December 2, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



269 



a corset for any length of time. The respiratory murmur below 

 the fifth rib was vei7 faint compared with the sounds above, and 

 these ladies found it impossible, as a rule, to move the strength 

 ' spirometer ' the fraction of a degree. From these facts, she con- 

 cluded that the capacity of the chest had become limited, and the 

 muscular fibre of the diaphragm impaired, by the unyielding walls 

 of the corset-prison. Not very great compression upon the line of 

 attachment of the diaphragm was required to interfere with its 

 contractile power. Loss of strength in the abdominal muscles and 

 diaphragm prepared the way for a slow and painful, if not instru- 

 mental, labor. Loss of respiratory capacity implied increase in 

 rapidity of the heart's movements: this meant weakening of its 

 force, and thus came the cold extremities and easily chilled skin so 

 common in those who wore corsets. She had not been able to de- 

 monstrate the displacement of the liver spoken of, because doubt- 

 less the examinations were made with the corset off. With a large 

 experience in treating girls suffering from displacements of the 

 uterus (mainly retroversion and downward crowding), little could 

 be done to relieve the sufferers until the corset was laid aside. 

 Active muscular movements and corsets were not compatible, 

 and unless the corset and its equivalent, tight clothing, were 

 discarded, she was not sure but girls were better off without 

 active physical exercise. What could we substitute for the corset, 

 which, without producing pressure or displacement, would give 

 the trim and tidy look so much admired by the sterner sex ? A 

 good dressmaker had more to do with this matter than the corset 

 had. An underwaist without bones, with skirts snugly fastened 

 to it ; a dress-waist well shaped, containing a few bones, and 

 loose enough to permit a long breath without limitation, — would 

 make nine girls out of ten look just as trim and tidy as a corseted 

 waist. If something more supporting was demanded, the ' Ferris 

 waist' was all that was required. Without steels in front, and 

 without bones, if worn loosely with the skirts attached, it might 

 be accounted healthful. Dr. R. G. Eccles spoke of the comfort 

 women derived from the corset. He had noticed that the more 

 intelligent the women, the more they were corset-wearers. Dr. 

 Jerome Walker spoke of the evils of corset-wearing, among 

 which he mentioned the shallow breathing as particularly objec- 

 tionable. Dr. William Anderson thought if we educated the 

 women to despise the corset, it would disappear. The president 

 remarked that we did not use our chests to their full capacity ex- 

 cept when making unusual exertion. A woman under ordinary 

 circumstances had her breathing but little restricted. If the servant 

 laced herself in her ordinary working costume as she did on Sun- 

 day, she would suffer severely. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 

 The Mechanism of Attention. 



M. Th. Ribot, whose useful compilations on English and Ger- 

 man psychological movements, on heredity, on the diseases of mem- 

 ory, of will, and of personality, have gained for him a world-wide 

 reputation, contributes to the Revue Philosophiqtie (of which he is 

 the editor) an interesting and convenient account of the mechanism 

 of the processes of attention. 



Attention is not so simple a phenomenon as popular analysis 

 makes it. It is not always one and the same state, but varies in- 

 definitely in intensity, from the momentary attention necessary to 

 brush off a fly, to the most complete absorption. This intensity is 

 gained either by the accumulative results of a long-continued strain, 

 or by an intense focusing of all energies to one group of sensations. 

 Regarding attention thus as a state varying in degree, we are ready 

 to make a distinction on which M. Ribot lays much stress; namely, 

 between sponianeous and voluntary attention. Our notion of at- 

 tention is derived almost exclusively from the latter. Attention we 

 regard as a purposive effort. But this is really not the typical nor 

 the most important aspect of attention. The former has been much 

 neglected, and to it M. Ribot devotes his first article. The distinc- 

 tion between the two forms of attention is easily made clear. The 

 first is a natural impulse to let such things make an impression 

 upon us as excite our interest. The second is an artificial product 

 of civilization, that we have learned at school. To look at flowers 

 and be impressed by them is a result of spontaneous attention ; to 



dissect and minutely analyze their parts, of voluntary attention. 

