"m\<«« i^^:- uu^: " ■" I. ^■a4fa«.->«i"«4^>->''**>*'-'«^'^^*v-**'»-»-''*^^''''-*' — LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 3 f \ &i i^aft* icpgrigll ^u. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE PSYCHIC FACTOR AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY BY CHARLES VAN NORDEN, D. D., LL. D. LATE PRESIDENT OF ELMIRA COLLEGE OF waRV>* I Ui^CoT-^ NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1894 K. ^^ \ Copyright, 1894, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Electrotyped and Printed AT THE ApPLETON PrESS, U. S. A. PEEFACE. The purpose and spirit of this little book is strictly scientific. If any justification for its appear- ance be needed, the public will find ample in the unsettled condition of the metaphysical world, in the marvelous strides of biological and psychical discovery, and the utter demoralization of the old psychology. The Psychic Factor is not addressed to the populace, nor yet to original investigators, but to students. It is intended to embody the trustworthy results of safe thought in the realm of current psychology. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/psychicfactorout01vann TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION. I. — The Science defined 1 IL— Methods . . .11 III. — History and Bibliography 13 Part I. — Mind in General. Section I. — The Psychic Factor Consid- ered Comparatively. I.— Mind in Plants . . . . . , .14 II.— Mind in Animals 20 III. — The Nervous System 24 ly. — A Survey of Nerve Systems in the Order of Com- plexity 30 V. — General Reflections upon the Psychic Factor Comparatively Viewed 86 Section II. — Consciousness. YI. — Consciousness in General 42 VII.— Attention 44 VIII. — The Enchaining and Grouping Function of Con- sciousness 47 IX.— The General Quality of Mental States . . .51 X. — The Influence of Mental States on Organic Func- tions 61 VI THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. CHAPTER PAGE Section III. — Subconsciousness. XI. — Subconsciousness in General .... 67 XII.— Sleep 69 XIII.— Dreaming 72 XIV. — Somnambulism 80 XY.— Hypnosis - . .84 XYI.— The Hypnotic Sleep Personality ... 91 XYII.— Thought-Transference 103 XYIIL— Lucidity . . . ... . .107 XIX.— Hallucination . . . . . . .110 Section lY.— The Psychology of Disease. XX.— Hysteria 118 XXI.— Criminality . . 120 Part II.— Mind in Detail. Section I.— The Sensory and Motor end Organs. XXII.— The Evolution of the End Orpans XXIII.— The End Organs of Touch XXIY.— Muscular Sense . XXY.— The End Organs of Smell . XXYI.— The End Organs of Taste . XXYII.— The Temperature End Organs XXYIII.— Sight XXIX.— Hearing .... XXX.— The Motor End Organs . 128 133 136 138 142 144 146 152 156 Section II. — Analysis op the Cognitive Powers. XXXI. — Synthesis of Sense Impressions .... 157 XXXII.— Sensation 158 XXXIII.— The Perceptive Process 166 XXXIY.— Memory .175 XXXY.— The Recollective Process 178 TABLE OF CONTENTS. yii CHAPTER PAGE XXXVI.— Imagination 182 XXXVII. — The Comparative Processes — Conception, Judgment, and Reasoning .... 188 XXXVIII.— Formal Tliought . . . . . .200 XXXIX.— Review 205 Section III. — The Feelings and the Will. XL.— The Feelings 208 XLL— Willing 213 Index 219 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. THE SCIEI^CE DEFIi^TED. 1. Psychology investigates mind. By mind we mean all psychic states, whether of intellection, feeling, or volition — in short, the psychic factor. 2. Eecent psychology has been described as ex- perimental and physiological, simply because practical rather than speculative — an attempt at exact science in a realm which hitherto has been proverbial for its vagueness, assumption, and contradictions. 3. All sciences have had their birth in regions of ignorance, and hence of superstition and of specula- tion. First came blank ignorance, after that super- stitious interpretation, and then philosophic specula- tion. Exact science began only with experimentation, and has proceeded by induction. Alchemy, at first a sorcerous attempt to convert stones into gold, only after ages of puzzled thought became chemistry. Suidas says jhat the Golden Fleece was simply a parchment on which was written this art of transmu- 4 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. into groups for purposes of study has not been, nor is likely to be, improved upon. 5. But long ago the vein was well worked out ; and on this line of effort nothing remains to do but to erect new structures of guesswork, and to batter down old ones just as well and just as ill founded. 6. The lackings of the speculative method are four- fold : (1) Introspection begins and ends with the thinker himself ; while the psychic factor is found in all living matter, and in every creature challenges study. (2) In the thinker, introspection is limited to the present moment and to memory of a personal past. It can not investigate even its own evolutionary ante- cedents. (3) It is utterly excluded from that vast realm of the subconscious, which forms the most interesting de- partment in the psychology of to-day. (i) It is embarrassed by its own prejudices and delusions. It were easy to show that it constantly mistakes mediate knowledge for immediate, acquired knowledge for innate, and inherited for necessary. 7. Though it be in methods experimental, psychol- ogy needs must start out with a postulate. For there can be no explanation without something to explain, and all philosophy brings us to ultimates. Psychology runs back upon three ultimates — matter, life and mind. These it fails to analyze into simpler elements or to identify beyond a peradventure with one another. Speculation may, of course, devise hypotheses to ana- lyze or to unify but all evidence fails. Hypotheses here have proved utterly barren. The endless battles of metaphysicians over these stubborn, elusive ele- THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 5 ments, in vain speculation, have been and can be only Walhalla conflicts of ghosts, that hew one another to pieces each day, on the morrow to renew the aimless strife joyfully and vainly. 8. We will note the five hypotheses that challenge our criticism at the present time, only to illustrate that folly of claiming to know too much which has always cursed psychology : (1) Materialism. Matter embraces mind. Atoms and forces beget ideas, which are material entities. Consciousness is only a series of those mental materials. In short, matter has latent in it the promise and po- tency of mind. Mill, Spencer, Tyndall, and a host of English philosophers, and Comte and his disciples among the French, and Herbart and his followers among the Germans, have held this doctrine. (2) Idealism. Mind embraces matter. Ideas be- get atoms and forces. Material phenomena are only phases of consciousness. In short, mind has in it the promise and potency of matter. As Omar Khayyam in the Eubaiyat declares : " We are no other than a moving row Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go." Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling stand prominent among idealists. (3) Ideal realism. Matter is parallel with mind. Ideas and things, thought and being, are parallel one to the other. By some mysterious coarrangement (occasionalism according to Descartes, pre-established harmony according to Leibnitz) the two series accom- pany one another, mind and body perfectly attuned — soprano and bass — but without causal connection. Lotze seems to find refuge in such a scheme. 6 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. (4) Monism. Matter is mind. Ideas and things, thought and being, are identical. Consciousness is an aspect of certain material forces. Says Fechner, '' What from an internal point of view seems to be your spirit, seems from an external point of view to be the bodily substratum of that spirit." If you stand on the inside of a hollow sphere you see only the concav- ity of its surface ; if on the outside, only its convexity. Yet it is the same surface. (5) Matter and mind are different in substance, but a causal connection exists between them. Atoms and forces on the one hand, and thought on the other ! Body and soul, each substantial but of utterly different substance ! The soul sways the body and the body af- fects the soul, there being a causal nexus. This is the popular, the traditional, and the simplest explanation. A very able defense of this view may be found in the closing chapters of Prof. Ladd's Physiological Psy- chology. 9. At first sight these hypotheses seem utterly di- verse, and doubtless are advocated by men of widely different temperaments, beliefs, and tendencies. But the diversity at bottom is more seeming than real and is owing to our reading into them meanings de- rived from prejudice. If the first be true, and matter be capable of generating mind, then in matter must be dormant all the properties that can be shown to have ever inhered in the psychic factor, and it is no longer gross and inert but as truly spiritual as material. If, however, the second hypothesis be accurate, and if it be the function of mind to generate matter, why, thoughts are quite substantial and visions full of solidity, force, and point. And if matter and mind be parallel, THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 7 which is the worse or different for that fact ? And if matter and mind be identical — only inside and outside of the same curved surface — what does this signify ? On any of these hypotheses you have broached a pos- sible fact, which is, however, utterly barren in prac- tical bearings. We naturally think of a materialist as a gross, , wooden-headed, leaden-hearted thinker, but there is nothing to prevent in him the loftiest flights of poetry and spirituality. And we are tempted to judge the idealist as an insane skeptic ; he may be and often is, however, a perfectly matter-of-fact person, given to hunger, athletics, and ionliommie. If you must have a hypothesis, choose one of these five, but do not de- ceive yoarself with the idea that you have added to your stock of knowledge. So far as knowledge goes, there are three unresolvable ultimates — matter, life, and mind. These may be capable of resolution, they may in time be resolved, but as yet they are to all ex- perimentation elements. And so the wag was quite right, who, when asked what mind was, replied, " No matter," and when asked what then matter was, an- swered, " Never mind." Well says Tyndall : " The problem of the connection of body and soul is as in- solvable in its modern form as it was in the prehistoric ages." And Huxley : " How anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irri- tating nervous tissue is just as unaccountable as the ap- pearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." Yet both of these men are pronounced materialists. 10. Two affirmations we may safely make of the re- lations existing between the three ultimates, that em- phasize the radical nature of the distinction : 8 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. (1) That particular molecules of matter may come and go in continuous interchange, without disturbing the vital or psychic processes in the least. This occurs in oxidation, secretion and excretion. In animal or plant, living matter is in perpetual flux. (2) When mind and life depart in death the matter remains, so far as science can discover, chemically and physically the same. These two facts throw discredit upon theories that confuse or identify the three ultimates. 11. Indeed, we shall find that while we push back the barriers of knowledge, beyond them lurk abysses we can not penetrate. Several things are to be re- membered : (1) We are dealing in this realm with forces in- finitely more attenuated, subtile, and lively than we ourselves as a whole are. Thus, in vision we are deal- ing with light. Eeflect that every second of vision, a cone of light for each luminous point viewed enters the eye at the rate of one hundred and eighty thou- sand miles. Gaze at a star. For every second of such vision a ray of light one hundred and eighty thousand miles long slides into the pupil. This ray is a vibra- tion of ether and enters in the form of waves, and breaks upon the retina as the ocean upon the seashore in a sort of ethereal surf. In one second not less than five hundred billions of these light-waves dash into the eye to beat against the optic shore of nerves. And this shore of nerves is composed of one hundred million nerve elements to the square inch ; each of which re- ceives a separate impulse, and all of which work in harmony. There is no end to such facts. We are subtler in detail than as a whole. As psychic beings THE SCIENCE DEFINED. 9 we master or are mastered by forces of inconceivable divisibility and subtility. (2) Then, again, it is the fate of mind, when in- quiring after causes and essences, to reach speedily the limits of knowledge ; and to attempt to penetrate be- yond is sheer folly. All the woes of metaphysicians have come from this foolhardiness. Ultimate facts will encounter us everywhere, marking the insur- mountable barriers of thought. With them we must pause. Our final knowledge is and will probably ever be but a light shining in darkness. (3) We are in a universe which bristles with prob- lems that the human mind may at some future time solve, but which can not be successfully treated at present. 12. The purpose of experimental psychology, then, is not to find out all psychic facts, nor to find out any psychic fact to perfection, but simply to discover and arrange relative and ^eriv^tive facts, to push out the barriers, to study mental methods, and to weigh the validity of mental operation. 13. It is therefore not a study of mental results but of mental processes — not what we see, but how we see ; not what we think, but how we think ; not what we feel, but how we feel. The results of mental action we have in various other sciences — astronomy, biology, chemistry, etc. Psychology tries to discover by what powers and methods we attain these results. It is the scientist turning from the world to study himself. It is a response to the everlasting " know thyself " of inquisitive philosophy. 14. This science is naturally and necessarily dom- inated by recent discoveries bearing upon the extreme 2 10 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. probability of an organic evolution. If man is the end of a series of growths allied genetically to lower minds, comparative psychology assumes first importance, and our study begins with the monad and finds a very good implement in analogy. In these lectures the evolu- tionary hypothesis is adopted as a working theory. It is not claimed as beyond peradventure proved, but only as best explaining the facts. Evolutionary language is used and the movement is by the paths of supposed evolutionary ascension. 15. The scope of this science is as far-reaching as the phenomena of life ; for life never appears without mind as its correlative. Hence biology, the science of life, and psychology, the science of mind, are kindred in aims, and constantly cross one another's path. His- tory recording the actions of men furnishes perpetual and diversified illustrations of psychic operation. As Herbart well claimed, " psychology shoots its roots into the sciences of life and blossoms in the historical sci- ences." * 16. The future of psychology is very promising. Myers is justified in saying that "there will be no calise for surprise if, as time goes on, man's experi- ments on the world without should yield in interest and importance to his experiments upon himself. In- ward the course of empire takes its way ! . . . All that he has learned without himself has been but a means to the comprehension of that which was within." METHODS. 11 CHAPTER 11. METHODS. 1. Chemical and physical. Because mind is always associated with matter, and the laws of material com- position and motion underlie the entire physiology of the senses and the organic functions. The study of the direct relations of mind and matter has been termed psycho-physics ; it busies itself chiefly with the relation between the quality and intensity of stimulus and the quality and intensity of psychic reaction. Closely as- sociated with this is psychometry, or the time-meas- urement of psychic reaction. 2. Biological. For mind is always associated with life, and we must study the living cell in its life his- tory in order to investigate psychic processes in their simplest forms and lowest degrees. Here we need the Ynicroscope; for this reveals to us a new world of thought, feeling and action. 3. Anatomical and physiological. For mind at its best is associated with structures of great and signifi- cant complexity admitting of vivisection and dissec- tion. Considerable knowledge of structure and func- tion is now required by psychologists. 4. Pathological. Because mind in its various pro- cesses is associated with localities in structure. A study of disease often enables us to locate functions. This method, however, is exceedingly difficult and misleading, because of our ignorance of disease, and because of the interrelations of the entire nervous sys- tem. Valuable results will flow only from the most 12 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. patient, prolonged and unprejudiced observation and reflection. 5. Psychical. For mind is never found unasso- ciated with other minds ; and subtle interrelations are clearly discernible. Hence, hypnotic experimentation has of late years, been much resorted to, as enabling one, the agent, in studying another, the sensitive, by suggestion and command to operate separately upon different sets of nerve centers. And hence, also, the value of studies in thought-transference, lucidity, and similar phenomena. These particular methods have come to group themselves together under the conven- ient heading. Psychical Kesearch. 6> Introspective. Last and best. Mind's highest knowledge is self-knowledge. I am always chez moi — at home with myself. Introspection must begin and end, accompany and correct, all our devising, albeit with due regard to the necessary limitations. CHAPTER HI. HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1. ExPERiMEiSTTAL psychology was rendered inevi- table by the labors of Bacon and Leibnitz in the seven- teenth century. Bain, Mill, Spencer, Taine, John Mueller, Weber, Fechner, and Lotze have been the prophets of its annunciation and exposition. Its pres- ent advocates are many, and they are the authorities in mental science. 2. Something of a division of labor, resulting from a varying direction of interest, occurs to-day among HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 13 psychical expositors. In England and America com- parative psychology and psychical research are upper- most; in Germany, psycho-physics; and in France, pathological psychology. 