The degree of exclusiveness and insistence in the predomi nance of any presentation is in proportion to the degree of morbid irritability in the particular tract of brain by which it is elaborated. Where the degree is not excessive there arise obsessions which the consciousness recognises as morbid. They do not preclude the coexistence of healthy functioning of the brain, and consciousness acquires the habit of treating these coexistent obsessions as foreign to itself, and of banishing them from its presentations and judgments. In aggravated cases these obsessions grow into fixed ideas. The immoderately excitable portions of the brain work out their ideas with such liveliness that consciousness is filled with them, and can no longer distinguish them from such as are the result of sense-impressions, the nature and strength of which they accurately reflect. Then we reach the stage of hallucinations and delirium. Finally, in the last stage, comes ecstasy, which Ribot calls the acute form of the effort after unity of consciousness.' In ecstasy the excited part of the brain works with such violence that it suppresses the functioning of all the rest of the brain. The ecstatic subject is completely insensible to external stimuli. There is no perception, no representation, no grouping of presentations into concepts, and of concepts into judgments and reasoning. A single presentation, or group of presentations, fills up consciousness. These presentations are of extreme distinctness and clearness. Consciousness is, as it were, flooded with the blinding light of mid-day. There therefore takes place exactly the reverse of what has been noticed in the case of the ordinary mystic. The ecstatic state is associated with extremely intense emotions, in which the highest bliss is mixed with pain. These emotions accompany every strong and excessive functioning of the nerve-cells, every extraordinary and violent decomposition of nerve-nutriment. The feeling of voluptuousness is an example of the phenomena accompanying extraordinary decompositions in a nerve-cell. In healthy persons the sexual nerve-centres are the only ones which, conformably with their functions, are so differentiated and so adapted that they exercise no uniform or lasting activity, but, for by far the greatest part of the time, are perfectly tranquil, storing up large quantities of nutriment in order, during very short periods, to decompose this suddenly and, as it were, explosively. Every nerve-centre which operates in this way would procure us voluptuous emotion; but precisely among healthy persons there are, except the sexual nerve-centres, none which are compelled to act in this manner, in order to serve the purpose of the organism. Among the degenerate, on the contrary, particular morbidly excited brain-centres operate in this way, and the emotions of delight which accompany their explosive activity are more powerful than sexual feelings, in proportion as the brain-centres are more sensitive than the subordinate and more sluggish spinal centres. One may completely believe the assurances of great ecstatics, such as a St. Theresa, a Mohammed, an Ignatius Loyola, that the bliss accompanying their ecstatic visions is unlike anything earthly, and almost more than a mortal can bear. This latter statement proves that they were conscious of the sharp pain. which accompanies nerve-action in over-excited brain-cells, and which, on careful analysis, may be distinguished in every very strong feeling of pleasure. The circumstance that the only normal organic sensation known to us which resembles that of ecstasy is the sexual feeling, explains the fact that ecstatics connect their ecstatic presentations by way of association with the idea of love, and describe the ecstasy itself as a kind of supernatural act of love, as a union of an ineffably high and pure sort with God or the Blessed Virgin. This drawing near to God and the saints is the natural result of a religious training, which begets the habit of looking on everything inexplicable as supernatural, and of bringing it into connection with the doctrines of faith. We have now seen that mysticism depends upon the incapacity to control the association of ideas by the attention, and that this incapacity results from weakness of will; while ecstasy is a consequence of the morbid irritability of special brain-centres. The incapacity of being attentive occasions, however, besides mysticism, other eccentricities of the intellect, which may here be briefly mentioned. In extreme stages of degeneration, e.g., in idiocy, attention is utterly wanting. No stimulus is able to arouse it, nor is there any external means of making an impression on the brain of the idiot, and awaken. ing his consciousness to definite presentations. In less complete degeneration, i.e., in cases of mental debility, attention may exist, but it is extremely weak and fleeting. Imbeciles (weak minds) present, in graduated intensity, the phenomenon of fugitive thought (Gedankenflucht), i.e., the incapacity to retair, or to unite in a concept or judgment, the representations automatically and reciprocally called into consciousness in conformity with the laws of association, and also that of reverie, which is another form of fugitive thought, but which differs from it in that the particular representations of which it is composed are feebly elaborated, and are therefore shadowy and undefined, sometimes so much so that an imbecile, who in the midst of his reveries is asked of what he is thinking, is not able to state exactly what happens to be present in his consciousness. All observers maintain that the higher degenerate' is frequently 'original, brilliant, witty,' and that whereas he is incapable of activity which demands attention and self-control, he has strong artistic inclinations. All these peculiarities are to be explained by the uncontrolled working of association. The reader should recall the procedure of that brain which is incapable of attention. A perception arouses a representation which summons into consciousness a thousand other associated representations. The healthy mind suppresses the representations which are contradictory to, or not rationally connected with, the first perception. This the weak-minded cannot do. The mere similarity of sound determines the current of his thought. He bears a word, and feels compelled to repeat it, once or oftener, sometimes to the extent of 'Echolalia '; or it calls into his consciousness other words similar to it in sound, but not connected with it in meaning, whereupon he thinks and talks in a series of completely disconnected rhymes; or else the words have, besides their similarity of sound, a very remote and weak connection of meaning; this gives rise to punning. Ignorant persons are inclined to call the rhyming and punning of imbeciles witty, not bearing in mind that this way of combining ideas according to the sound of the words frustrates the purposes of the intellect by obscuring the apprehension of the real connections of phenomena. No witticism has ever made