NOMADISM, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HEREDITY. 25 



nomadic impulse, in turn, may occur without the other psychoses. 

 The student of epilepsy, finding nomadism often associated with it, 

 concludes that nomadism is a symptom of epilepsy, or is sometimes 

 "caused by" epilepsy. The student of hysteria is struck by cases of 

 nomadism — occurring as "ambulatory automatism" — and ascribes 

 them to hysteria. A student of the depressed similarly finds in that 

 state the cause of the wanderings so often associated with it. Still 

 other students consider the wanderings as incomplete manifestations 

 of epilepsy, hysteria, depression, as the case may be. Others classify 

 them under the vague term "equivalents." The new light brought by 

 our studies is this : The nomadic impulse is, in all the cases, one and the 

 same unit character. Nomads, of all kinds, have a special racial trait — 

 are, in a proper sense, members of the nomadic race. This trait is the 

 absence of the germinal determiner that makes for sedentariness, 

 stability, domesticity. Under the influence of the mores — or social 

 pressure — the nomadic impulse is often repressed for a considerable 

 time, but periodically — due to the same sort of internal tension that in 

 other individuals (especially other members of their families) leads to 

 epileptic, hysteric, depressive, and sexual outbreaks — they are unable 

 to inhibit the impulse and it breaks out. The individual becomes 

 more and more restless as his inhibitions grow less and less effective, 

 and finally he goes off. It is probable that, without the periodic 

 paralysis of the inhibitions, the nomadic tendency will generally reveal 

 itself in a minor form of restlessness, such as our family histories fre- 

 quently show. But nomadism is so often associated with other sorts 

 of periodic behavior because, for extreme exhibitions of nomadism, it is 

 not enough that the intelligent nomad should be without the sedentary 

 trait; on the contrary, his inhibitions must be periodically paralyzed; 

 he must belong also to a race of periodics. In such a race of periodics 

 the nomadic impulse shows itself in fullest and most typical form. 



One other class of nomads must be considered — the one that belongs 

 to strains showing feeble-mindedness and dementia. Such nomads 

 usually lack a normal development of the inhibitory mechanism, and 

 in such the nomadism is less apt to be of the explosive type. To this 

 class belongs many typical rolling-stones or ne'er-do-wells, some tramps, 

 the gypsies, and the other nomadic tribes. Examples of such are seen 

 in our family histories Nos. 4, 22, 29, 37, 44, 48, 50, 63, 66; also 13, 20, 

 24, 78, 86, 100. These cases differ from those described in the last 

 paragraph only in this, that the inhibitory mechanism is so poorly 

 developed that the nomadic tendency shows itself without waiting, as 

 it were, for the paralysis of the inhibitions. The relation between this 

 class and the other is much the same as between the steady drinker 

 and the dipsomaniac. There is so little resistance to be overcome in this 

 latter case that one can no longer speak of an overwhelming impulse. 

 Representatives of this class roam about as naively as the chimpanzee 

 or young children do. 



