ATTENTION. 419 



'absent-minded,' 'abstracted,' or 'distraits.* All revery or 

 concentrated meditation is apt to throw us into this state. 



" Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in geometrical medi- 

 tation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own 

 death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of the Roman sol- 

 diers was: Noli turhare circulos meos! In like manner Joseph Scaliger, 

 the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so 

 engrossed in the study of Homer that he became aware of the massacre 

 of St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on the day subsequent 

 to the catastrophe. The philosopher Carneades was habitually liable to 

 fits of meditation so profound that, to prevent him sinking from 

 inanition, his maid found it necessary to feed him like a child. And 

 it is reported of Newton that, while engaged in his mathematical re- 

 searches, he sometimes forgot to dine. Cardan, one of the most illus- 

 trious of philosophers and mathematicians, was once, upon a journey, 

 so lost in thought that he forgot Ijoth his way and the object of his 

 journey. To the questions of his driver whether he should proceed, he 

 made no answer; and when he came to himself at nightfall, he was sur- 

 prised to find the carriage at a standstill, and directly under a gallov;s. 

 The mathematician Vieta was sometimes so buried in meditation thtit 

 for hours he bore more resemblance to a dead person than to a living, 

 and was then wholly unconscious of everything going on around him. 

 On the day of his marriage the great Budaeus forgot everything in his 

 philological speculations, and he was only awakened to the affairs of the 

 external world by a tardy embassy from the marriage-party, who found 

 him absorbed in the composition of his Commeiitarii.'''' * 



The absorption may be so deep as not only to banish 

 ordinary sensations, but even the severest pain. Pascal, 

 Wesley, Kobert Hall, are said to have had this cajDacity. 

 Dr. Carpenter says of himself that 



" he has frequently begun a lecture whilst suffering neuralgic pain so 

 severe as to make him apprehend that he would find it impossible to 

 proceed ; yet no sooner has he by a determined effort fairly launched 

 himself into the stream of thought, than he has found himself con- 

 tinuously borne along without the least distraction, until the end haa 

 come, and the attention has been released ; when the pain has re- 

 curred with a force that has overmastered all resistance, making him 

 wonder how he could have ever ceased to feel it." f 



Dr. Carpenter speaks of launching himself by a deter- 

 mined effort. This effort characterizes what we called ac- 



* Sir W. Hamilton; Metaph^-sics, lecture xiv. 



f Mental Physiol., g 124. The oft-cited case of soldiers not perceiving 

 that they are wounded is of au analogous sort. 



