i54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



areas pass before us in visual thought. Limiting sequences follow one 

 another in senile thought. The dominance of spatial concepts indicate 

 premature sensory associations preventing the outward movement of 

 thought to unexplored regions. The dominance of fixed sequences in 

 thought reveals a lack of energy and of objective adjustment. Motor 

 thought begins not in established mental associations but in bodily 

 movements, aroused by external contacts. If movement precedes 

 thought, action is adjustive; when thought determines movement ab- 

 normal mental states or senile limitations cause thought to flow on 

 without any adjustive tests of its truth. Normally each thought should 

 start a train of muscular activity leading to adjustment. Thought 

 should be transformed into movement, and movement into thought. 

 The morbid intensity of particular centers prevents this by forming a 

 series of related ideas instead of transforming thought into movement. 

 Visual or word repetitions are thus the marks of morbidness due to 

 motor strains. This dance of sensory ideas with no accompanying 

 activity is, however, regarded not as a defect but as an excellence. Such 

 abnormalities are regarded as native powers when they should be recog- 

 nized as acquired disjustments. Few readers will be willing to admit 

 this. To do so would call into question conventional standards and 

 strike at cherished literary and artistic concepts. 



I can make my meaning clear by example better than by argument. 

 When the American Academy of Political and Social Science was 

 formed, President James and I had a discussion as to the title of the 

 organization. He contended that the title should contain an "and," 

 and I was equally firm in the opinion that the " and " should be omitted. 

 He argued that without the "and" the scope of the society would not be 

 regarded as comprehensive, while I asserted that with it the title would 

 lack a definiteness in aim. It was a long time before I realized what 

 was the real difference between President James and myself. I found 

 that I, myself, was constantly tending to put " ands " in sentences and 

 to pile adjectives on top of one another. "When I made a short, crisp 

 sentence I came back to it, thinking that I had left something out. 

 This feeling was often so strong that I could not get away from the 

 sentence until I had added something, or balanced it, as a rhetorician 

 would say. I finally hit on the cause of my feeling, or at least an ex- 

 planation that seemed satisfactory. The place where this tendency 

 was strong was where the word had some closely related synonym, 

 which, stored in my subconscious memory, strove to express itself and 

 troubled me until I dragged it forth and made it a companion of the 

 word I had used. If I had no double associations of words I wrote 

 easily, but the flow of thought was checked at points where double asso- 

 ciations existed. There I either expressed my thought twice or under- 

 went a mental conflict until I drove the related word out of conscious- 

 ness. The title to which I have called attention is an illustration of 



