INSTINCT. 4-^5 



especially that of ownership, are insane, and their insanity 

 has no more to do with the association of ideas than with 

 the precession of the equinoxes. As a matter of fact his 

 hoarding usually is directed to money ; but it also includes 

 almost anything besides. Lately in a Massachusetts town 

 there died a miser who principally hoarded newspapers. 

 These had ended by so filling all the rooms of his good- 

 sized house from floor to ceiling that his living-space was 

 restricted to a few narrow channels between them. Even 

 as I write, the morning paper gives an account of the 

 emptying of a miser's den in Boston by the City Board of 

 Health. What the owner hoarded is thus described : 



'' He gathered old newspapers, wrapping-paper, incapacitated um- 

 brellas, canes, pieces of common wire, cast-oft" clothing, empty barrels, 

 pieces of iron, old bones, battered tin-ware, fractured pots, and bushels 

 of such miscellany as is to be found only at the city 'dump.' The 

 empty barrels were filled, shelves were filled, every hole and corner was 

 filled, and in order to make more storage-room, 'the hermit ' covered 

 his store-room with a network of ropes, and hung the ropes as full as 

 they could hold of his curious collections. There was nothing one could 

 think of that wasn't in that room. As a wood-sawyer, the old man had 

 never thrown away a saw-blade or a wood-buck. The bucks were rheu- 

 matic and couldn't stand up, and the saw-blades were worn down to 

 almost nothing in the middle. Some had been actually worn in two, 

 but the ends were carefully saved and stored away. As a coal-heaver, 

 the old man had never cast off a worn-out basket, and there were 

 dozens of the remains of the old things, patched up with canvas and 

 rope-yarns, in the store-room. There were at least two dozen old liats, 

 fur, cloth, silk, and straw," etc. 



Of course there may be a great many ' associations of 

 ideas ' in the miser's mind about the things he hoards. He 

 is a thinking being, and must associate things; but, without 

 an entirely blind impulse in this direction behind all his 

 ideas, such practical results could never be reached.* 



Kleptomania, as it is called, is an uncontrollable impulse 

 to appropriate, occurring in persons whose * associations 

 of ideas' would naturally all be of a counteracting sort. 



* Cf . Flint, Mind, vol. i. pp. 330-333 ; Sully, ibid. p. 567. Most 

 people probably have the'impulse to keep bits of useless finery, old tools, 

 pieces of once useful apparatus, etc. ; but it is normally either inhibited at 

 the outset by reflection, or, if yielded to, the objects soou grow displeasing 

 «ijd are thrown away. 



