240 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



writer or speaker can in a moment form a sentence which shall 

 occupy a minute in writing and several seconds in speaking. 

 I certainly do not myself claim the power of thinking 

 of two things at once, nay, I believe that no one ever 

 had or could have such a power : yet I find it perfectly 

 easy, when lecturing, to arrange the plan for the next ten 

 minutes' exposition of a scientific subject, and to adopt the 

 words themselves for the next twenty seconds or so, while 

 continuing to speak without the least interruption. I can 

 also work out a calculation on the black-board while con- 

 tinuing to speak of matters outside the subject of the calcula- 

 tion. It is more a matter of habit than an indication of any 

 mental power, natural or acquired, to speak or write sentences, 

 even of considerable length, after the mind has passed on to 

 other matters. In a similar way some persons can write 

 different words with the right and left hands, and this, too, 

 while speaking of other matters. (I have seen this done 

 by Professor Morse, the American naturalist, whose two 

 hands added words to the diagrams he had drawn while his 

 voice dealt with other parts of the drawing : to add to the 

 wonder, too, he wrote the words indifferently from right to 

 left or from left to right.) In reality the person who thus 

 does two things at once is no more thinking of two things at 

 once than a clock is, when the striking' and the working 

 machinery are both in action at the same time. 1 



1 Since the above was written I have noticed a passage in Dr. 

 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, p. 719, bearing on the matter I have 

 been dealing with : ' The following statement recently made to me by 

 a gentleman of high intelligence, the editor of a most important pro- 

 vincial newspaper, would be almost incredible, if cases somewhat 

 similar were not already familiar to us : * I was formerly,' he said, 

 ' a reporter in the House of Commons ; and it several times happened 

 to me that, having fallen asleep from sheer fatigue towards the end 

 of a debate, I had found, on awaking after a short interval of entire 

 unconsciousness, that I had continued to note down correctly the 

 speaker's words.' ' I believe,' he added, ' that this is not an uncom- 

 mon experience among Parliamentary reporters.' The reading aloud with 

 correct emphasis and intonation, or the performance of a piece of 

 music, or (as in the case of Albert Smith) the recitation of a frequently- 