 The main characteristic of attention, and especially of its typical, 

 natural form, now under discussion, is its motor aspect. As 

 Maudsley puts it, whoever is incapable of controlling his muscles 

 is incapable of controlling his attention. All attention, how- 

 ever, is, in a sense, an abnormal, exceptional state. Such 

 states cannot last long, because they are opposed to the ever- 

 present change that is the law of life. We see this abnormality 

 when attention is carried to the extreme, producing clouding of 

 the mind, a mental void, or vertigo. Their analogy with fixed 

 ideas and states of ecstasy is also close. The normal process of 

 ' cerebrising ' consists of an ever-changing focusing on one set of 

 impressions, then a diffusion of these to give place to another group, 

 and so on in an ever-successive lighting and skipping ; the laws of 

 association governing the order and connection of the several foci. 

 Normal thought is thus a ' poly-ideism,' while attention is a ' mono- 

 ideism.' It is a focus concentrating into itself all the available 

 energies : it is the substitution of unity for diversity. Attention is 

 further characterized by being directed towards an end : it is not 

 a subjective process, but is adaptive, convergent. If a definition 

 be desirable, we might define attention as " an intellectual mono- 

 ideism with spontaneous or artificial adaptation of the individual." 



Spontaneous attention is well seen in children and in the higher 

 animals. Its cause is universally an emotional state. It is only 

 the sensation-exciting, the interesting, the agreeable or disagree- 

 able, that is naturally attended to. An animal incapable of feeling 

 pleasure and pain would by that fact be incapable of attention. 

 This general fact is exemplified in the biographies of great men, 

 showing in some cases how the hero of the tale is for a long while 

 restless, listless, until he falls upon the occupation that interests 

 him, enthuses him, and brings out his genius by focusing his atten- 

 tion to a single line of thought. This passion for work has its ana- 

 logue in other less desirable passions. The drunkard's attention is 

 critically intense in the presence of the glass. But these intense 

 states cannot endure long, and they only last as long as they do 

 because a small amount of flitting really goes on, continuous as 

 the state seems to us. 



The physical conditions and accompaniments of attention are of 

 great importance. The general law under which they are to be 

 considered is that there is no thought without a tendency to its ex- 

 pression in motor terms. Thought is initial action. The motor 

 expressions of attention are visible in three directions, ; — the vaso- 

 motor phenomena, the respiratory phenomena, and the expressional 

 phenomena. The first is recognized in the increase of blood in 

 certain parts of the brain under mental work, as ascertained by 

 direct experiments of Mosso and others. The slightest mental 

 strain produces this result. The second is characteristic of the 

 attitude of attention. The breath is slowed or held ; sighs occur ; 

 and all this suggests the abnormality of the process. The third 

 kind of movements are psychologically the most interesting; and 

 many theories, notably that of Darwin, have been proposed to ex- 

 plain their origin. Duchenne experimented by applying electrical 

 stimuli to muscles of etherized patients, and noting the facial ex- 

 pression thus aroused. He regarded the contraction of a single 

 muscle as characteristic of one emotion. The frontal muscle fur- 

 rowing the forehead is the muscle of attention ; the orbiculars con- 

 tracting the orbital space and lowering the eyelid of reflection, and 

 so on. The motor expressions will be different according as the 

 attention is directed inwards (reflection, contemplation) or outwards, 

 as is usually the case. The motor expressions of the two are op- 

 posed : in the one the forehead is lowered, in the other the eyelid is 

 lowered, the mouth closed as in effort, and so on. Darwin calls 

 the attitude of reflection that of difficult vision turned inwards. The 

 general attitude of attention is immobility, a tendency to unity of 

 action, to convergence. It is a concentration of both motions and 

 thoughts ; and the degree of attention is inversely to the amount of 

 motion. An attentive audience is quiet : an inattentive one shuffles 

 and moves in a hundred ways. 



To this rule there is an apparent exception in the common habit 

 of walking, beating, etc., when deep in thought. This is to be ac- 

 counted for by the increase of brain-activity thus brought about. 

 Such movements are dynamogenic, re-enforcing, arousing the motor 

 centres, and thus adding to the available energy. 



