670 



PSYCII0L0O7. 



scribed miglit iu an empliatic sense be termed redintegra- 

 tions, for the}' would necessaril}' lead, if unobstructed, to 

 tlie reinstatement in tiiouglit of the €7itire content of large 

 trains of past experience. From tliis complete redintegra- 

 tion there could be no escape save through the irruption of 

 some new and strong present impression of the senses, or 

 through the excessive tendency of some one of the elemen- 

 tary brain-tracts to discharge independently into an aber- 

 rant quarter of the brain. Such was the tendency of the 



Fig. 40. 



word * heir ' in the verse from ' Locksley Hall,' which was 

 our first example. How such tendencies are constituted 

 we shall have soon to inquire with some care. Unless they 

 are present, the panorama of the past, once opened, must 

 unroll itself with fatal literality to the end, unless some 

 outward sound, sight, or touch divert the current of thought. 

 Let us call this process impartial redintegration. Whether 

 it ever occurs iu an absolutely complete form is doubtful. 

 We all immediately recognize, however, that in some minds 

 there is a much greater tendency than in others for the 

 flow of thought to take this form. Those insufferably gar- 

 rulous old women, those dry and fanciless beings who spare 

 you no detail, however pett}', of the facts they are recount- 

 ing, and upon the thread of whose narrative all the irrele- 

 vant items cluster as pertinaciously as the essential ones, 