3. Any one beginning in earnest the study is advised first to master a good history of philosophy, like Erd- mann's or Ueberweg's, then Bain's The Senses and The Intellect, and The Emotions and The Will. After that, H. Spencer's Principles of Psychology. These simply to prepare the way for Lotze's Microcosm, Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic, and Ladd's Physiological Psychology. It will be well to add Janet's Automatisme Psychologique, if one read French and Binet on the Psychic Life of Micro- organisms. A great many articles in scientific maga- zines, pamphlets and books, of much value and intense interest, are now constantly appearing. Psychical re- search engages at the present time the rapt attention of many keen minds and the publications of the Eng- lish Society of Psychical Kesearch will repay careful perusal. To keep in touch with the great leaders of what may be termed orthodox psychology one must be con- versant with the works of such writers as McCosh, Sully, Baldwin, and Hoeffding. PART I. MIND IN GENERAL. SECTION I. THE PSYCHIC FACTOR CONSIDEEED COMPARATIVELY. CHAPTER L MIKD IN PLANTS. ^ 1. Living matter is always psychic. At first this statement may seem startling in its involvements, but it is simply a corollary not only of the theory of evolu- tion, but as well of the unquestioned facts of develop- ment. (1) We must infer it from the facts of develop- ment. Take our own human life-history, from ovum to maturity. The fertilized human egg is at first a single living cell, but directly, by division of the nucleus, it becomes an aggregate of cells. This aggre- gate takes shape as a sac or gastrula. Out of the gas- trula arises a vertebrate creature of lowest notochord type ; and this forms a spinal column, soon to appear as clearly a mammal. Last of all comes the human infant — child — youth— adult ; and the series ends per- MIND IN PLANTS. 15 chance in Plato, Shakespeare, or Tennyson. Now this progress is a close continuous unfolding of the original cell. There is no gap for mind to creep into during the movement. The original cell, simple and un- divided, must at the start be viewed as psychic. If mind is to be found at last in Plato, we must presup- pose it in the egg ; if that egg be merely chemical and physical, why, so is Plato. (2) We must infer the same from the evolution of intelligences in the organic world. There is an un- broken gradation of them, a series of ever-expanding numbers. There is no beginning place for mind any- where in the evolutionary movement. Deny it at the bottom, and you must fail to get it all the way up. Claim it for the philosopher, and the claim runs down to the monad. Animal mind presupposes vegetal mind; and the mental rhythm of creation is dual. The logical result of denial will be complete skep- ticism, which ultimately must hold man himself as a mere machine — as, indeed, even so shrewd a thinker as Huxley has already boldly urged. Were there no evidence of intelligence in low forms, based on obser- vation, we should need to infer it as at least a latent presence. 2. But we need not depend upon theoretical con- sideration ; ample observation establishes the connec- tion between mind and even the simplest life beyond peradventure. One may of course claim, that to infer intelligence from such action in low forms as would warrant the conclusion in human beings, is unjustifi- able on the ground of the relative inferiority of the former. The difference, however, is rather of quantity than of quality. Purposive and ingenious conduct is 16 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR quite as trustworthy testimony in a micro-organism, for instance, as in a domestic animal or a human neighbor. The surety equals at least that of any ob- servation of other intelligence than our own. And no living form fails to furnish the desired evidence. In this chapter will be cited in testimony those represent- atives of life which, in common parlance, are named plants, including the lowest protophytes. 3. The psychic difference between plants and ani- mals is simply one of degree. Vegetals are feebly psy- chic, animals intensely so. To begin at the bottom, let us consider the slime-molds, which are mere naked masses of jelly like matter, chiefly protoplasm, that ooze over decayed trunks of fallen forest trees or rot- ting bark in tannery yards. Thiselton Dyer claims that this inert, formless, f unctionless substance can be edu- cated to the extent, at least, of learning to accept food at first rejected. Moreover, the mass at some time in its endless existence breaks up into swarm spores and becomes active, with no little indication of psychosis. All a-quiver, these swarm spores react upon stimulus, and dart to and fro seeking food, with precision and seeming prevision, until, this phase of life passing, they fuse together to form new plasmodia. A very large number of simple plants enjoy a similar period of swarming and intense activity. 4. Scarcely higher — perhaps even lower — in the scale are the microbes of putrefaction, fermentation, and disease. P. F. Frankland, in a popular lecture on these forms, claims for them individuality and capacity for education. He says : " In fact, experimenting with micro-organisms partakes rather of the nature of legis- lating for a community than of directing the inani- MIND IN PLANTS. 17 mate energies of chemical molecules. Thus frequently the past history of a group of micro-organisms has to be taken into account when . dealing with them ; for their tendencies may have become greatly modified by the experiences of their ancestors." However this may be, it is now known that bacteria possess an oxy- gen sense, by which they detect the presence of oxygen at a distance and are able to seek it. Moreover, they can gauge the quantity of this gas, and if it prove too intense they flee it. Engelmann claims that bacteria can, detect one trillionth of a milligramme of oxygen, or, in other words, a solitary molecule. 5. The Desmids, a pretty order of green plants, each of but one cell, possess a sunshine sense. We discover no pigment spots, but without failure they find the sunny side of the tumbler in which they are imprisoned, in order to expose to the sunbeams their chlorophyl and work their simple machinery of nutri- tive assimilation. They distinguish light from dark- ness, and in the light find the sunbeam. 6. In colonies of Pandorina^ a higher form, some of the cells possess pigment spots that serve as rude eyes — not, of course, for vision, but simply to sense the sunbeam. While the Desmids have only a light sense, Pandorina has a light sense organ. 7. Many colonies of one-cell plants show a sort of aggregate intelligence. These are veritable confeder- acies, not organically one, but dominated by a common purpose and united in common movements. We may still have swarmspores or zoospores, and a motile period and mutual attraction and fusion ; but there is added combination for security, motion and nutrition. Oscillatoria is a case in point ; it is simply a cylindrical 18 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. filament of cells, each shaped like a pill box and piled end on end. Its confederate action is merely a sway- ing of the filament to and fro in rhythmic oscilla- tion. The psychic harmony seems based upon proto- plasmic contact. 8. More surprising are those combinations of cells which form not so much confederacies as true unions, with organic interharmony and public functions, also, doubtless, based on protoplasmic contact. These are often spoken of as (vegetal) "persons." . A fine exam- ple is Volvox — a beautiful sphere of cells, the whole no larger than the point of a pin. There are twelve thou- sand individuals, each with two protoplasmic lashes called cilia. The twenty-four thousand lashes all wave rhythmically, and the community rolls through the water with perfect unity of purpose, protoplasmic con- tact of individuals enabling the whole to move as one creature. Moreover, this confederacy owns common duties, and a true division of labor subserves the com- mon end. Some of the cells in partnership develop spermatozoids, others become oospheres, and, through the combination of the two, new colonies come into being. These baby volvoces are protected during ex- pansion within the hollow globe, until set free by the death of the parent colony. The older sphere rolls slowly across the field of the microscope, within it re- volving the spheres of the future, like the vision of the prophet, " a wheel within a wheel." Volvox is clearly swayed by protoplasmic unity, and that sway is psy- chic. 9. Tissue plants only emphasize the same unity of plan and action, controlled by forces other than chem- ical and physical. And we no longer wonder over the MIND IN PLANTS. 19 growth of a fern from spore to frond, or of a palm from cocoanut to plume, or of an oak from acorn to leafy crown. In all these cases one cell multiplies into many, and these come to exhibit, in an orderly way, the nicest specialization of parts and division of labor and concert of action, all on a plan foreordained in the fertilized ovum, and in every case peculiar ; and each form, thus highly organized, lives and dies as one per- son. Many tissue plants seem much less psychically active than those which are microscopic, but the psy- chic activity is only latent ; for during the period of fertilization both sperm and germ cells become amae- boid and assume a motory existence. Often the sperm cells are true spermatozoids, and not only very active, but with display of instinct. They respond to stimulus, and actively seek the germ cell of their own species, which they recognize and approach. It is known that the spermatozoids of ferns are attracted to the corre- sponding archegonia of the prothallus by malic acid, which is secreted in the latter to attract and guide them. Some tissue plants, however, are intensely psychic at all times. Some are exquisitely sensitive, like the well-known mimosa, and faint at a touch. These barely fail of a true nervous system, their pro- toplasm being almost as sensitive as nerve matter. Others are carnivorous and entrap animalcules, in- sects, etc., to consume them as food ; which is true of the bladderwort, pitcher plant, Venus's flytrap, sun- dew, and water pitcher. 10. These results are secured somehow by the ac- tual contact of all the protoplasms combined. Minute filaments of living matter, through even thick walls of cellulose, connect not only neighboring cell plasms, 20 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. but eveu the chromatin of neighboring nuclei. A net- work of living matter explains the harmony of plan and action. 11. All tissue plants exhibit what is called geotro- pism — that is, their stems grow upward and their roots downward, or they somehow arrange themselves with reference to the force of gravity. Moreover, some runners and some rhizomes grow horizontally. Some flowers face and follow the sun. Some tendrils reach out for support and about it twine thernselves. Some plants sleep at night, allowing their tissues to become flaccid and to droop. All these movements have hith- erto been explained by the best botanists as mechanical. A closer study of the facts now casts doubt upon this far-fetched solution ; and Francis Darwin does not hesitate to ascribe plant movements, like those of ani- mals, to irritability aroused by stimulus. CHAPTER 11. MIND IK ANIMALS. 1. In animals, protoplasm assumes more active habits, mind predominating over matter. The crea- ture on its entire periphery exhibits sensitiveness to stimulus and responds in appropriate action, showing feeling, volition, and judgment. It is active, and hence voracious; predatory, and hence ferocious. 2. Animals of one cell, or protozoans, invariably put forth motory organs, as do plants in their motile states. In the rudest, these organs are extemporized out of the body substance — mere protrusions or false feet (pseudo- MIND IN ANIMALS. 21 pods). In the higher they become quite permanent lashes {cilia) or whips {flagella). The lashes are short and delicate, and often form a light fringe. The whips are long and powerful. Both are composed of two united filaments of protoplasm, the one contractile and the other elastic. Hence they can bend and rebound. Of the whips there are two kinds, the one trailing be- hind, the other extending in advance. The forward whip is used, as a boy uses his right arm when swim- ming on his right side, to draw the body along. The hinder whip serves like a tadpole's tail, to propel. These members secure and guide the animal's move- ment when in search for food, or, by creating a vortex in the water, they bring in the food from a distance, while the creature remains still. 3. Protozoans have the rudiments of senses. Thus all have the power of touch seemingly on the entire periphery. Probably also they have what is called " general sense." 4. The light sense is well developed in some in- stances, localized in pigment spots, which give at least a perception of the distinction between light and dark- ness, sunshine and shadow. Euglena^ a pretty green infusory, has a pigment spot of bright red, which is sensitive to light and enables it to seek the sunbeam. As this is one of the chlorophyl animalcules with a vegetable habit, of course light is necessary to its ex- istence, and the organ of great practical value. 5. Even the sense of hearing has been claimed, at least for one beautiful ciliated inf usory — Loxodes Ros- trum — which exhibits along the back a row of small organs supposed to be of the general nature of audi- tory sacs. 22 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 6. They may or may not have smell and taste ; but the presumption is in favor of at least smell, in view of their skill in finding and selecting appropriate food. They certainly show in this regard likes and dislikes ; and then some are herbivorous and some carnivorous. 7. That they have the rudiments of sensation and perception follows from the possession and use of senses. 8. That they have the power of judgment on a low scale is also to be inferred from the purposive nature of their activity, and the instinct, experience and skill evinced in their methods of life — as in the pursuit of food ; some go in quest of it, some draw it to them by creating little vortices with their fringe of lashes. This is readily studied in the process of decomposition. After the bacteria and other simplest forms have caused extensive decay of the tissue, a creature appears on the scene armed with a long, rigid, anterior flagellum ter- minating in a hook, and a posterior flexible flagellum. It anchors itself by its trail and then successively coil- ing and uncoiling the flagellum, darts up and down on the decaying substance. This inf usory is succeeded by a group that hurl themselves on the putrid tissue and hammer it to bits. Finally, a gleaner appears and de- vours the scraps. Each form comes at the right time, recognizes the presence of appropriate nutriment, treats the food in a skillful manner, ingeniously sat- isfies its needs, and sustains life until changed con- ditions force out of existence everything but its dor- mant germs. 9. Or take their methods of attack, as evincing not only thought but also volition and feeling. According to Stein, the Bodo Caudatus combines in companies MIND IN ANIMALS. 23 of ten, twenty, forty, for purposes of attack. Like wolves, these little flagellates will throw themselves upon animalcules a hundred times larger, worry them, tear them to pieces and devour the huge prey piece- meal. Many hunter infusories are supplied with tri- chocysts, by means of which they wound, stun, and disable their quarry ; while other more peaceable ani- malcules are armed with the same weapons to be used only in defense. The trichocysts are sharp filaments, poisonous, like the stings of nettles, with which the parts adjacent to the mouth supply themselves by some internal method of manufacture. These serve as darts and are shot out by some simple mechanism with suf- ficient force to pierce. The attacked animal, wounded, is paralyzed, no longer tries to escape and is easily devoured. 10. The protozoans are in some cases, as with Vor- ticella^ distinctly male and female, and these share in the usual psychic phenomena of sex. It is said they make love and indulge in coquetries, the male seeking and the female exercising choice. 11. Communal instincts show themselves in the groupings of protozoans into colonies. Thus Vorti- cella may in the same genus occur with one species in separate individuals, and with another in a compound arrangement ; and in the compound arrangement there is not only individual but communal sensibility. 12. Metazoans are protozoans complicated by de- velopment and evolution ; for every metazoan begins its life-history as a protozoan, and must have arisen in the combination of a number of single cells of com- mon ancestry. The simplest conceivable form of meta- zoan is that of a double sheet of cells rounded into a 24 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. pouch. The inner cells become nutritive, the outer serve for sensation ; and the whole creature is a true federal union descended from one egg cell. From this simple scheme, by growth and specialization, all elaborations of animal shape and function are pos- sible. 13. Protozoans show tendency in many genera to become metazoan. Thus in the genus Zodthamniurn^ while some species are mere colonies {simplex^ nutans)^ others are true federations {arbuscula^ alternans). 14. The intelligence of metazoans is now so gener- ally admitted by scientists that we need not carry the argument further. Presuming that the psychic factor is here acknowledged, it seems important rather to ex- pend energy upon its elaborate methods of assertion. CHAPTER III. THE NEKYOUS SYSTEM. 1. The growing complexity of metazoans, as we ascend the scale of animal existence, ere we proceed far, necessitates the specializing of certain cells to regulate the others. Protoplasmic unity of all the cells fails to meet the demands that arise for nice co- ordination and vigorous purposive action. The psychic factor itself, now that many individual cells are cum- bered with special functions, demands an organ. The little union has become so complex in its public duties and interrelations that there needs not only consensus and harmony, but authoritative government. 2. For this, nerve cells are set apart. These, how- THE NEHYOUS SYSTEM. 25 ever, seem to have no properties unpossessed by proto- plasm in general ; indeed, they are only commonplace individuals specialized to perform certain difficult functions — just as a president, a senator, or a gov- ernor is, after all, only an American citizen, in no wise different from farmers, traders and mechanics, except in the fact that he is set to govern all the rest. Nerve cells are of various shapes — spheroidal, ovoidal, trian- gular, etc., and have nucleus and nucleolus. 