WILL. 541 



same state. The motives that would lead other persons not to do such 

 acts do not operate in such persons. I have known a man steal who 

 said he had no intense longing for the article he appropriated at all, at 

 least consciously, but his will was in abeyance, and he could not resist 

 the ordinary desire of possession common to all human nature." 



It is not only those technically classed imbeciles and 

 dements who exhibit this promj^titude of impulse and tardi- 

 ness of inhibition. Ask half the common drunkards you 

 know why it is that they fall so often a prey to temjjtation^ 

 and they will say that most of the time they cannot tell.. 

 It is a sort of vertigo with them. Their nervous centres 

 have become a sluice-way pathologically unlocked by every 

 passing conception of a bottle and a glass. They do not thirst 

 for the beverage ; the taste of it may even appear repug- 

 nant ; and they perfectly foresee the morrow's remorse. 

 But when they think of the liquor or see it, they find them- 

 selves preparing to drink, and do not stoj^ themselves : and 

 more than this they cannot say. Similarly a man may 

 lead a life of incessant love-making or sexual indulgence, 

 though what spurs him thereto seems rather to be sug- 

 gestions and notions of jjossibility than any overweening 

 strength in his afiections or lusts. He may even be physi- 

 cally impotent all the while. The paths of natural (or it 

 may be unnatural) imjjulse are so pervious in these charac- 

 ters that the slightest rise in the level of innervation jjro- 

 duces an overflow. It is the condition recognized in pathol- 

 ogy as 'irritable weakness.' The phase known as nascency 

 or latency is so short in the excitement of the neural tissues 

 that there is no opportunity for strain or tension to accumu- 

 late within them; and the consequence is that with all the 

 agitation and activity, the amount of real feeling engaged 

 may be very small. The hysterical temperament is the play- 

 ground par excellence of this unstable equilibrium. One of 

 these subjects will be filled with what seems the most genu- 

 ine and settled aversion to a certain line of conduct, and 

 the very next instant follow the stirring of temj^tation and 

 plunge in it up to the neck. Professor Eibot well gives the 

 name of ' Le Eegne des Caprices' to the chapter in which 

 he describes the hysterical temperament in his interesting 

 little monograph * The Diseases of the Will.' 



