284 NATURE STUDIES. 



during two or three days of the amount of food 

 consumed, or the avoidance of some of the more 

 stimulating articles of diet. Here, however, we are 

 considering rather those mental troubles which are 

 produced by mental work, whether relating to subjects 

 of great difficulty or carried on too long. We would 

 notice also that in dealing with other indications of 

 mental mischief we need not be careful to show how 

 the more serious cases of each kind suggest the 

 significance of the slighter and far commoner mental 

 troubles which form our real subject of inquiry ; for 

 this reason, simply that what we have here said about 

 failure or loss of memory applies equally to other 

 signs of temporary mischief. 



II DISTKACTED ATTENTION. 



The next of these signs one, indeed, which many 

 mental physiologists set first is an inability to fix the 

 attention on any subject till the mind has done with 

 it. We have taken the failure of memory first, simply 

 because we believe that this symptom can ordinarily 

 be recognised earlier than inability to fix the attention. 

 The fact would seem to be that since in the ordinary 

 processes of thought, we first recognise or ascertain 

 particular facts, and then commit them to the keeping 

 of the memory, the latter process is naturally the one- 

 which first fails us. That it should be taken first is 

 indicated, too, by the circumstance that although 

 many cases can be cited of persons who, although 