3. In its rudest form the nerve cell has no attach- ment, and exerts a direct control over adjacent indi- viduals by mere protoplasmic contact, as in Hydra. In general, however, it exhibits processes— one, two, or many — which are called nerves, and themselves, prob- ably, are elongated cells end to end. 4. At its simplest a nerve is a protoplasmic fibril and nothing more. In animals well innervated it be- comes a fiber, composed of many such fibrils, or it may be a bundle of such ^fibers. In the higher vertebrates, where dense masses of nerve cells and infinite com- plexity of interrelations require it, the fibers are often united in skeins and the skeins in cables. A vast number of fibers may be in one so-called nerve. Thus, in the motor nerve of the human tongue are full five thousand fibers and many hundreds of thou- sands of fibrils. In what we call the optic nerve — in reality an optic cable — are no less than one hundred thousand fibers and many millions of fibrils. 5. In the vertebrates (except in the sympathetic system) nerves are insulated by two layers of non- conducting material up to near their terminations and are divided lengthwise by nodes somewhat like a cane or rattan stalk. All human nerves are supplied 3 26 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. with what seem to be re-enforcing cells — relay bat- teries — here and there along the line. 6. The function of nerves is simply to convey im- pulses received either at the center or on the periphery. Hence they connect a nerve cell with another such cell or with an end organ. In passing through inter- mediary nerve cells the composing fibrils spread out from pole to pole against the inner surface of the cell wall, so as to inclose the cell protoplasm. Hence nerves are said to be efferent or afferent, according as they conduct energy from the centers to the periph- ery or the contrary. This division of labor is not based upon any essential difference in composition and it is likely that both kinds are able to convey im- pulses in either direction. 7. The energy, like other forms of motion, is a transformation in this case of chemical affinity if from within, or of the impinging energy if from without. It is one motion converted into another, probably by the nerve cells, but become peculiar to itself, and quite different in physical properties from light, or heat, or electricity. In man a sensory impulse has been calculated to - travel at a speed of from one hundred to three hun- dred feet a second. Moreover, the number of im- pulses that may thus travel during one second is very great. By stimulation with the wires of a telephone, it has been shown by D' Arson ville that a nerve can transmit upward of five thousand vibrations per sec- ond, and that the wave-forms may be so perfect that the complex electrical waves produced in the telephone by the vowel sounds can be reproduced in the sound of a muscle after having been trans- THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 27 lated into nerve vibrations and transmitted along a nerve. 8. It is the nerve cell that stores up complex and unstable material derived from food, and by exploding this releases the needed energy. Morgan likens this complex material to a building of wooden blocks erected by a child, which, the more elaborate it be- comes, the more unstable it is, until a jar or a touch shatters the edifice, liberating the stored-up energy of position acquired by the blocks in building. We may also liken a nerve cell to a pistol loaded — a touch on the trigger discharges it. Or it is a galvanic battery, and the costly stored-up material is the zinc, to be con- sumed when the current is closed and the imprisoned energy is released. The shock may be very violent, as in the case of Sulla, who is said to have died of an explosion of wrath ; or of Leo X, who fell a victim to an outburst of joy. It has been ascertained that bee drones perish in the act of sexual intercourse, slain by the shock of passion, and not, as formerly asserted, by ruthless action of the queen. 9. A nervous system is a series of two or more nerve cells with appropriate connections ; it may be very simple or it may be very intricate. A typical sys- tem is a solitary psychic cell connected by two proto- plasmic filaments with a sensory and with a motor surface, but any variation on this is possible. As nerve systems become elaborate, they them- selves need eentral control, hence centers simply for co-ordination of such centers; these may be termed co-ordinating organs. 10. Nerve cells are capable of three kinds of action : 28 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. (1) Automatic. The word explains itself, and a good illustration will be found in the cells that control the beating of the heart. A frog's heart after excision will yet throb some time, because the ganglia that con- trol the action accompany it. (2) Keflex — that is, in response to stimulus come in on some nerve. A pinch of snuff, and the resulting sneeze, will serve for illustration. (3) Inhibitory. Where one nerve cell prevents or restrains action in another. Stimulate the vagus, and the action of the heart is arrested. Atropine paralyzes this inhibitory influence, muscarine stimulates it. If from any cause the smaller arterial vessels become con- stricted, and the heart in forcing blood through them be required to work with greater effort, and so in dan- ger of exhaustion, the depressor which connects the heart with the vasomotor center inhibits or depresses this center and obliges it to dilate the vessels, and so remove the cause of the embarrassment. The entire nervous system is such a marvel of com- plex harmony, capable of intelligent supervision of its own operations at every point. 11. Four laws govern the action of nerve cells and systems : (1) Of specialization— that is, of specific function for every element. Of course, in simple forms, the function may be much more general than in the more complex. The law becomes more and more emphatic as we ascend the scale, until in man specialization is carried to the extreme. (2) The law of habit. Energy here, as everywhere, follows the lines of least resistance. Psychic action carves out physical channels in the process of time THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 29 and flows in them as a matter of course. As Carpen- ter puts it, the nerve system " grows to " the modes in which it has been exercised ; or, to vary the iUustra- tion, nerve matter, like paper, folds most easily in the old wrinkles. Indeed, it is claimed by evolutionists that nerve fibrils owe their origin, in the gradual de- velopment of systems, to this very law ; lines of motion following paths of least resistance occasion neural trails. The trails become fibrils or filaments of cells end to end, specialized as neural highways. (3) The law of duration. Nerve reactions are far from instantaneous, and can easily be measured. It takes time for a stimulus at the periphery to reach the center, time for the center to receive the impulse and to respond, time for an execution of the motory result. The moment elapsing between a stimulus and its result is called " reaction time," and is different for different individuals and for differing moods of the same indi- vidual. Much labor has been put forth in its careful estimation, especially in Germany ; but the results so far have been disappointing in the matter of important discovery. (4) Conservation of energy. The nerve systems exert no force not derived ; their motions are previous motions converted. Their explosions are exhaustive and their wasted energies must be redintegrated. Hence all complicated centers are abundantly sup- plied with nutriment. The brain, during action, is suffused with nourishing blood. The. immediate con- comitant of an effort at hard thought or intense feel- ing, or vigorous willing, is a rush of blood to the ganglia in use ; and so if one be hungry, weary, or anaemic, the effort is likely to prove feeble. Centers 30 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. can not generate force of themselves, but can only use such energy as the nutritive apparatus supplies. Hence, for vigorous psychosis, the need for substantial food well digested. CHAPTEK IV. A SURVEY OF NEKYE SYSTEMS 11^ THE ORDER OF COMPLEXITY. 1. Protozoans, as we have seen,- have no nerve systems, but their single cell is itself the prototype of the nerve cell, possessing, at least in germ, all the qualities of automatic and sensitive life which the latter attains. 2. The first appearance of cells specialized for sen- sory-motor control is found in Hydra^ one of the sim- plest of the metazoans, which is yet complex enough to require central control ; it has nutritive, sensitive, combative and generative cells, and in addition a few psychic ; these however without processes. Hydra- form metazoans go no further on this line of evolution. 3. Medusaform metazoans, which are simply an elaboration of the hydraform, develop a more exten- sive nerve apparatus. Thus the medusae of Bougain- villia present a central and a peripheral system, the former a double ring of nerye cells, the latter scattered nerve cells, and both connected with pigment spots, muscle fibers and sensitive ectoderm by filaments. The higher medusae perfect this simple arrangement and add olfactory tracts to rude eyes (or ears). Cut a hydra into bits and each part will restore a whole creature. The specialization is not complete enough NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OF COMPLEXITY. 31 to cripple the generative and formative independence of each cell. But if you slice off the nerve ring of a medusa, what remains of the animal is thereby para- lyzed, and will soon die. Specialization cripples cell independence and though reflex action on stimulation of peripheral centres occurs, automatism ceases. 4. The next higher order of radiated metazoans (the Actinozoa) improve somewhat on medusaform. Coral polyps, sea-pens, anemones and the like possess in some cases rudimentary eyes and ears, with corre- sponding co-ordinative organs, but with similar lim- itations. 5. The Ecliinodermata — sea urchins, starfishes, crinoids, etc. — also group the nerve centers in a ring about the mouth. There are ganglia for each ray, connected together by filaments, and from each gan- glion there are radiating nerves. Thus the creature has as many little brains as rays ; these, however, though acting in concert, must not be conceived of as entirely dependent. Cut out one segment of a starfish and it will thrive very well, under its own local control. The brains are harmonized, but not co-ordinated by any su- preme center. Hence the radiated animals have not attained any very high grade of intelligence. 6. A more hopeful plan has proved that of the ar- ticulated animals, whose bodies are made up of seg- ments — worms, centipeds, etc. ; each segment is like the previous one and each has a very simple nerve system connected with all the others by double fila- ments. The chain of cells is ventral, and a pair of ganglia for each segment. Here the system is of the simplest, but it is reduplicated. And now we are in the line of royal succession. 32 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 7. An improvement on this appears in certain of those worms which have cephalic ganglia, the twin nerves rising and dividing to allow the oesophagus to pass through, and ending above in one or more highly- psychic cells. In this arrangement segments are still independently active. Cut off the head of a centiped while walking, and its body will continue to move on- ward ; cut the body into three or four parts, and the same result will obtain. Let the headless end strike an insurmountable obstacle and, while of course the motion ceases, the legs will continue to strive in attempted propulsion. The cephalic ganglia supply- only needed general direction ; when the other nerve centers are destroyed, these fail of instruction from headquarters and are like a company of soldiers in battle whose officers have been killed. 8. Among the insects this scheme becomes much more elaborate, and the cephalic ganglia much more numerous and complicated, with an immense stride in psychic energy. Thus the ants possess a real brain, large in proportion to their size and bearing some faint resemblance to that of the vertebrates ; and they seem to have carried the type they represent to nearly its full ideal development. Still, we are hardly pre- pared by the visible anatomy of an ant's head for the astounding unfoldings of mind manifest in its life's history. Sir John Lubbock, who has made a lifelong study of these insects, declares that they rank in intel- ligence next to man. He has discovered that they possess character, and are some timid and some bold, some born to lead and some to follow, some thievish, some greedy, some phlegmatic. If they fail of a lan- guage, they at least transfer intelligence readily by NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OF COMPLEXITY. 33 crossing antennae. This has enabled the organization of quite complicated social systems, with the virtues of public spirit, neighborliness and patriotism carried to the utmost limit of personal abandon. In some species distinct classes have evolved — warriors, work- ers and slaves. Communal industries flourish ; many kinds keep aphides and regularly "milk" them for their honey ; Lasius flavus preserves in its nest dur- ing the winter eggs of these lice, hatches out young by a sort of incubator process, and in the spring stocks appropriate trees with them, quite as men breed cattle, stall them and then send them out to pasture. In western Texas, Myrinica tarlata clears a tract of ground about four feet square around its city, and from this garden spot all plants are rooted up, and all stones and rubbish removed ; a variety of millet is now sown, weeds that spring up extirpated and marauding insects warned off; when mature, the crop is reaped and stored away in granaries within the nest, for winter consumption. The parasol or leaf-cutting ants of Trinidad plant a fungus garden and nourish them- selves on the proceeds of their labor. Many species keep slaves, who do all the hard and dirty work ; these are seized in their homes, in the larva or pupa form, during great forays and often amid bloody bat- tle, and are brought in the jaws of their captors to their new abodes, where they are taught to serve and wait ; and there are good and there are bad masters. The foraging ants of South America make incursions, sometimes in dense Macedonian phalanx, sometimes in light detached columns ; they send out scouts, sur- vey routes, convey to one another information and form camps, quite as though human beings ; every few 34 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. days they arrange new camps, like the cruel robbers they are, move to and fro over the country, according to the exigencies of their predatory existence. The ingenuity exercised by these formidable barbarians in overcoming obstacles encountered on the march is said to be astounding. Thus, in crossing a crumbling slope, which was gradually disintegrating under the passage of the army, a portion of the band, by adher- ing to each other, formed a solid pathway over which the others passed safely ; a twig formed a bridge across a small rill, but this proving insufficient for the transit of the host, it was widened by ants clinging to each side of the twig. There seems no end to these wonders, nor any good reason for not comparing such intelligence favor- ably with that of the Australian bushmen, the Ved- dahs of Ceylon, or the pygmies found by Stanley in the African forests. From the psychological stand- point these facts are to the highest degree significant. 9. The nerve system of articulated animals is im- proved upon by a fusion of the chain of ganglia into a continuous mass or " cord." This appears in the lowest of the vertebrates, and is supported by a flexible fibro-vascular rod called a notochord. Amphioxus, a stupid, senseless little creature, and certain genera of fishes, are so equipped ; and the embryos of all higher vertebrates pass through this notochord stage. But the latter in time develop a true vertebral column embrac- ing in its bony canal the spinal cord. 10. The spinal cord is found to enlarge at points where its resources are severely taxed by limbs or sen- sory organs. In AmpMoxus^ which has no limbs, and few if any sense organs, and the lowest fishes with NERVE SYSTEMS IN ORDER OP COMPLEXITY. 35 cartilaginous skeletons and a uniform wormlike body, the cord presents the same general appearance at every point ; but in fishes endowed with powerful fins and some intelligence there are corresponding local en- largements. These great and continuous bodies of nerve matter are unaccompanied by much psychic energy, as they serve simply to co-ordinate correspond- ingly large masses of end organ and muscle. 11. The enlargement of the cephalic portion of the cord first in fishes produces a true brain. A brain is thus a cephalic collection of specialized ganglia ; its appearance signalizes the presence of energetic psychic activity. In its lowest forms a brain is composed of very simple sensory and motor ganglia, and the verte- brate so endowed is far below bees and ants. As ce- phalic ganglia become complicated, they themselves need co-ordination — hence centers for brain co-ordi- nation. Over the sensoriumf rises a cerebellum, and over that a cerebrum. 12. In all but the lowest of the fishes we have a distinctly marked cerebellum, double optic and olfac- tory lobes, with two diminutive cerebral hemispheres. The development of the cerebrum now significantly marks the progress of intelligence. In Amphibia the hemispheres are relatively larger than in fishes. In reptiles they push backward, in birds both forward and backward. Anterior lobes of the cerebrum only are found in egg-laying vertebrates. First in placen- tal mammals appears that great body of connecting fibers uniting the hemispheres and called the corpus callosum. Eodents give us the earliest indication of middle lobes distinct from the anterior. Monkeys develop posterior lobes, and these the anthropoid apes 36 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. emphasize. Only in the more elaborate mammals do these fold in and form convolutions ; the hemispheres now divided and convoluted quite cover the cerebellum and the medulla, and a forehead occasioned by en- larged masses of ganglia may be perceived. At last v/e have the human brain with a cerebrum whose cortex is folded into fissures and crevasses, until its surface is doubled, and with correlated ganglia aggregating full six hundred million nerve cells, and probably a much larger number of nerve fibers. CHAPTEE V. GEN^ERAL REFLECTIONS UPON" THE PSYCHIC FACTOR COMPARATIVELY VIEWED. 