458 PSTCHOLOGT. 



head, pulling mustache, vibrating foot, or what not, accord- 

 ing to the individual. There is an anecdote of Sir W. Scott, 

 when a boy, rising to the head of his class by cutting off 

 from the jacket of the usual head-boy a button which the 

 latter was in the habit of twirling in his fingers during the 

 lesson. The button gone, its owner's power of reciting 

 also departed. — Now much of this activity is unquestionably 

 due to the overflow of emotional excitement during anxious 

 and concentrated thought. It drains away nerve-currents 

 which if pent up within the thought-centres would very 

 likely make the confusion there worse confounded. But 

 may it not also be a means of drafting oil" all the irrelevant 

 sensations of the moment, and so keeping the attention 

 more exclusively concentrated upon its inner task ? Each 

 individual usually has his own peculiar habitual movement 

 of this sort. A downward nerve-path is thus kept con- 

 stantly open during concentrated thought ; and as it seems 

 to be a law of frequent (if not of universal) application, that 

 incidental stimuli tend to discharge through paths that are 

 already discharging rather than through others, the whole 

 arrangement might protect the thought-centres from inter- 

 ference from without. Were this the true rationale of these 

 peculiar movements, we should have to suppose that the 

 sensations produced by each phase of the movement itself 

 are also drafted off immediately by the next phase and help 

 to keep the circular process agoing. I offer the suggestion 

 for what it is worth ; the connection of the movements them- 

 selves with the continued effort of attention is certainly a 

 genuine and curious fact. 



