UNIVERSITY REFORMS 57 



repeated step for step in the life history of each individual. From the 

 first movements of the embryo until the adult has reached the prime of 

 development, the line of progressive functional development is un- 

 broken. In the earlier studies made upon the brain local lesions such 

 as those caused by apoplexy, injury, tumors, etc., were the first to attract 

 and interest the public as well as physicians. It was much more diffi- 

 cult to understand the diseases of the brain not dependent npon locali- 

 zable lesions, but gradually a way was found leading to a better under- 

 standing and clearer analysis of the mental disturbances occurring 

 without discoverable lesions. But the brain is so complicated an organ 

 that a slight interference with its mechanism may give rise to com- 

 plicated functional disorders involving the entire personality. As a 

 matter of fact comparatively little is yet known in regard to the cumu- 

 lative effect of disturbances in the mental activity incident to relatively 

 small lesions in the higher brain centers. In the study of the various 

 psychoses the alienist has found a complete analogy to the results 

 obtained in the study of the comparative physiology of the brain. When 

 the attempt was made to analyze the anomalies of conduct in the insane 

 it became evident that no distinctive qualitative difference separated 

 them in behavior from normal individuals. In the daily ups and downs 

 of the ordinary life are found the basis of the pathological conditions 

 known as manic-depressive insanity, while in the precocious bizarre 

 habits of young people and children are recognized the germs of that 

 sad group of cases known as dementia praecox. In the rigid inflexible 

 opinions so frequently expressed in the discussion of religious or 

 political questions we find the key explaining the stand-pat positions 

 of individuals subject to chronic systematized insane ideas. 



The individuals showing a particular bias, or those inoculated with 

 the spirit of excessive partisanship, the sentimentalists, the whole host 

 of faddists, the doctrinaires, the obstinate and the bigots to a certain 

 extent reflect but to a less degree some of the mental traits of the 

 paranoiac. The permanence and intensity given to certain ideas have 

 been the result of the emotional storms attending their appearance in 

 consciousness, and in the latter condition, where a marked psychosis 

 has intervened, the intense emotional reaction has subsided and the 

 idea has crystallized out of its setting. In the normal individual when 

 one function of the brain is nicely balanced against the other the analy- 

 sis of behavior is, as a rule, more difficult than it is in the insane in 

 whom the exaggeration of different traits of character becomes so 

 marked that a clue as to their origin and development is given. 



In the history of psychology it is particularly interesting to note 

 that practically every advance made in this department has followed 

 close upon the incorporation of the conceptions and terms of natural 

 science; and it is equally obvious that the delays and regressions have 