1. LiYiisra matter can always be described in lan- guage of mind. 2. The ascent — from simple to complex — is marked by an ever-increasing specialization of cells for psychic functions, enlarged function in general indicated by enlarged ganglia. Animals that depend much upon vision are sure to display extensive optic lobes, those living by scent great olfactory tracts. Birds that use wings for flight, in the corresponding vertebral gan- glia show significant increase in size, while those that depend exclusively upon the legs for locomotion indi- cate this by the swelling of the spinal cord lower down. 3. As a rule, the more nerve centers the more men- tal functions. Each specialization means a corre- sponding dexterity in the psychic factor. Co-ordi- GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 37 nating lobes counterbalance diversity and restore per- sonal unity to organisms that would be otherwise overspecialized ; hence these indicate high intelli- gence. 4. It must be remembered, however, that increase in the size of ganglia may be owing to mere enlargement of bulk ; in this case massiveness is not significant. Both the elephant and the whale in brain weight ex- cel man ; but this size is only the correlative of bodily bigness. It is the relative weight of nerve matter that signifies. 5. And even the relative weight is deceptive, with- out regard to quality. Many apes possess more brain than man in proportion to avoirdupois, the difference being in quality. The brain of the ant is, as we have seen, an instance of the remarkable possibilities of even minute particles of nerve matter. We may safe- ly say that the amount, complexity and quality of mind, in a general way, correspond with the amount, complexity and quality of nerve matter. It is sound psychology to speak of a " brainy man," and Henry Ward Beecher was right when he declared that the world had always been swayed by men of '* big heads and big bellies." 6. Added ganglia often re-enforce those previously existing, by contributing higher potentialities. At least four or five of the basal lobes of the human brain are united in the work of co-ordinating muscular movements with sensation. All the great nerves of sense spring from two or more roots, imbedded often in quite different soils; thus the optic nerve arises by different roots from the optic thalamus, corpora quad- rigemina and geniculata, to say nothing of adventi- 38 THE PSYCHIC FACTOE. tious roots connecting one tract with the other. This means that the apparatus for innervating eyes in the lower animals, in the higher is re-enforced with new potentialities. It is very clear that eyes, ears, etc., are far more varied in endowment with mammals than with articulates, radiates and mollusks. 7. Nerve masses which were once centers of con- sciousness, as more elaborate organs appear, work au- tomatically or in a merely reflex activity. A7nphioxus does all its thinking with its spinal cord ; but verte- brates that have risen to the dignity of a brain, use the spinal cord only for reflex, conductory, and auto- matic work. Consciousness with each step upward becomes more comprehensive and intense, rising to higher outlooks upon the universe and more subtle and complex intellection, but seemingly withdrawing itself from regulation of the lowly functions of mere bodily existence, which fall to the realm of all but the highest centers. AVe may in ourselves observe this withdrawal in constant operation. We learn in childhood to walk, with much painful education of reluctant nerve cen- ters ; but in boyhood already walking has ceased to be a matter of conscious regulation. One is taught to ride a bicycle with many woful episodes of inexpe- rience, as a necessary concomitant of the intensely conscious process ; in time the bicycle becomes part of the rider, and he now recognizes passing friends, en- joys the scenery and muses undisturbed as he skims along. The same is true of reading, singing, piano- playing, and even of preaching and praying ; the cen- ters run themselves. In these cases consciousness has by no means withdrawn wholly, but it evidently tends GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 39 to do so ; give it ages of evolution, and it might do so entirely. 8. This withdrawal in no wise interferes with the automatic and reflex performance of duty on the part of lower centers. We have seen that to cut off a centiped's head does no more than remove control ; the after ganglia operate normally. A frog from whom the cerebral lobes have been removed will swim, leap, crawl and croak ; it is sensitive to light, but is stupid and listless, its life but a dream. Even a rabbit so operated on will stand, run and leap, start, tremble, cry if pinched and seek the light ; but it is torpid, its consciousness that of sleep. A bird thus maimed will pick up food, drink, fly, clean its feathers, avoid obstacles and start at sharp sounds or flashes of light, but is dull and sleepy ; nay, it is asleep, only the lower ganglia present and active. Human beings have in many instances lost large masses of brain matter without serious impairment of faculties. Lallemand narrates the case of a person of average intelligence in whose cerebrum the right hemisphere was found after death to have been filled with only a serous fluid. Bo3^er tells of an epileptic child of usual brightness whose entire temporal lobe on the left side was found to have been destroyed. A premature discharge of blasting powder on a certain occasion sent a crowbar through the head of a young American ; entering at the left angle of the jaw and passing through the top of the head, it was picked up some distance off smeared with blood and brains. The stunned youth recovered in a few minutes, ascended a flight of stairs, gave an intelligible account of the loss to a surgeon and continued to live for over twelve 40 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. years, with no impairment of his sensory or motory powers. Human infants born without other brain than the medulla have been known to live for hours, crying and sucking. 9. Ganglia may act vicariously. When a nerve center is destroyed a neighboring center often can and sometimes does assume its role ; for it must be remem- bered that nerve cells, after all, are only protoplasmic elements specialized, and that they preserve somewhat of the power of general adaptation to environment and stimulus. Just as a factory hand, who all his life has devoted himself to some one little operation in the making of shoes, watches or sewing machines, yet can, if necessary — though doubtless crippled by such mo- notonous activity — do many other things. 10. The evolution of mind displays a marvelous unity in diversity. At the beginning of the individual life, and at bottom of the psychic scale, we have nothing greater than the living cell ; and at the end of the individual life and at the top of the psychic scale, there is nothing greater than the living cell ; there is no break in unity, and only growing diversity with three great leaps. The three leaps are: (1) The appearance of pro- toplasm in form of cells. This made structure possi- ble. (2) The specializing of cells. This made func- tion possible. (3) The co-ordinating of functions. This made all degrees of mental attainment possible. 11. Mark the progress in its results. First single cells with a psychic factor and conscious of their own simple activities ; then colonies of such cells pervaded by a fellow - feeling ; then communities, federally united and with a communal consciousness, the indi- GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 41 vidual cell-mind now tending to work automatically ; then communities in which some cells are set apart to feel, think and will for all the rest — in short, with nothing less than veritable government. Individual cells with the rise are more and more automatic, and their consciousness retreats into the background. The final outcome and greatest triumph of Nature is in the evolution of large masses of nerve matter for very elaborate psychosis, with consciousness covering the play of only the highest centers, the lower groups acting automatically. Crowning the whole, man ! 12. We have no evidence that Nature's reservoir is exhausted in man, even on the lines of neural de- velopment. Who knows what further possibilities of brain development and complexity may not exist? Who shall say what future evolution may not do for man's present brain ? Who can tell what other and better endowed creatures may not somewhere, or even here, arise ? SECTION II. €OI^SCIOUSNESS. CHAPTER VL CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL. 1. Consciousness is an ultimate fact, and there- fore does not admit of definition. Every one knows what it is until asked to tell. It is not a mere name for a series of mental states, for these suppose its pres- ence ; it is not any particular psychic operation, be- cause it reviews all psychic operations. It is a recog- nition by mind of its mental states, an awareness of what is going on within, and thus mentality in its last analysis. 2. The organ of consciousness is primarily living matter. There seems no good reason for denying even to the lowest forms of life some at least dim and shad- owy awareness of their psychic acts. All that we have thus far said emphasizes the juvstice of this claim. When nerve centers appeared, these doubtless func- tioned as the exclusive organs of consciousness, which had withdrawn from commonplace cells ; and when nerve systems were organized, the last-formed became the seats of conscious existence. In man the organ of consciousness, with the greatest probability and accord- CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL. 43 ing to nearly all competent thinkers, is the cortex of the cerebrum. 3. The basic fact of consciousness is change. Pos- sibly without change we might have knowledge, but we should hardly be aware that we knew : consciousness would become nirvana^ and practically extinct. The awareness is at least kept alert by change, and in all conscious life change is incessant. Moreover, change has a physiological necessity; for, as our nerve centers are constructed, action always involves exhaustion, and persistent use destruction. Healthful activity of the brain constantly shifts the burden from cell to cell, from one center to another. Kibot, describing the tumultuous stream of thought, calls it "an irradiation in various directions and through various strata — a mobile aggregate, which is being incessantly formed, unformed, and reformed." 4. Hence, consciousness involves a time considera- tion. It is a constant noiv. It is aware of memories, but not of those past occurrences and operations them- selves which are remembered ; it is aware of anticipa- tions, but not of those future occurrences and opera- tions themselves which are impending; it is aware only of present mental states. The noio of consciousness is not a point but a period of time — very brief, but of sensible duration, with a fading indistinctness beiiind and a brightening indis- tinctness before. The length of this period varies from six to twelve seconds. 5. Consciousness involves a discrimination between an ego, or self, and a non-ego, or not-self — that is, be- tween a conscious subject and an object of which the subject is aware. This has been denied, on the ground 44 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. that babes are not supposed to make any such discrim- ination, and that they discover the self after a while. The .objection, however, is only a surmise, and not an overvvise one. There seems no good reason to deny that an infant, even at birth, may have an awareness of itself at least dim and empty enough to correspond with the void and shadowy nature of its consciousness at that time. It would not be in keeping with our purpose to dwell upon the idea of self in a metaphys- ical spirit, and it is here simply postulated without speculation as another of our ultimates, incapable in its last analysis of definition. When consciousness is busy with its own states, viewing them as its own, we name the operation self- consciousness. 6. Consciousness has two functions of supreme im- portance — attention, and the enchaining or grouping of mental states. Without these wonderful gifts the so- called faculties would each one be quite useless. The first of these two functions is consciousness intensely aware, and the other is consciousness aware of the re- lation between its objects. CHAPTER VII. ATTEKTIOK. 1. Atte:n'tiok is a temporary arrest of psychic change, a fixation of consciousness. If we picture the latter as the mind's eye, the former will be the " yellow spot " of clearest vision. 2. The compass of attention is not large, or, in ATTENTION. 45 other words, the yellow spot of consciousness is small, like that of the eye. According to Wundt, there may be four or five visual simultaneous impressions — lines, letters, or numbers. If successive, and with the most favorable interval of two or three tenths of a second, sixteen simple and eight double impressions are pos- sible. If successive sounds be rhythmical and in groups, the largest possible number of impressions attended to at once is forty, if divided into five groups not more than three tenths of a second apart. Wundt fixes the extreme possible duration of any act of atten- tion at from two and a half to four seconds. 3. The physiological condition of attention is a rush of blood to the nerve centers involved and the strong innervation of the end organs or of the muscles used. This is so because the centers are strained to the uttermost, and require quick, continuous and ample nutrition. Thus, in looking attentively at anything, the various ganglia in which the optic nerve is rooted are richly supplied with blood, and the end organs of vision and the eye muscles are vigorously inner- vated. 4. Attention is spontaneous or voluntary — you may be made aware or you may make yourself aware. It is either sensorial or reflective, directed to what is without or to what is within. 5. If spontaneous, it is caused by emotional states: we attend to this or that because for some reason we want to and are attracted. Hence, spontaneous atten- tion reveals character ; the things apperceived betray the quality and working of our emotional natures. Surprise is such a fixation of consciousness of high intensity. We speak of a person's being rooted to the 46 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. spot, chained, fascinated, etc. As Plato tell ns in his Theaetetus, " Philosophy begins in wonder " — that is, in a spontaneous but very vigorous observance of phe- nomena. 6. Voluntary attention is the result of education, a cause and an effect of civilization, a sociological phe- nomenon. Eibot suggests that it originated in wom- an, through her cruel necessity of doing unattractive work ; thus she first won the gift of application. And Eibot is certainly correct in describing three stages from infancy to manhood : (1) In childhood such attention is secured by means of education, acting only upon the. simple feel- ings — love, fear, desire of reward, shame, etc. (2) Later it is aroused and maintained by appeal to feelings of secondary formation, as love of self, am- bition, emulation, etc. (3) Still later, organization comes in and volun- tary attention becomes a matter of habit. 7. A measure of solitude securing freedom from disturbance becomes the necessity of the intense thinker or observer. Mohammed must go into the mountains above Mecca, Paul sojourn in Arabia, Dante haunt the woods of Fonte Avellana, and Schiller roam by brook and glade, while Cervantes does his best work in prison. Voluntary attention through long habit may ac- quire the absorption of absent-mindedness. Archi- medes would forget to eat his meals, and only com- pulsion forced him to the bath ; he lost his life in such a fit of abstraction, at the hands of a Eoman soldier to whom he was too absorbed to return the answer that would have saved him. Sir Isaac Newton would ENCHAINING AND GROUPINa FUNCTION. 47 "sit, half dressed, on his bed for many hours of the day, when composing the Principia. 8. Intensify the attraction and so the consequent absorption, and we have the condition called rapture and ecstasy. Socrates was liable to fits of abstraction so complete that it was impossible to arouse him until attention voluntarily withdrew itself. Once in the camp at Potidaea he stood twenty-four hours in the sunshine and in the dew, motionless. The prophet Ezra sat crouching in the court of the temple from morning until night in an ecstasy of horror. CHAPTER VIII. THE ENCHAINING AND GROUPING FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1. Mental states are recognized as coming and going in chains and groups. Think of Lamarck and Darwin comes into view ; picture Adam and Eve promptly appears, apple in hand; hear the hum of bees and you smack your lips for honey; see a cow and you long for cream ; say " one," and " two," " three," " four " come crowding on ; hum a theme and an entire symphony seems to swell upon the ear ; and so on ad infinitum, 2. There are seeming exceptions. Often mental' states succeed each other without break or outside suggestion that are not apparently related. You smell an odor of jasmine and think of Mount Desert, but perceive no connection. But if you will allow your mind to dwell upon the matter, the search will 48 THE PSYCHIC FACTOK. probably be rewarded by the coming up into view of certain submerged links in the chain, whose absence caused the apparent break. Then all is plain : the jasmine perfumed the handkerchief of the young lady from Boston, and the fabric of lace — borne by you on the winds from the passing yacht— you gallantly res- cued from the waters of Bar Harbor. 3. The laws of this enchaining and grouping are not far to seek, if by laws we mean only a classifica- tion of the kinds of chains and groups. As these kinds are merely the conceivable relations of things- spatial, temporal and logical — we may, if we please, ex- ercise much ingenuity in classifying. Usually philos- ophers have arranged them under a few captions, thus : Contiguity Horse and rider. Contrast Light and dark. Resemblance Grant and Sheridan. Succession Quoted words. Cause and effect Vice and misery. Whole and parts United States and New York. Genus and species Dog and greyhound. Sign and thing signified . . Cross and Catholic faith. 4. Sir William Hamilton has reduced these to two, simultaneity (in time and space) and affinity, the latter including every kind of logical relation. Then, following St. Augustine, he compressed these two into one, which he named redintegration, and which may be stated thus : " Those mental states suggest one an- other which have at some previous time formed parts of one mental state." Contiguous and successive states associate themselves because at some time joined in consciousness ; and logical relations provoke associ- ENCHAINING AND GROUPING FUNCTION. 