298 NATUEE STUDIES. 



a great number of people,, who followed each other 

 quickly, and to each of whom I was obliged to give 

 my attention. I was also under the necessity of 

 writing much, but the subjects were various, and of a 

 trivial and uninteresting nature, and had no con- 

 nexion the one with the other ; my attention, there- 

 fore, was constantly kept on the stretch, and it was 

 continually shifting from one subject to another. 

 At last it became necessary that I should write a 

 receipt for some money I had received on account of 

 the poor. I seated myself, and wrote the two first 

 words, but in a moment found that I was incapable 

 of proceeding, for I could not recollect the words 

 which belonged to the ideas that were present in my 

 mind. I strained my attention as much as possible, 

 and tried to write one letter slowly after the other, 

 always having an eye in order to observe whether 

 they had the usual relationship to each other ; but I 

 remarked, and said to myself at the time, that the 

 characters I was writing were not those which I 

 wished to write, and yet I could not discover where 

 the fault lay. I therefore desisted, and partly by 

 words and syllables, and partly by gestures, I made 

 the person who waited for the receipt understand that 

 he should leave me. For about half an hour there 

 reigned a kind of tumultuous disorder of my senses, 

 in which I was incapable of remarking anything very 

 particular, except that one series of ideas forced them- 

 selves involuntarily into my mind." The patient goes 

 on to describe the various thoughts which occurred 



