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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No 267 



(p. 27), which (except that it interprets the short and long haul 

 clause to mean that a question of fact is thereby substituted for a 

 question of law; and, inferentially, that to determine it the testimony 

 of every individual in the employment of the railway must be taken 

 by the court) does ttot in ike slightest degree change the habitude 

 and method of running a railway ; does not introduce a single inno- 

 vation, or modify a single rule of railway operation : in other words, 

 Congress has enacted a statute which a commission chartered to 

 enforce it declares enacts that things shall remain as they are, and 

 that, if the statute is ever suspected of interfering with things as 

 they are already, the subjects of the statute must interpret it blindly 

 and at their own peril ! 



It would seem, therefore, that the commission itself has decided 

 that the railways of this Republic have been, up to the date of its 

 own appointment, properly managed : certainly there is no disap- 

 proval of any particular acts, and only in the sixth ruling does it 

 condemn certain possible acts and differentiations which it is not 

 alleged that any railways have been guilty of, and which certainly, 

 therefore, is mere obita, or the expression of a general opinion upon 

 a very interesting but entirely gratuitous conundrum of suppositi- 

 tious railway policy. But is not a disturbance of constitutional 

 limitations a rather high price to pay, even for so valuable a boon 

 as is a governmental approval of American railway management? 

 Once broken, who can say what will pass these barriers ? Perhaps 

 there may yet be established at Washington an interstate theatrical 

 commission which shall review and absorb the early functions of 

 Master of the Revels, stage censor, and Lord Chamberlain ! And, 

 indeed, for such a bill, congress need not again borrow its policy 

 from an Empire of Blood and Iron. It can get its suggestion this 

 time from a Republic — from Mexico — where theatres are not 

 only under the espionage of government, but even the migratory 

 Yankee circus is officially coerced into living up to its posters. 



Appleton Morgan. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 

 Morbid States of the Attention.' 



The absence of attention is usually termed 'distraction,' but 

 there are really two kinds of lack of attention. In the tirst there is 

 a constant flitting of the mind from one idea to another, a constant 

 dissipation of the energies in all directions, for which the word 

 'distraction' may be retained ; and there is the lack of attention 

 to the impressions going on about us, due to the fact that the at- 

 tention is really absorbed in something else, — this is absent-mind- 

 edness, which is thus an extreme ' present-mindedness ' to a different 

 train of thought, and may be termed 'abstraction.' It is with the 

 exaggeration of one or other of these two conditions that morbid 

 states of the attention are allied. If we take as a convenient defini- 

 tion of normal attention, ' a temporary predominance of a mental 

 state with a natural or artificial adaptation of the subject,' then we 

 can distinguish two groups of morbid deviations : (i) an absolute 

 predominance of such a state that becomes fixed and cannot be 

 dislodged from consciousness ; and (2) a state in which no idea 

 can get an audience, and the attention is too weak to hold an im- 

 pression steadily in the mind. To this may be added a third group, 

 in which, through congenital defect, the power of attention never 

 develops, as in idiots and the weak-minded. 



There are all degrees of transition, from a normal concentration 

 of the attention to the most imperative forms of fixed ideas. We 

 have all been haunted by an aria which we cannot stop humming ; 

 have been anxious about a sick friend, so that in spite of ourselves 

 we could think of nothing else. This is a mild form of possession 

 by an idea, that is more persistent than any other, keeps itself in 

 consciousness, and by imperceptible steps passes beyond the con- 

 trol of the will. The profound absorptions of many great men in 

 their work are so much beyond their own control that one cannot 

 but recognize an element of the morbid in them. When the object 

 of reflection is a less worthy one, and the devotion to it, far from 

 coinciding with the intentions of the individual, seems to him as an 

 imposed task, we speak of an insistent idea {zwangsvorstelhing of 

 the Germans). M. Ribot distinguishes three kinds of such, accord- 



1 Abstract of an article by Th, Ribot iRevue Philosojtldque, February, 1888). See 

 Science^ Dec. 2 and 16, 1887, 



ing as the purely intellectual, the emotional (usually a fear, ;is the 

 long list of phobias indicates), or the voluntary (usually a morbid 

 impulse to an absurd or criminal act, kleptomania, etc.) predomi- 

 nates. The first class is the most important in this connection. 