49 ation because the mind has perceived such relations and grouped together things thus naturally in affinity. When a new fact is cognized, we note its surroundings, antecedents and consequents, and we perceive or study up its relations and then place it in its own classes ; and henceforth it is likely to call out or to be called out by any member of these classes. Vice does not suggest misery until we discover that the one is a cause and the other an effect ; henceforth, associated by this mental act, either may call up the other. What, however, shall we say of the quick association of new facts with mental states — that they never could have met in consciousness ? For instance, you are in- troduced to a Mrs. Irving Booth, and soon find your- self repeating the name of the distinguished Salva- tionist, Mrs. Ballington Booth, though the two have never been in thought together before. The solu- tion is simple. The name Booth has many times formed part of the whole thought Ballington Booth, and it is that name recalls the Ballington. Hence- forth Ballington and Irving, hereby associated, will be able to suggest one another without aid of the surname. All new objects of thought must contain some quality or condition, already in some class of memo- rized qualities and conditions, and it is by these and their associations that what is absolutely new is joined to what is old. 5. But in the infinity of possible concurrences what is it that determines the appearance of states actually restored ? Why, when I recall the song at last night's concert, do I think of the singer rather than of the programme, or of the programme rather than of the 50 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. audience, or of this or that, out of a thousand possible restorations ? It depends upon — (1) Habit. Familiar combinations are wrinkled into the nerve structure and tend of themselves to recur. Frequency of recurrence in thought, for the wonted notion, establishes lines of least resistance, neural highways easily traversed. (2) Kecentness. Poems, orations, series of facts, readily restore themselves, if but recently committed, even to the scholar of mediocre memory. Not only frequent but recent recurrence is essential to restore them. (3) Vividness. This is of value because of the deep cutting in of the record on the neural tablet. Moreover, vivid mental states not only leave a more enduring record ; by their very intensity they associate themselves with a larger range and variety of other mental states. (4) Interruption. Which may interpose sensations powerful enough not only to start new chains and form new centers of circling ripples, but also to force out of consciousness states already found in possession. Conversation is a perpetual disturbance of the asso- ciated flow of thought, a continual throwing of stones upon the already disturbed surface. Every remark, question, or gesture of a companion starts new rip- plings and establishes condensing centers for related ideas. (5) Voluntary preference ; whereby the will sum- m.ons, retires, combines, disassociates and recombines the mental states. 6. The briefest association time on record (known to the author) is -341 of a second. A simple method THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 51 of handling this problem is to read aloud as rapidly as possible. Every word sounded is an act of associa- tion ; as so many are uttered in a minute, divide sixty seconds by this number, and from the result subtract the perception time and the interval of utterance. 7. The relations of things being very numerous, the possibilities are countless. General Grant, for instance, is classed with mankind, with men, with Americans, with great generals, with Presidents, etc. ; he succeeded Johnson and preceded Garfield ; he was a cause and an effect ; in reticence he was like William the Silent, in temperament he contrasted Washington ! he was part of his army, part of his family, etc. The number of mental states which the name of Grant may revive is thus practically countless. tlHAPTER IX. THE GE^-ERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 1. Mek'tal states may be classified as initiative, habitual or instinctive ; and all living matter may be said to be capable of exhibiting these three phases of mind. 2. Mind is initiative when its operations are, for the creature in question, novel ; and that even the lowest forms can entertain novel psychoses is now be- yond reasonable denial. It is shown in the capacity to learn, as displayed by all animals and not impos- sible to plants. Protoplasm, as has already been re- marked, can be educated. Even bees and ants, though in popular estimate the very incarnation of routine. 52 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. have not yet passed beyond the point when their young need to be trained by their elders in knowledge of life. An ant of the slave species, if captured when a pupa, will grow up in the captor's hill in perfect ignorance of its kindred, will fight them if necessary and will learn obedience in humility. Young ants or bees all receive a certain schooling in the hill or hive. The same mental initiative appears in the shrewd devisings of various creatures to control novel circumstances, as narrated in countless trustworthy anecdotes. Com- mander E. H. Napier describes the feeding of a num- ber of pigeons upon a few oats accidentally let fall by a cartman while fixing the nosebag on a horse stand- ing at bait; all the grain at hand having been de- voured, one of the birds arose, and, flapping its wings furiously, darted at the horse's eyes. The startled animal tossed his head and in so doing shook out more kernels. This proceeding was repeated whenever the pigeons had exhausted their supply. Another witness tells of two swallows who built a nest in the veranda of a house in Victoria ; as the nest leaned upon a bell wire, it was frequently disturbed and twice pulled down. The pair then began afresh, making a tunnel through the lower part of the nest, around the bell wire ; and they were annoyed no more. 3. This initiative, however, tends to become habit- ual, because of the neural law of habit ; in accordance with which nerve elements can adapt themselves to pe- culiar functions, repeated performance develops facil- ity and a nerve system " grows to " the modes in which it is exercised. Hence the possibility and the tenacity of personal habit. Shakespeare has observed, " How use doth breed a habit in a man ! " and long before his THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 53 day Ovid wrote of evil ways and lie might have said it of the paths of peace : " 111 habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." 4. The early result of frequent repetition of any act is a simplification of the necessary movements. Habit finds the lines of least resistance, and these be- come trodden paths ; and hence the work is done with increasing directness, accuracy and ease. Gradually the act tends to become reflex or automatic, and the conscious self is less and less troubled with care of its supervision. When we first learn to play on a musical instrument, to skate, to swim, to ride a bicycle or to per- form some other dexterous combination of activities, we find it necessary to regard every particular move- ment, and even then are clumsy and soon wearied ; ere long, however, all these things are done without awkwardness, fatigue or even conscious attention, the trained nerve centers working satisfactorily under only general supervision. Huxley tells of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, " Attention ! " The man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. This law guarantees mental evolution and ren- ders possible complex mental operations. Well says James, " Habit is the fly-wheel of society," and we may add, it is the condition of progress ; it forms the con- servative factor in the growth of mind. By its help we trail our way through the tangled forests of life's devious experiences with ease and comparative safety ; without it there could be no evolution of mind or mankind. 54 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 5. The totality of habits is very nearly the sum total of personal character. Said the Duke of Wel- lington : " Habit a second nature ! Habit is ten times nature ! " There is an old Greek fable which declares that the goddess of Love once converted a weasel into a beautiful woman ; and it adds that this fair creature could never see a mouse without jumping at it. Hence the personal value and the danger of habits : they represent the grooves worn into. our brains by long usage ; and as they remorselessly tell the secrets of our past lives, so they peremptorily condition our future. Well said Novalis, the German philosopher, " Character is destiny." That is, our constitutional habitudes weave our fates ; they curse and they bless us. 6. Habits are inheritable. This is now denied by a large and able body of extreme Darwinians, who will allow no cause for evolution but natural selection. Over against their theory, however, there is a host of facts not easily explicable except on the old and popu- lar belief in the heredity of habit. Take the follow- ing, and such cases are legion. Surgeon- General Ham- mond tells of a gentleman who, having formed the habit of taking a cup of tea at midnight, did this for twenty years. His son, born after his death, and knowing nothing of this, at twenty years of age one midnight awoke with an intense desire for tea, rose and gratified the longing; the next night the same thing recurred and it became a lifelong custom. This man died when a little son was but six years old ; the boy grew up, and seldom tasted tea, until on a cer- tain midnight the now ancestral passion suddenly seized him and he became an habitual midnight tea- drinker. The grandson, up to the development of the THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 55 custom, had never heard of the usage of either father or grandfather. We can all recall such instances : the acquired habits of parents, whether animal or human, become inherited habits in the offspring. This is very marked in the results of the training of dumb animals. The retriever, the setter, the collie and the spaniel, among dogs, are good instances. A cross with the bulldog has affected for many generations the courage and obstinacy of greyhounds, and a cross with a greyhound has given to a whole family of shepherd dogs a tendency to hunt hares. Mr. Douglas Spalding declares that one day, after fondling a dog, he put his hand into a basket containing four blind kittens three days old. The doggy smell his hand carried set them puflSng and spitting in a most comical fashion. It is evident that the antipathy to dogs was inherited, and also that in the ancestry of the kittens it had resulted not from congenital variation but from bitter experi- ence. 7. When habits are inherited we call them in- stincts ; and such instinct is thus an individual intel- ligence become racial. It is ancestral experience crystallized into race character. Le Conte calls it "communal experience treasured in inherited struc- ture " ; he defines it as " inherited memory," as " in- herited knowledge." But the memory, the knowledge, the experience were become habitual and so automatic before inheritance. Long since — it may be ages ago — ' individual experience resulted in usage ; and this usage — an ancestral heirloom — became a mental tendency. Thus there were swallows in North America before col- onists arrived, and only after the land was settled did chimneys and barns become manifest conveniences for 56 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. these birds, which their individual intelligence discov- ered and appropriated. A habit resulted which finally, by inheritance, was crystallized into instinct, and there are now barn and chimney swallows. The same may be said of animals introduced from the old country : in manner of life and methods of chase and escape they have accommodated themselves by a play of ini- tiative intelligence, stiffened into habit and inherited as an instinct, to their new environment. The fear of man acquired by creatures running wild in once in- habited regions is the result of surprised observation and bitter experience become a race heritage. This whole process is beautifully illustrated in the recent life history of a small parrot in New Zealand, the kea, which until recently fed on insects and the honey of flowers. Latterly it has taken to a meat diet, and lives on sheep. It began by picking at the sheep- skins hung out to dry, and at carcasses of mutton in process of curing. About 1868 it commenced to at- tack living sheep, which were often found with raw and bleeding backs. It has now learned to burrow into the animal's body, eating its way down into the kidneys, which form its special delicacy. 8. Instinct may work in full vigor on the moment of birth, as in the case of sucking with infants, or it may be delayed for years and then appear entirely without education in great energy, as in the instance of the tea-drinking habit just cited. A Mr. Lardner has stated, in Nature, that his brother extracted from the oviduct of a West India snake two snakelets six inches long; both, though unborn, threatened to strike, and made with their tails the characteristic burring noise. On the other hand, Spalding kept THE GENEKAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 57 young swallows caged until they w^ere fledged, and then allowed them to escape ; they flew off directly, showing the instinctive power of flight in a perfect but deferred form. 9. Some kinds of instinct display evidence of a high degree of original initiative intelligence. As in case of the California woodpecker, which bores holes into the bark of trees and plugs them up with wormy acorns, thus allowing the grubs within to fatten and furnishing itself with a rich future repast ; or of the wasp, that stings spiders in the nerve centers, paralyz- ing but not killing, and so preserving them as food for its larvaB. 10. We have remarked that all inherited habits are instincts ; now we must add that not all instincts are inherited habits ; they may result from sexual or nat- ural selection. Says Lloyd Morgan : " The instincts of female insects, which lead them to anticipate by blind prevision the wants of offspring they will never see — of caterpillars, which compel them to make pro- vision for the chrysalis condition of which they can have no experience, or of the copepod crustacean, which lays its eggs in a brittle star that they may therein develop, probably in the brood-sac, and may eveu destroy the reproductive powers of the host for the future good of her own offspring — these and many others would seem to have no basis in individual ex- perience." But even in these cases the instinct be- comes a racial heritage; and though the impulse is too blind to be termed intelligence, as a psychic fea- ture it belongs to the mental rather than to the vital factor. 11. The relation of instinct to initiative intelli- 58 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. gence being thus intimate, we need not be surprised to find that the two are present in animals in an in- verse ratio of predominance. The more instinct the less individuality, the more inividuality the less in- stinct. As Le Conte argues : " The mental wealth con- sists of two parts — individual and inherited. In man the individual acquisition is large and the inheritance comparatively small. In the lower animals the indi- vidual acquisition is small and the inheritance is large. . . . We now see why intelligence varies inversely as instinct. It is because with high intelligence actions are so varied in different individuals and in different generations that it is impossible that their results should accumulate in and become petrified in struc- ture. But in the lower animals the conditions of life are narrow, the habits run in few lines, and these are deepened with every generation, until they become, as it were, petrified in brain structure ; ... all such pet- rifactions arrest development, because unadaptable to new conditions." 12. Instinct may become very stupid ; as is seen in the tendency of caterpillars to go back to the be- ginning of a series of actions to commence over again, when interrupted. The very wasp, which so wisely walls up its prey in burrows, will go through the ac- customed action of closing a burrow from which it knows the prey to have escaped, before proceeding to fill and seal another. The periodic migrations of the lemming, a rodent of Norway and Sweden, has for ages furnished amazement to the scientific world. At varying intervals of from five to twenty years certain cultivated districts are overrun by these little crea- tures ; in an army they steadily and slowly advance THE GENERAL QUALITY OF MENTAL STATES. 59 down from the mountains to the sea — regardless of all obstacles, swimming across streams and lakes, devas- tating every field, pursued and preyed upon by wolves, bears, foxes and eagles, countless millions swarming to the seashore ; the ocean attained, they plunge boldly into the waves and swim until exhausted they sink beneath the surge^ Doubtless in some previous age with a different geological aspect this migration was a movement of wisdom required by circumstances and justified by the results : it is now only the blind work- ing of a dangerous instinct. Very likely the same fate v/ould overtake Euro- pean birds that annually migrate to Africa by way of Italy and Sicily, w^ere the African continent to disap- pear. This migratory habit was formed at a geologic- al period, when there was practically a land connec- tion between the northern and southern continents, and when the African elephant and hippopotamus roamed over Sicily. Should the north coast of Africa sink beneath the waves, it is all but certain that Euro- pean migratory birds would seek its sands and groves to return no more. What we term absent-mindedness is often only the stupidity of mechanical thinking; as with that Texas farmer, who drove five miles ere he discovered that the tail-board of his wagon had been forgotten, and returned to find, as he dismounted in his yard, that all the while he had been sitting upon it ; or as in the case of that eminent Connecticut clergy- man, who on a noted Sabbath morning forgot to make the " long prayer," and could not understand why the service ended at half-past eleven o'clock — a circumstance absolutely unique in his ministry. 60 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR, The stupidities of nltra-oonservatism illustrate the same infatuation of habit. Truths are held to be true merely because they are not new ; and institutions are valued chiefly because well established. Somebody has well said of the run of mankind, " Men are only dead men warmed over." 13. It is man's glory, however, that he may rise above the instinctive to the initiative. He is, after all, not a mere brain structure, not a nerve machine con- structed and wound up years ago. He not only in- herits habits; he may generate them. So doing he reigns. There are no kings and queens in the world any more save such as these. Originality comes to a throne. History of each one is always expecting form- ative action, and the world is to every person a con- stant challenge of opportunity. He who acts instinc- tively is human, he w^ho lives a life of habit has formed a character, but that one who can develop new habits and bequeath new instincts to the race is divine — poet, genius, prophet ; the world waits for him, per- secutes him, builds his sepulchre and worships him. 14. To sum up, w^e find a three fold stratification of psychic phenomena : (1) An inherited constitution of instincts, or in- herited memories and aptitudes. (3) A superadded mass of habits, or acquired memories and aptitudes. (3) An uppermost layer of individuality, forming new memories and aptitudes. THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. Gl CHAPTEE X. THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES ON ORGANIC FUNCTIONS. 