 At last the one sinks, the other rises, till they are at 

 a common level ; a fraction more, and the flood of 

 nervous energy pours out from the world of the 

 present into the world of its own desire, its own 

 jrfiantasy. When its own desire is represented by 

 memories of a happy past, the mind reverts to that 

 past. To be accurate, the will is liberated from its 

 task of controlling the hated present, and turns to the 

 simpler and slighter measure of control which it once 



had to e.xercise ; and with that degree and form of 

 will come flying back all the associations of the time 

 when it was in power. When the desire of the tor- 

 mented present will has simply been to abandon 

 all control, without necessarily envisaging anv par- 

 ticular past time as most desired, then apparently 

 we have the complete return to the uncontrolled state 

 of the infant. 



There we must leave the subject. It is a fragmen- 

 tary tale that I have been able to tell ; but our know- 

 ledge is fragmentary. At least it will begin to give 

 some idea of the new vistas that biology is opening 

 up. We have at any rate been able to assure our- 

 selves that life can run backward, that reversal of 

 development is a fact. Further, we see that reversal 

 may show itself in several forms. It may be com- 

 patible with health and w-ith normal function through- 

 out, as in the Planarians ; or, though recovery from 

 it may be possible, yet reversal itself is only accom- 

 plished by a change to a simpler non-functional state, 

 in which the organism can tide over hard times, as 

 in Clavellina ; or it may be (for the individual con- 

 cerned) a pathological process, resulting inevitably in 

 death, as in Perophora ; or, finally, it may affect 

 the mind without affecting the body, as in mental 

 regression. 



Such facts, among many others, make us feel that 

 we are on the verge of a control of living matter which 

 will make even our control of inorganic matter seem 

 unimportant. The biology of to-day will look to our 

 descendants as the chemistry and physics of Boyle 

 and his contemporaries look to us. And the results 

 will not merely be capable of changing our environ- 

 ment ; they will be capable of changing us — our 

 constitutions, our very natures. Let us hope that 

 the thought of that time and the rulers of that time 

 will be better fitted to make use of those discoveries 

 than are the thought and the rulers of our own time 

 to make use of the power that discovery has already 

 put into their hands ! 



The Discoveries in Crete 



By George Glasgow, B.A. 



{Concluded from January Xo., p. ii) 



IX 



Cretan religion differed from that of classical Greece 

 in that the chief deity worshipped was a goddess, 

 Mother Nature or Earth-Mother, some at least of 

 whose characteristics we find embodied in the Rhea 

 of Greek mythology. Matriarchal religion seems to 