 The insistent idea takes many shapes, and in most of these we can 

 trace analogies to our own every-day experiences. There is an 

 arithmetical form of it, that sets the patient to ask. Why are men 

 just so and so high ? Why have houses this particular height .' 

 and so on. Again : it may be a mania for counting every thing, — 

 the number of pavements on a street, the number of streets in a 

 city. The sight of a bag of grain irresistibly led one patient to 

 estimate how many grains there are in the bag, how many in the 

 country, etc. Another must count all the trains leaving the rail- 

 road-station, and keep account of their destinations. In these 

 cases the patients often recognize the morbid nature of their 

 thoughts: they fight against them, know that they are wasting 

 time ; but the ideas fill their minds completely, and demand atten- 

 tion with a tyrant's power. A feeling of intense discomfort, of an 

 impending evil if they fail to count the trains, etc., is sometimes 

 associated with the state. There is, too, a metaphysical mania, in 

 which the mind busies itself with unanswerable questions as to the 

 constitution of matter, the final ends of nature, and so on. Persons 

 thus affected are usually of more than average culture ; for the 

 concentration of attention implies mental power. Nor are the 

 objects of their thoughts entirely different from ours : the main 

 difference is in the time and the control of these states. We think 

 of such problems for a while, and then pass on to something else: 

 to them that is impossible. In other respects such patients are 

 often perfectly sound, and show great ingenuity in concealing a 

 knowledge of their weakness from their associates. In general, it 

 can be said that a large proportion of persons thus afflicted are the 

 offspring of neuropathic parents, and not infrequently show other 

 and physical symptoms of a degenerate stock. But the environ- 

 ment, education, must be called into account to explain others of 

 them ; and each case, especially as regards the particular form that 

 the idea takes, must be studied by itself. The state differs from 

 the normal, then, in degree rather than in kind. It is persistent, 

 it is intense, it allows no relapse to a diffuse condition of the at- 

 tention, and, as a mark of nervous disorder, it carries with it a 

 weakness of the will that cannot drive out the unwelcome and offi- 

 cious visitor. 



A more intense and acute concentration of the attention is to be 

 found in the trance state, or ecstasy. This is allied to contempla- 

 tion, to absorption in intellectual work, and brings with it an in- 

 sensibility to outward impressions. When the state is very pro- 

 found, such impressions can be intense and yet pass unnoticed. 

 Archimedes, during the taking of Syracuse, remains absorbed in 

 his contemplations. Soldiers often do not know they are wounded 

 until the fight is over. Here, again, there is a high degree of men- 

 tal power necessary, though it is often exhibited by fanatics other- 

 wise mentally inert. But M. Ribot properly distinguishes between 

 the cases in which the object of the contemplation is a sensory one 

 and those in which it is purely ideal, and adds that the fanatics 

 usually display the former kind of extreme attention. As a type of 

 the more spiritual kind of ecstasy, the remarkable confessions of 

 St. Theresa (a Spanish religionist of the sixteenth century) is cited. 

 She describes no less than seven stages of ecstasy which are in a 

 rough way capable of a psychological interpretation. The first is a 

 state of ' vocal prayer ; ' that is, the praying in a loud voice draws 

 the attention away from the outside world. The second stage is 

 termed ' mental prayer.' The sensory impressions are no longer 

 necessary, the mind being held by the ideas that fill it. The ' prayer 

 of meditation ' marks the third stage, which is perhaps only a more 

 intense form of the previous state. The fourth degree is charac- 

 terized by the ' prayer of passivity.' Here the soul no longer pro- 

 duces, but receives, has truth directly impressed upon it without the 

 need of a logical demonstration. The fifth stage, the ' prayer of 

 union,' marks the beginning of the ecstasy, but it is as yet an in- 

 stable state, and the possession is not profound. Finally, in the 

 sixth stage, the ' prayer of rapture,' the body becomes cold, speech, 

 and res])iration are checked, the eyes are closed, the slightest 

 movements require great effort, and in rare cases consciousness is 

 lost. The seventh degree of ecstasy is very mystically described.. 