1. These lectures will often emphasize the fact of influence by organic functions over mental states; we purpose to prepare for this by treating here of the reverse fact, as one of general interest. Says Prof. James, " A process set up anywhere in the centers re- verberates everywhere and in some way or other affects the organism throughout, making its activities either greater or less." Notice the influence of mental states upon the se- cretions. Sorrow in moderation increases, in excess checks, the flow of tears. Anxiety often occasions perspiration. The transudation of bloody sweat, in extreme mental agony, is in a few cases at least well attested as a historical fact, and entirely apart from the record of Gethsemane. The immediate and striking effect of mental states upon lactation are well under- stood. Or notice the effect upon the vital functions. An instrument for measuring the rhythm and flow of the pulsation will record extreme unrest in the blood- vessels, conditioned by passing emotions ; which show themselves potent in constant changes. Thus a dog's circulation exhibits tumultuous pulse-markings when listening to the sudden scream of another dog. " We catch our breath " on a sudden alarm. We " hold the breath" whenever attention and expectation are strongly engaged ; and a sigh marks the relief of dis- 62 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. traction. A certain Colonel Townsend could Yolun- tarily slow up or quicken the action of the heart. Many persons can blush at will ; and now and then one is found who can faint if desirable. Great fright may cause the heart to stop beating and the blood to " cur- dle," and either joy or fear, if sudden and intense, may occasion instant death. Excitement quickens the circulation ; modesty and shame reveal themselves by blushing. The sight of anything horrible may in- duce a faint ; while a disgusting object, or even the thought of one, may bring about vomiting. The influence of the mental states even upon the muscles is to be noted. Maniacal fury vastly aug- ments the bodily strength, and determination has much to do with both vigor and endurance. The som- nambulistic condition seems at times to impart aston- ishing acuteness and accuracy to the muscular sense and to muscular activity. A lively play of the im- agination provokes expressive movement of the fea- tures, gesticulation, and perhaps talking aloud. An actor can only with difficulty declaim a part expressive of intense ideas without grimace and posture. Some guileless people record the whole inner soul in the features and movement. A belief that ghosts are present invariably causes a cold shudder or the sensation of a cool draft. 2. So tremendous is this power of mind over body, that diseases may often be cured and ailments caused by a new idea. A woman once came to Sur- geon-General Hammond with what he considered an incurable disorder. She sighed as she turned to go away disconsolate, saying, " Ah, if I but had some of the water of Lourdes ! " — for she was a devout Catho- THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. 63 lie. Now it so happened that a friend had brought the doctor a bottle of the genuine water of Lourdes to experiment with. He informed the patient of this, and promised her some, provided she would first try a more potent remedy, Aqua Crotonis (New York city aqueduct water). The woman consented, but pro- testing that this latter could not reach the case. He then gave her a little vial of the real article, but labeled "Aqua Crotonis.'^ When this had failed he gave her Oroton water, but labeled " Water of Lourdes." The result was a complete cure. On the other hand, diseases may arise through ideas. A woman saw a child caught in a gate, and she believed for a moment that its ankle had been crushed. So deeply did sympathy cut, that one of her own ankles swelled and reddened. Dr. Morton P. .Prince cites the case of a lady who believed that the mere presence of a rose in the room brought on vio- lent catarrh and weeping ; and when she smelt a rose these symptoms did invariably occur. So her physi- cian presented her suddenly one day with an artificial rose, occasioned these disastrous results, and then con- fessed the fraud. The mental shock of the revelation restored her to sanity, and the affliction ceased. It was tie false idea produced the symptoms ; this removed, the diseased condition was gone. 3. The hygienic value of this fact is very evident, and in it lies the secret of the faith cure, mind cure and Christian Science. The Hebrews were wont to quote to one another this proverb, "A joyful heart maketh a happy cure." As persistent attention and exaggeration of ideas will account for most of oar grievances and woes, so distraction from pain and 64 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. dwelling upon pleasure will guarantee contentment and peace. 4. There is danger to health and sanity in a greedy brain, which if pampered will take more than its share, in any case large, of the body's nourishment. The result is the starvation and drooping of the vital organs, and the failure of the machinery of nourish- ment itself. Much of ill health among students re- sults from this overindulgence of the brain, with the inevitable final failure not only of the general physique but no less of the central ganglia themselves, whose greediness caused the trouble. It is impossible long to nourish the head at expense of the body ; general decay sooner or later must set in. 5. An extremely common morbid result of undue mental anxiety is what has recently come to be called nervous dyspepsia, which is a failure of innervation of the stomach. Extremely freakish, it depends upon moods and conditions. The simplest food may fail of assimilation, and the most complex may at another time be appropriated with ease. The immediate cause is an inhibition of the nerve of the stomach, the re- mote cause general nervous exhaustion, or at least that irritability of brain ganglia which precipitates general exhaustion. 6. Nervous prostration — a convenient phrase cover- ing much ignorance on the part of the physicians — in general describes the most prominent and the most alarming malady of the day. It has many forms and numberless symptoms, but its cause is exhaustion of the nerve cells, through starving or overwork. Doubt- less the age is responsible. The sleepy days of former stupid discontent, when most men drowsed and the son THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES. 65 followed in the footsteps of the father, untroubled by ambition, social problems or religious perplexity, are forever gone. We are come to an age of intelligent unrest, aspiration, inquiry and endeavor. Human ac- tion is in general intense to universal nervousness ; hu- man thought is in general without repose. The times are feverish. There are scarce any more Sleepy Hol- lows even am^ong the mountains and in lonely forests ; the railroad king or the statesman is as likely to come forth from the cot in the wilderness as from the heart of a city. The very plow handles think. Villages are become but suburbs to the universal civic pande- monium. Notice how popular words which describe popular men — " wide awake," " smart," " clever," " sharp " — indicate the intensity of the striving. Hence the prevalent diseases are of the nervous order, hyste- ria, apoplexy, neurasthenia, brain-softening, insanity. The phrase nervous prostration describes the first monitory approaches of these insidious foes to happi- ness and health. It assumes protean forms, and has numberless symptoms, the most marked of which are incapacity for mental work, persistent depression, in- digestion and insomnia. 7. The proper care of the brain involves : (1) Its nourishment by good food well digested. (2) The preservation of tone throughout the body by careful prevention of an oversupply of the brain, which should not be allowed to rob the stomach and other vital organs. (3) Periodic rest in sufficient daily sleep and sab- batic and yearly vacations. (4) All of which involves a judicious limitation of the work done. 66 THE PSYCHIC FACTOE. (5) It should be a fixed habit to divert attention from personal pain, from the foul, morbid, and hor- rible, and to keep the mind sweet and clean, hopeful and aspiring, stored only with the facts and fancies of the true, the beautiful, and the good. (6) The imagination should be used to intensify the " sweetness and light " of existence. Schiller said that a truly artistic imagination " only plays with the beautiful and plays with the beautiful only." It much concerns mental health that the imagination should " play " with only the fair and winsome. (7) Will to be well ! This, strictly speaking, is the "mind cure," is potent in nerve -diseases, and is not useless in other maladies. Physicians are constantly telling their patients to " give up and go to bed," but worse advice, except in the doctor's interest, could not be offered. Never give up, and do not go to bed unless to sleep. Note. — The famous Thomas K. Beecher, in a sermon of review, stated that during a ministry of many years he had buried two thousand persons, and only three of them had died a natural death. On being reproached for so extraordinary a statement by an eminent neighboring doctor of medicine, he vented his little joke and explained by saying that those three were the ones who had not employed a physician. This will at least serve to illustrate the growing feeling among men of thought, that we have been doctored overmuch, and that the recuperative powers of the human body have not been suffi- ciently appealed to through the imagination and the will. SECTION III. SUBCONSCIOUSNESS. CHAPTER XL subconscious:n"ess in ge:n'eral. 1. By the word subconsciousness we describe mental states that are neither conscious nor uncon- scious. 2. We have observed that the nerve centers, directly they become " lower " and subordinate to higher co- ordinating centers, retreat into the background, their activities fading out of personal sight and surpervision. Consciousness withdraws to the higher, and the lower perform their work with an intelligence of their own that is automatic and in a measure impersonal and beyond the purview of the ordinary every-day self- recognition. 3. We have seen that even personal habits tend to retreat from the field of conscious activity and to be- come automatic and impersonal. The same is true of instincts, which rule the life with or without conscious supervision. 4. Sleep introduces us to another condition of the subconscious, and one in which it is possible to inves- tigate the condition itself. 68 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 5. To this realm belong those obscure mental activities which recent writers have termed " uncon- scious cerebration." A man wearies of a problem he can not solve, and leaves it in despair ; on the morrow, unexpectedly and when he is thinking of something else, the solution comes to him as a happy thought. You forget a name, and give up the attempt ; by and by it pops into thought unceremoniously. One hears a tune, likes the air and forgets at once ; on the mor- row it can not be recalled, but a week later one is found humming it over. We sleep with a determination to rise at a certain hour, and on the stroke of the clock we are somehow aroused. A large proportion of our thinking and willing is done for us by a somewhat within, and we get only the results. Often the ob- scure decision anticipates our conscious discussion and resolution. As was true of that country parson who, called to a city church on a largo salary, betook him- self to prayer for light. After several weeks a neigh- bor accosted his eldest : " Say, Jim, is your father going to accept that call ? " The boy replied, " Well, father is still praying for light, but most of the things is packed ! " 6. Here, also, find place somnambulism, hypnosis and those subtile powers of the human mind which hitherto have been claimed for sorcery and spirit- ism, and which now we have come to name thought- transference and lucidity. 7. To these must be added certain diseased condi- tions which, in the decay of personality and the fading out of consciousness, push up into notice — to wit, hal- lucination and dual and multiple personality. 8. All these subconscious states are marked by SLEEP. 69 automatism, which is quite independent of the ego, and often defifct of it. They form a personality of their own, and develop consciousness beyond the threshold of consciousness. CHAPTER XII. SLEEP. 1. Nerveless creatures do not in any true sense sleep, but they have seasons of repose that may sug- gest and may even simulate it. Unicellular organisms very commonly go through stages of inactivity, when they are encysted and quies- cent. Plants enjoy periods of rest, and often they droop and fold their leaves at night; and nerveless communities of animal cells are not incessantly active. 2. Animals with nerves not only can, but must, sleep. The intenser the mental activity the greater the need. ISTerve cells in action consume much pre- cious substance, dissipate enormous stores of energy and will die of exhaustion if constantly worked. The lifelong perpetual beating of the heart may seem to be in contravention of this, but who knows that this wonderful organ is innervated all through the twenty- four hours of the day by precisely the same cells? Analogy renders this extremely improbable. 3. With all animals that have active brains, sleep is a very significant factor, not only of health, but no less of life itself. In man's development it assumes vast importance. The worst form of torture for us is to be kept constantly awake. Continued insomnia 70 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. results in madness, and ultimately in death. And we are all ready to say with Sancho Panzai^ " Blessings on him who first invented sleep ! " 4. Sleep is induced by weariness, darkness, quiet and low monotonous noises, like the buzzing of insects, the murmur of a breath of wind among leaves, the fall of a tiny surf upon the seashore, a mother's lullaby, or the droning of a dull preacher ; or by gentle move- ments, like the rocking of a cradle and the swinging of a hammock. In short, anything which soothes psychic activity and determines blood from the brain will tend to cause somnolence. 5. On the contrary, awakening can be effected by any kind of rousement, determining blood to the brain and exciting psychic movement. A sharp call, a vigorous shake, or a sudden flood of light will gen- erally suffice. 6. The process of going to sleep is very interest- ing. The members succumb in regular succession ; first the head grows heavy, then the upper eyelids droop, the subhyoid muscles yawn, the inspirations become slower and deeper, the lower jaw falls, the chin drops upon the chest, and the limbs relax. A similar sequence of psychic phenomena occurs. Speech becomes confused, vision indistinct, thought obscure. First the will and the moral nature go to sleep, and consciousness falls into a petty anarchy. Visions come and go, often with marvelous rapidity, in grotesque connection and succession, continuing nothing, perfecting nothing and evanescent. At last the imagination slumbers, and there is profound rest. 7. Waking reverses this process : for it is the im- adnation that first arouses itself to renew its chaotic SLEEP. 71 dreaming; then follows the will, reason and moral nature ; finally the eyes see and the tongue recovers speech. 8. The physiological explanation of these facts is simply the withdrawal or the supply of nutrition. In sleep the brain is anasmic. The same is true of the spinal cord ; the retina also is blanched, and all the end organs unsupplied ; indeed, the nerve centers re- ceive only a slight and sluggish flow of blood — just enough to repair waste but not sufficient for active work. Hence sleep can be prevented by excitement and by medicinal stimulants, and can be artificially oc- casioned by pressure on the great arteries of the neck, or by acting through drugs upon the vasomotor cen- ters. 9. It is probable that in sleep the mind is at all times subconsciously active. Dreams may utterly fail but there is a subdued self -awareness ; and some nerve cells are always on guard and practically awake. Per- sons in deepest repose can be aroused by a word, if only you know what is the exciting signal. The bark of a watch dog, the ringing of a bell, the cry of a babe will suffice. We can sometimes appoint an awaken- ing with ourselves and start up on the stroke of the clock. 10. Some good work, in a quiet way, is often done- in sleep, especially if it be restless : plans are matured, problems solved and happy thoughts evolved, as ap- pears on the following morning. The advice so often given concerning some troublesome aspect of life's puzzle, " to sleep over it," is good philosophy. 11. During sleep the temperature of the body falls 72 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. from one half a degree to two degrees, the amount of carbonic dioxide exhaled is diminished, and the amount of heat given off falls from 112 calories to 40 (for a man weighing 147 pounds— Helmholtz). This shows that tissue changes are very slight. 12. The amount of sleep required is, for a child, one half its time ; for an adult, one third. Women need more than men and among men there is vari- ance. Napoleon could sleep and wake at will, and needed but four or five hours : he died of exhaustion, however, at fifty-two. Descartes required ten hours and was incapable of efficient brain work without it. Doubtless, in this matter of amount, both the quality and vigor of nerve cells are involved. CHAPTER XIIL DREAMING. 1. Some people never dream, or, if they do so, fail to remember ; with most, however, at least just after losing one's self and just before awakening, subcon- sciousness is more or less alert. 2. The whole nervous system, though partially in repose, now displays a certain amount of sensitiveness. A touch, a sound, a ray of light, a pungent odor, a pain, a sense of heat or cold, modifies the rhythm of respiration, determines a contraction of the vessels of the forearm, increases the general pressure of the blood, causes an extra inflow of blood to the brain, and quickens the heart-beat. This sensitiveness, both peripheral and central, combined with ample cerebral DKEAMING. 