easier the discovery of any truth. And whoever has tried to hold a serious conversation with a quibbling person of weak mind will have recognised the impossibility of keeping him in check, of getting from him a logical conclusion, or of making him comprehend a fact or a causal connection. When An imbecile degenerate, the history of whose illness is related by Dr. G. Ballet, said: 'Il y a mille ans que le monde est monde. Milan, la cathédrale de Milan (La Semaine médicale, 1892, p. 133). Mille ans' (a thousand years) calls up in his consciousness the like-sounding word 'Milan,' although there is absolutely no rational connection between the two ideas. A graphomaniac named Jasno, whose case is cited by Lombroso, says 'la main se mène' (the hand guides itself). He then begins to speak of 'semaine ' (week), and continues to play upon the like-sounding words 'se mène,' 'semaine,' and 'main' (Genie und Irsinn, p. 264). In the book of a German graphomaniac entitled Rembrandt als Erzieher, Leipzig, 1890 (a book which I shall have to refer to more than once, as an example of the lucubrations of a weak mind), I find, on the very first pages, the following juxtaposition of words according to their resemblance in sound: Sie verkünden eine Rückkehr . . . zur Einheit und Feinheit' (p. 3). 'je ungeschliffener Jemand ist, desto mehr ist an ihm zu schleifen' (p. 4). Jede rechte Bildung ist bildend, formend, schöpferisch, und also künstlerisch' (p. ). Rembrandt war nicht nur ein protestantischer Künstler, sondern auch ein künstlerischer Protestant' (p. 14). Sein Hundert guldenblatt allein könnte schon als ein Tausendgüldenkraut gegen so mancherlei Schaden . . . dienen' (p. 23). Christus und Rembrandt haben. . . darin etwas Gemeinsames, dass Jener die religiöse, dieser die künstlerische Armseligkeit-die Seligkeit der Armen-zu Ehren bringt' (p. 25), etc. ... presentations are connected, not merely according to auditory impressions of simple similarity of sound, but also according to the other laws of association, those juxtapositions of words are effected which the ignorant designate as 'original modes of expression,' and which confer upon their originator the reputation of a brilliant' conversationalist or author. Sollier* cites some characteristic examples of the 'original' modes of expression of imbeciles. One said to his comrade, 'You look like a piece of barley-sugar put out to nurse.' Another expresses the thought that his friend made him laugh so much he could not restrain his saliva, by saying, 'Tu me fais baver des ronds de chapeaux.' The junction of words which by their sense have little or no relation to each other is, as a rule, an evidence of imbecility, although it often enough is sensational and mirth-provoking. The cleverness which in Paris is called blague, or boulevard-esprit, the psychologist discerns as imbecility. That this condition goes hand-in-hand with artistic tendencies is easy to understand. All callings which require knowledge of fact, and adaptation to it, presuppose attention. This capacity is wanting in imbeciles; hence they are not fitted for serious professions. Certain artistic occupations, especially those of a subordinate kind, are, on the contrary, quite compatible with uncontrolled association of ideas, reverie, or fugitive thought, because they exact only a very limited adaptation to fact, and therefore have great attractions for persons of weak intellect. Between the process of thought and movement there exists an exact parallelism explicable by the fact that the elaboration of presentations is nothing else than a modification of the elaboration of the motor impulses. The phenomena of movement make the mechanism of thought more easily apprehensible to the lay mind. The automatic association of muscular contractions corresponds to the association of ideas, their co-ordination to attention. As with defective attention there ensues no intelligent thought, so with faulty co-ordination there can be no appropriate movement. Palsy is equivalent to idiocy, St. Vitus's dance to obsessions and fixed ideas. The attempts at witticisms of the weak-minded are like beating the air with a sword; the notions and judgments of sound brains are like the careful thrust and parry of skilful fencing. Mysticism finds its reflected image in the aimless and powerless, often hardly discernible, movements of senile and paralytic trembling; and ecstasy is, for a brain-centre, the same state as a prolonged and violent tonic contraction for a muscle or group of muscles. * Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l'Idiot et de l'Imbécile, Paris, 1891, p. 153. CHAPTER II. THE PRE-RAPHAELITES. MYSTICISM is the habitual condition of the human race, and in no way an eccentric disposition of mind. A strong brain which works out every presentation to its full clearness-a powerful will, which sustains the toiling attention-these are rare. gifts. Musing and dreaming, the free ranging of imagination, disporting itself at its own sweet will along the meandering pathways of association, demand less exertion, and will therefore be widely preferred to the hard labour of observation and intelligent judgment. Hence the consciousness of men is filled with a vast mass of ambiguous, shadowy ideas; they see, as a rule, in unmistakable clearness only those phenomena which are daily repeated in their most intimate personal experience, and, among these, those only which are the objects of their immediate needs. Speech, that great auxiliary in the interchange of human thought, is no unmixed benefit. It brings to the consciousness of most men incomparably more obscurity than brightness. It enriches their memory with auditory images, not with welldefined pictures of reality. A word, whether written or spoken, excites a sense (sight or hearing), and sets up an activity in the brain. True; it always arouses presentation. A series of musical tones does the same. At an unknown word, at 'Abracadabra,' at a proper name, at a tune scraped on the fiddle, we also think of something, but it is either indefinite, or nonsensical, or arbitrary. It is absolute waste of labour to attempt to give a man new ideas, or to widen the circle of his positive knowledge, by means of a word. It can never do more than awaken such ideas as he already possesses. Ultimately everyone works only with the material for presentation which he has acquired by attentive personal observation of the phenomenal of the universe. Nevertheless, he cannot do without the stimulus conveyed to him by speech. The desire for knowledge, without any hiatus, of all that is in the world, is irresistible; while the opportunities of perception at first hand, even in the most. favourable circumstances, are limited. What we have not ourselves experienced we let others, the dead and the living, tell us. The word must take the place of the direct impressions of sense for us. And then it is itself an impression of sense, and our consciousness is accustomed to put this impression on a level with others, to estimate the idea aroused by this word equally with |