73 blood supply, gives us the physical conditions of dreaming. 3. Psychologically, the supremely important fact in dreaming is the withdrawal of the personal con- sciousness, with its trained will and developed moral nature. Personality slumbers, the impersonal remains awake. Eeality, central control and the co-ordination of ego and non-ego, all practically cease to exert in- fluence. 4. Some claim that dreaming is the earliest and primary form of self -awareness, and that waking is a secondary state developed to meet external needs. Be that as it may, the two are radically distinct. In the former the imagination, dominated only by fortuitous association, plays at anarchy. 5. The orgy begins even before the drowsy person- al consciousness is disposed of ; and for a while, and indeed so long as slumber remains light, the work of fantastic creation may be controlled. The author is able in light sleep to end his dreams by an act of will if they prove unpleasant, and to continue and elabo- rate if agreeable. At best, however, the sway of will is weak and brief ; imagination soon and easily escapes its leash, as slumber deepens. 6. Hence dreams are apt to be irrational, not regu- lated by the known limitations of tiuie, space and causation. They play childishly with extension and • duration, are often utterly absurd, are sometimes quite inconsequential, and not seldom vicious or darkly criminal. Miss Cobbe cites several instances of atro- cious misconduct on the part of persons whose eleva- tion of character rendered the infamy of it quite in- She tells of a distinguished philanthro- 6 74 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. pist, an eminent jurist, who constantly committed forgery and regretted the act only when he learned that he was to be hanged ; of a woman whose life was devoted to the instruction of pauper children, who, seeing one making a face at her, doubled him up in the smallest compass and poked him through the bars of a lion's cage ; and, finally, of one of the most benevolent of men who ran his best friend through the body and felt extreme satisfaction on seeing the point of his sword come out through the shoulders of his beloved companion. 7. Yet are dreams intensely realistic, in a way. After all is said that can be of their unreasonableness and immorality, they are yet sufficiently actualistic to justify the Hebrew Psalmist, when, comparing life to a dream-troubled sleep, he said, " I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness"; sufficiently true to life's evanescent and unsatisfactory phenomena to point the dramatist's cynicism, when he made one of his players declare : " We are such stuff as dreams are made of, And our little life is rounded with a sleep, And like the baseless fabric of a vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, And, like an insubstantial pageant, faded, Leave not a rack behind." This close connection of the two worlds is not to be forgotten. 8. Dreams are determined by central or by pe- ripheral stimulation. Of the central determination we know little ; it seems to be an automatic action of DREAMINa. 75 nerve cells in the brain, sending out thought waves that cause other nerve cells to explode and other thought waves to vibrate. The locality of the start- ing point and the energy of the impulsion probably determine the character of the succeeding visions. Of peripheral stimulation very little is required to decide the nature of dreams ; an odor, a breath of air, the bark of a dog, a rustle, or a cramped muscle or a touch of indigestion, the pain of a wound or a disturb- ance of circulation, will any and all suffice to provoke elaborate trains of fantastic imaginings. A physician who applied a hot- water bottle to his feet on retiring dreamed that he was climbing Mount Etna and found the heat insufferable. Another, who applied a blister to his head, was scalped by a party of Indians. Dr. Beattie mentions a man who could be made to dream on any subject by^ suggestive whispering in his ear. Lobster salad just before retiring has been known to produce very lively and not always agreeable visions. The dreaming of patients in painful illness is generally distressing. In this connection a speculation of Prof. Ladd is of interest. He claims, and seems to prove, that the dots, lines, splashes and angles which we observe in the field of vision when the eyes are closed — what the Germans name Eigenliclit., and Prof. Helmholtz calls "luminous chaos" and "luminous dust" — to some extent determine the form and character of dreams, and to some degree occasion them. 9. Dreams often transpire in an incredibly short space of time. A person was suddenly aroused from sleep by a few drops of water sprinkled on his face ; he pictured on the instant the events of an entire life, 76 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. in which happiness and sorrow mingled, and which finally terminated with an altercation upon the bor- ders of an extensive lake, into which his exasperated companion succeeded after a struggle in plunging him. Dr. Abercrombie relates a similar case of a gen- tleman who dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, car- ried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and led out to execution. He awoke as the fatal fusillade resounded in loud report, to discover that the cause of his dis- turbance was a noise in the adjoining room. Lord Holland fell asleep when listening to somebody read- ing, had a long dream, and yet awoke in time to hear the conclusion of the sentence, of which he remem- bered the beginning. 10. Another most interesting feature is the com- pleteness of the hallucination. There is absence of all surprise over ridiculous transformations, grotesque situations and impossible combinations. "iWZ ad- mirari " is now the motto of even the most skeptical and the most susceptible. This is because impressions from the outside are not present to contrast ideas : ideas have undergone an absolute as well as a relative increase in intensity. Time, space, motion, pleasure, pain, are exaggerated, and, occupying the whole field of thought, produce npon the subconsciousness the effect of reality. 11. The coherence of these hallucinations is worth consideration. While dreams do not in general " stand upon the order of their going," there is enough of orderliness of sequence to suggest the working of some law of connection other than that of mere asso- ciation of ideas. Many persons, of whom the author DREAMINa 77 is one, receive their first intimation of approaching sleep in fragmentary pictures, which succeed one another in the most incoherent way, like views from a stereopticon thrown upon a canvas, whereon the audi- ence knows not what will appear next — a grand old moss-covered castle, a tall chimney, the face of a friend, etc. This is followed by a dramatic show with lively action, in which the dreamer may be actor or spectator, or both, and which, however grotesque, at least preserves a thread of sequence. It seems highly probable that the nerve cells of the brain, on being loosed from control, acting at first disjointly, as slum- ber deepens soon begin to combine, but under some sway less rigid than that of the conscious will. A kind of dream personality is suggested. 12. In the same connection is the curious fact that we dream that we dream. Often we bemoan lying awake, when some one stirs us and we learn to our astonishment that we have been only dreaming that we were awake. Much insomnia is little less than this restlessness and vivid dreaming. We are confident that this phenomenon occurs only with habitual dreamers, in whom the secondary dream personality is so well developed that a fainter tertiary personality looms up in the distant shadows. We have no evidence that any one ever carried this involvement into further complications, to dream that they dreamed that they dreamed — though this is by no means impossible. 13. Sometimes dreams manifest a vigor and range of intelligence not usually in control. While most persons have only silly imaginings in slumber, some see visions that are the product of much creative 78 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. power. The author remembers on one occasion im- agining himself turning over a book of fine engrav- ings. He had never seen them before, as he assured himself while dreaming and afterward, on awaking, and while intensely vivid impressions remained. AVhat was it enabled him in a moment to create a score of varied and superb works of art ? Moreover, he has not only created whole dramas, filled with characters, scenes and witticisms ; he has himself personally acted in them as one of his own dramatis personcs ; and then he has lain awake a long while marveling over this utterly unusual activity, never having succeeded at impersonation, nor having been knowingly capable of dramatic composition. Some really great works of genius have arisen in this way. Tartini, a famous violinist and composer, dreamed that the devil had become his slave, and that one day he asked the Evil One whether he could play the fiddle. Satan replied that he thought he might pick up a tune, and thereupon he played an exquisite sonata. Tartini, imperfectly remembering this on awakening, noted it down, and it is now known to musicians as II Trillo del Diavolo. And in like man- ner Coleridge composed his poem of Kubla Khan. 14. Dreams are occasionally significant precursors of disease. Armand de Villeneuve dreamed that a dog bit him in the leg, and a few days later fell victim to a cancerous ulcer on the very spot bitten. Gessner, in his sleep, fancied that he was fanged in the left side by a serpent ; soon on the same place he developed a malignant pustule, of which he died. A man saw, in a dream, an epileptic, and shortly himself became one. A woman spoke to a person who could not replyto her DREAMINa 79 because dumb, and she awoke to find that she herself had lost the power of speech. These facts indicate that subconscious centers are capable of sending up to the dream personality valu- able information. 15. That dreams occasionally become veridical has been the belief of many in all ages. The night before Julius Csesar was assassinated his wife Calphurnia dreamed that her husband fell bleeding across her knees. On the night that Attila died the Emperor Marcian, in slumber, saw the bow of the Hunnish con- queror broken asunder. So at least the old records tell us, and such stories are legion. Our Bible is full of similar narratives, which unbelievers have ridiculed and which the devout have swallowed with no little choking. To the great amazement of the scientific world, the Society of Psychical Research has recently collected a very large array of no less marvelous narratives of sig- nificant dreams told by persons of the highest charac- ter and position, and verified by corroborative docu- ments and circumstances. We must delay the attempt to throw light upon these claims until the study of thought-transference and lucidity shall engage our attention. Well and truly wrote Byron : " Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality ; And dreams in their development have breath, And tears and tortures and the touch of joy. They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils ; They do divide our being ; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, 80 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. And look like heralds of Eternity. They pass like spirits of the past, they speak Like sibyls of the future ; they have power, The tyranny of pleasure and of pain. They make us what we were not, what they will ; And shake us with the vision that's gone by — The dread of vanished shadows ! " CHAPTER XIV. SOMNAMBULISM. 1. A SLEEPER dreaming sometimes acts his dream : he talks or walks. Such a person we describe as a sleep-walker or somnambule. The condition is induced by apparently trivial causes — an undigested meal, a lingering mental ex- citement, or a disturbance of slumber from without. It may and often does occur during sleep by day. 2. Physiological explanation of this lies in the partial awakening of certain end organs and of the corresponding sensory-motor centers. The psychological explanation is in the increased coherence and activity of subconsciousness. 3. Sleep-talking at first is incoherent, but it may become in time, if cultivated, a gift of intelligent con- versation. One of the students of Elmira College, a remarkably talented young lady, who when awake was unusually reticent and discreet, when dreaming could be skillfully led on by her roommate to reveal all the occurrences of the day. Carpenter tells of a young lady who, when in school, often talked in sleep, her ideas always running upon the events of the previous SOxMNAMBULISM. 81 day. If encouraged by leading questions, she would give a coherent account of these occurrences, provided the queries were pertinent; questions not pertinent were not answered, and to all other ordinary sounds she was quite insensible. Sleep-walking undergoes a like development. It begins in a mere locomotive restlessness, but if culti- vated becomes an ambulatory life of uncanny adven- ture, in which certain end organs are alert and certain brain ganglia active, while the muscular system is wide awake. Sleep-walkers wander through houses, climb roofs, stray abroad over the country and in general manifest an adventurous disposition. 4. If encouraged by circumstances, the somnam- bulic habit develops into a secondary sleep character, a subconscious sleep life, in which the center of per- sonality is shifted. -A new memory arises; all occur- rences in former attacks being tenaciously retained, a new mnemonic chain forms; each somnambulic ex- perience connects itself with all previous ones. More- over, the somnambule, in addition to these memories, holds in addition the entire storehouse of waking rec- ollections, and so is richer in resources of reminis- cence asleep than awake. Then characteristics assert themselves : the patient is a " visual " — that is, sees, but hears not — or is an "audile " — that is, hears, but sees not — or is a " tactile " — that is, having hypersen- sitive touch, dispenses with both eyes and ears. Or he may be quite like himself and only a little " queer." 5. We saw that, in dreaming, attention is not ob- servant, but rapt ; in the sleep-walking condition at- tention arouses itself and becomes discriminating. There is now a non-ego as well as an ego ; the somnam- 82 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. bule may even perceive that he is other than himself, and may delight in it. He may move through the world and converse and act much as if awake, with accurate judgment of men and things. Eational in- telligence is now partially aroused, though displaying marked departures from the normal types. Only the old personality slumbers ; the thought center seems shifted, and a dual consciousness inaugurated. Indeed, the somnambule often refers to his waking self as to a third person. 6. Some very amazing incidental phenomena have always rendered this condition the puzzle and despair of metaphysicians and other scientists. There is often a muscular dexterity quite unwonted, and capable of most noteworthy feats of skill and daring, sight with closed eyes, and touch beyond all ordinary experience hypersensitive. Imagination is intensely vivid, and the most astonishing creations of dreams may become actual performances. A young, ignorant girl may be- gin to preach or recite poems with excellent pronun- ciation, rhetoric and elocution. The most intricate problems may be solved, the most difficult music per- formed. We shall presently see that thought-trans- ference and lucidity are also frequently manifested to a remarkable degree. 7. This condition may in some patients be volun- tarily induced, in which case, however, it merges into the hypnotic trance. Of this anon. 8. Somnambules must be gently aroused, if dis- turbed at all. A violent shock is injurious, and may prove fatal. In general the trance lapses of itself into ordinary sleep, and on awaking the patient remem- bers the sleep acting only as a fading dream, if at all. SOMNAMBULISM. 83 9. Action in sleep is much more exhaustive than mere dreaming, and the actors awake wearied and pale. Hence this condition has always been yiew^ed by physicians as unhealthy. It would seem wise, there- fore, rigorously to repress all tendencies in this direc- tion by attention to health, the ventilation of bedrooms and the removal and prevention of disturbance. 10. A careful review of these facts will convince us that we are here dealing with only the old problem of dreaming, but in an exaggerated form and degree. Nothing absolutely new by w^ay of psychic phenomena is developed. The creative imaginings of somnambu- lism are no more wonderful than the splendid visions, correct impersonations, and elevated poems and dramas of dreaming ; only they are spoken and acted, as well as conceived. Its marvelous hypersensitiveness of the end organs is but what w^e find occasionally in the waking condition of certain exceptionally gifted per- sons, while its thought-transference and lucidity only multiply in number, intensity and quality, as we shall soon see — experiences which many have when in full possession of all their faculties. Somnambulism does not offer us a new problem ; it puts exclamation and interrogation points over against facts ordinarily obscure, but quite common, and vastly significant ; it proves that we are creatures of marvel- ous capabilities ; that man's knowledge of himself is the least developed of all the sciences ; and that, as Sir Isaac Newton said of his own immense learning, the wisest have only " scratched the surface of things." 84: THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. CHAPTEE XV. HYP:t^OSIS. 1. We have learned that it is of ourselves we sleep, that sleeping we dream, and that dreaming we often talk and act our visions. Now let sleep and dreaming, sleep talking and walking, be induced by another than ourselves, and we may describe the condition as hypnosis. We are hypnotized, the sleep is enforced and the dreams are suggested by another. In short, hypnosis is induced sleep, induced dreaming and induced somnambulism. The essential feature is the induction, and the impor- tant problem of hypnotism is the secret of its nature and method. We may expect all hypnotic phenome- na to group themselves under the three heads of sleep, of dreaming and of somnambulism. ^ 2. Hypnosis is a widespread possibility. Its range is as extensive, probably, as the possession of brains, or of elaborate nervous systems ; and it thus appears that even in low forms there exists a realm of sub- consciousness. Hypnotic results have been obtained in the shrimp, crab, lobster and sepia; in the cod, brill and torpedo fish; in the tadpole, frog, lizard, crocodile, serpent and tortoise ; in some birds ; in the Guinea pig and in the rabbit. It is generally found sufficient to place the animal in some abnormal posi- tion — for instance, on its back — and to keep it quiet, with slight, continuous pressure. Soon it refrains from voluntary movement, and anaesthesia of skin and mucous membrane results. With repeated ex- HYPNOSIS. 85 perinient animals become more and more suscep- tible. 3. Of human beings the majority may become . either agent or sensitive. Authorities vary as to the proportion of sensitives ; they agree, however, in hold- ing that persistent experiment would overcome re- sistance in most cases. Forel thinks that every per- son not insane in time would succumb ; and as in every one there is a realm of the subconscious, this is probably true. It has generally been supposed that health, cul- ture and intelligence, affording self-control, favored resistance ; and that a weak will, incapacity to fix at- tention and the hysteric temperament predisposed to easy surrender. Moll, however, with many other able experimenters, now claims that the weak and hyster- ical are, if anything, less amenable to suggestion, and that the best sensitives are vigorous in mind and body. 4. The condition is produced by any method that fixes the attention and arouses expectation of its oc- currence. Thus, by passes or other manipulation — by causing the sensitive to gaze fixedly at a bright object — by a sudden flash of light, a violent noise, a word of command, etc., the suggestion may enter by any of the senses. In well-trained cases a simple direction by letter, by telegraph, or by telephone will do; and a mental command, working by thought- transference over, miles of distance, has been known repeatedly to succeed. Bernheim's method is as follows : " You place the patient in an armchair, and make him for a few seconds, or minutes, look up into your eyes; and meanwhile tell him, in a loud and confident but monot- 86 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. onous tone, that he is going on famously, that his eyes are ah^eady swimming, that the lids are heavy, and that he feels a pleasant warmth in legs and arms. Then you make him look at the thumb and first fin- ger of your left hand, which you gradually lower, so that the eyelids may follow. If the eyes now close of themselves, the game is won. If not,. you say, 'Shut your eyes,' and proceed with suggestions." A lady accidentally hypnotized a girl — a perfect stranger — whom she met in a railroad station, and whose face she simply stroked in sympathy. A gen- tleman hypnotized his babe by playfully shaking his finger at it. Esdaile succeeded with a blind colored man, by gazing silently upon him over the wall, as the patient was engaged eating his dinner; the laborer gradually ceased to eat, and in a quarter of an hour was perfectly entranced and cataleptic. This was re- peated at untimely seasons, and when the operator's presence could not have been known, always with like results. The " evil eye " of ancient superstition in this experiment was probably realized. Baron von Shrenk-Notzing has shown that hypno- sis may be hastened or intensified by narcotics. A few whiifs of chloroform will put even an obstinate patient into susceptible condition, and often a narcotic of it- self is sufficient to predispose to all the Well-known conditions ; moreover, a person only slightly under control may be thrown into deeper mesmeric trance. This is so because narcotics affect the conscious per- sonality, but leave the subconscious largely, if not wholly, awake. 5. Hypnosis occurs in varying degrees of complete- ness, in some cases resembling ordinary drowsiness. HYPNOSIS. 87 in others effecting profound revolution in the work- ings of the nervous system. A few sensitives retain throughout somewhat of personal consciousness, and decided power of resistance to absurd, disagreeable, or immoral suggestions. Most, however, are only sub- conscious and passively obedient. In its most perfect manifestation the condition presents three phases, though not in any fixed order — lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism. 6. Lethargy, or deep hypnotic sleep — for it is nothing else — can be produced by firmly closing the eyes, if the entranced patient knows that such result is expected thereby. Sensitives become under this treatment perfectly inert, with tendency to rigidity. Psychosis is intensely subconscious, and some claim that the state is one of complete unconsciousness. They, however, hear, understand and respond to the commands of the operator, and are therefore so far forth subconscious, precisely as in the case of ordi- nary slumber. Pressure on tendons will render associated m^uscles inflexible; the whole body can be stiffened by pres- sure on certain parts of the legs ; so that patients can be placed with head on the back of a chair and feet on the floor, unyielding as a board. There is complete insensibility to pain, and needles may be inserted even into the quick between nail and finger tip without provoking outcry. Latterly, the lethargic stage has been used as a substitute for anaesthetics in surgical operations ; and the most elaborate cuttings have been carried on with an insensibility as complete as that conferred by chloroform. Sensitives must, however, be trained by repeated mesmerizing for this. 88 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 7. Catalepsy, or hypnotic dreaming, is produced by simply opening the eyes of the lethargic patient. There is now a sort of impersonal consciousness, which replaces the coma of lethargy. An attitude or a movement can be impressed from without upon the subject, who will retain the attitude or complete the movement. In fact, the dreaming condition now obtains, only the dreams are suggested and guided by the will of another, and the patient is sensitive to only one suggestion at a time — a perfect automaton. She is a devout Catholic — for we describe an actual case — and a gong rung to simulate the ringing of a church bell will produce an attitude of prayer, with eyes lowered, and head and body meekly bowed. In- sert a red glass between her staring eyes and the light, and she will receive a suggestion of conflagration, will see flames and burning wretches, and will wring her hands in horror, fear and pity. Whistle a waltz, and she will dance. Indeed, any vivid idea suggested works its way and by channel of any of the senses, into her brain, and arouses, by purely reflex action, pos- tures, gestures and cries appropriate. It is a curious fact that the two halves of the brain can be operated upon separately, by the direc- tion of suggestion to the right or to the left end or- gans. Thus a double and opposing suggestiveness may work the most contrary emotions and expressions ; the right brain may be frightened and the left en- couraged, with the result of the left half of the face exhibiting terror and the right wreathing itself in smiles. 8. In hypnotic somnambulism the sensitive is sleep talking and sleep walking and knows her own HYPNOSIS. 89 dreams. There is not only subconscious activity of a high degree of acuteness, but also a pronounced sleep personality. Sensibility to pain is fully recovered, complex ideas possible, speech regained. Three series of phenomena are now to be ob- served : (1) The sensitive is curiously en rapport with the operator ; her sleep personality is in strange identity with his own. There is a blind confidence, a devoted clinging, an implicit trust, entirely non existent be- fore ; and so close is this psychic union that salt or pepper on the operator's tongue will cause the pa- tient's face to draw awry, and headaches and tooth- aches can at a word be transferred backward and for- ward. Thought-transference becomes an exceedingly easy channel of communication, and commands may be made and executed by silent volition. (2) An expressed judgment of the operator is ac- cepted as fact ; nay, more, the sensitive's imagination plays with and elaborates the most improbable asser- tions with infantile credulity, and as though her mind were only an annex of his own. A file bitten is pro- nounced good chocolate, because so declared. The patient is asked whether she hears the canary sing, and enlarges upon the variety and richness of the tones. She is assured that an Englishman present is a Chinaman, believes it, and pictures vividly his Ori- , ental robes, slit eyes and pigtail. Another guest is accepted as a block of ice, with flowers growing on the surface ; and she points to the glacial streams flowing from him, and picks Marechal Niel roses from his pencil case. She is told to sleep, and is in profound slumber; she is awakened, and then again bidden to 7 90 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. sleep until the hat of one of the company be removed, and, obeying, the moment the hat is removed she awakens herself. She is commanded to poison the Chinaman with arsenic, does so, and weeps bitterly in remorse ; giving him the phantom cup, she gasps, " Drink it not — the cup is poisoned ! " as if driven by dread fatality to what horrified her. (3) Finally, the operator may play upon the sensi- tive's machinery of inhibition and acceleration. He may make it impossible for her to pronounce the let- ter A, and take from her the very idea of the letter, so that all words containing A are sounded without it. He may inhibit the use of any sense, rendering her blind with open eyes, deaf, dumb, v/ithout taste, or without smell. He can make her lame in arm or leg. Or, on the contrary, he may accelerate any sense or function. She will detect a particular quarter of a dollar from twenty such, simply by weight, poising them upon a finger. She can be brought to see things microscopically small or through a cardboard, and even behold her own image on a piece of writing pa- per, using it as a mirror. Inform her that a picture is on a blank sheet of paper, and she v/ill at once per- ceive it, and if it be mixed with other blank sheets will extract the right one; turn it upside down and she will complain that her picture is reversed. Nay, these im- aginary sketches appear to respond to all the laws of optics, can be rendered double by pushing inward one of her eyes, can be doubly refracted, etc. Draw a mark with red chalk on paper, and assure her that the page is blank, and she will not perceive it. To be sure, the eyes work normally, and the usual impression is made upon the retina, as appears from the fact that when THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 91 her vision is directed to another blank sheet she does see the complementary green after-image of the red chalk mark. She sees and is inhibited only from per- ceiving. If the mark be doubled by a prism, she will perceive the second image, but still ignore the first and direct one. 9. Hypnosis is terminated by reversing passes, if these were made at first, by blowing upon the eyes, by a word of command, by predicting that at such a mo- ment or on such an occurrence the patient will awake. Care should be taken to remove all unpleasant previous suggestions, to tell the sleeper that the situation is a very comfortable one, and that the awakening shall be to health and peace of mind. 10. The condition is favorable to the display of thought-transference and lucidity; of which a little later. CHAPTER XVI. THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 1. Hypnosis may be repeated indefinitely ; and with repetition the sensitive becomes more and more susceptible, as to speediness of subjugation, as to in- tensity and as to duration. In some cases the control can be maintained for long periods — for months, and even for years. 2. Renewals all connect themselves with previous experience in a consecutive order, and a mnemonic chain forms quite as in natural somnambulism. Rec- ollection of what has taken place in the trance rarely presents itself on awaking, except perhaps as a fading 92 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. dream ; but it is perfectly active and accurate when hypnosis is renewed. Hence facts acquired in the sleep may be recovered on the awakening by indirect meth- ods, appealing to this coherent subconsciousness. Give the aroused patient a planchette, and the needed infor- mation will be forthcoming. Mr. Gurney describes a large number of experiments in arithmetical problems given a patient when under influence, the answers hav- ing been duly written out by planchette in the normal condition, when the latter was wholly unaware of what he was doing. Dr. Proust describes a person who falls asleep himself without outside suggestion and without warning, who for short periods exists in an entirely anomalous life ; he is a veritable Dr. Jekyll, only his Mr. Hyde is not at all a demon. On May 11, 1889, he was breakfasting at a restaurant in Paris, and two days later found himself at Troyes. Of what had happened during the interval he could remember nothing ; he recalled, however, that before losing his primary con- sciousness he had worn a greatcoat containing in a pocket two hundred and twenty-six francs. He was hypnotized, and at once gave a lucid account of his somnambulation, of his visit to Troyes, of friends dined wdth there, and where he left the overcoat and purse. These statements were all verified, and the coat and purse with exact amount of money recovered. Other similar authentic cases are on record. 3. These facts account for the gradual rise in hyp- notics of what has been called secondary personality, which, after all, is only intensified sleep personality. Chronic cases slowly develop a distinct subconscious character, and if the waking character be weak or vi- cious, the " new creature " may become the most re- THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 93 spectable member of the firm. (Eead account of Blanch Witt and of Marceline K in Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Eesearch, vol. xv, pp. 316, 217, 219, 220.) 4. When the secondary personality has become well established, itself may be hypnotized, and so in time a third sleep character appear, the shade of a shadow, the dream of a dream. This is verified in the famous case of Madame B , an elderly French peasant, who, though old, dull and ignorant, shy, passive and stolid, has become the most interesting woman in Europe. Leonie B (long the favorite sensitive of Prof. Janet), who falls asleep at a word or by volition ex- erted over great distance, has developed, when in the mesmeric trance, an extensive mnemonic chain and a distinct character peculiar to the condition. When hypnotized she calls herself Leontine, and is, as such, vivacious, saucy and not very truthful ; her memory now is more extensive than Leonie's, comprising as it does all that the latter knows and all that the former has experienced. One day Janet received a note from Leonie written in serious and respectful style and de- claring that she was ill. Over the page began another epistle in a quite different style. " My dear good Sir : I must tell you that B really, really makes me suf- fer very much ; she can not sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me I I am going to demolish her ; she bores me ; I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine." Madame B knew nothing of this second letter when closely questioned. These duplex letters became common. Madame B would write Leontine's post- scripts automatically, in a fit of abstraction, and if on 94 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. arousing herself she discovered what she had done, she would tear up the missive. Hence Leontine hit upon a plan of placing them in a photographic album, into which Leonie could not look without falling into cata- lepsy. After Leontine's personality was well established, noticing that there was a background of subconscious cerebration even in her psychic life, Janet succeeded in throwing her into mesmeric trance and thereby causing to emerge a third personality, at first faint but now daily becoming more and more characteristic. This third Madame B called herself Leonore, and knew, in addition to her own memories, all that Leo- nie or Leontine recollected. Leonore is thoughtful, grave, addicted to poetry and much the most estimable mxCmber of Madame B 's copartnership. 5. It is said that back of Leonore a still other indi- viduality looms up ; and the question arises, whether there is any limit to these mnemonic chains and more or less distinct personalities. To meet such astound- ing facts, F. W. H. Myers has broached a hypothesis, in which he assumes that every cell in our bodies has its own cellular personality with its own particular memory, and that every combination of cells in or as- sociated with limbs or organs develop composite per- sonalities with associate memories. " These, however, do not deserve the title of separate personalities (ex- cept in the sense in which that word may be applied to the brute creation), and their memories may never come into the human consciousness at all. Above these rises the immense nervous apparatus, which cor- responds to the human mind; and of this apparatus we habitually use only such proportion as our English THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 95 vocabulary bears to all possible combinations of the alphabet. The letters of our inward alphabet will shape themselves into many other dialects ; and many other personalities, as distinct as those we assume to be ourselves, can be made out of our mental material. . . . Each of the personalities within us is itself the summation of many narrower and inferior memories. It is conceivable that there may be for each man a yet more comprehensive personality, which correlates and comprises all known and unknown phases of his being.'' It would be premature to accept this hypothesis as anything more than a mere surmise, but its conclusion seems in the highest degree probable. That man, in the last analysis, is an indefinite series of personalities, is as utterly repugnant to self-respect as it is inherently im.probable. We are safe in concluding that the facts of sleep personality emphasize not the mere divisibility of man, but the boundless resources of his mind and the countless possibilities of his being for achievement and for character. And the supreme psychological importance of hyp- notism lies in the fact that it furnishes a method for cleaving the strata of consciousness, for analyzing the workings of the mental machinery, and for studying in detail the mental processes. Like the microscope in histology, the telescope in astronomy, or the spec- troscope in spectrum analysis, it is a new instrument of research. 6. While memory of what occurs in the mesmeric trance generally fails to persist into tlie waking state, commands and suggestions for future action, then re- ceived, are likely to be executed in due time — not as the urgings of another will but as self-suggested. A 96 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. clerk, haying been hypnotized, was told that two and two make five. The next day all his accounting went wrong, and it was discovered that wherever two and two came together he added them as five. Here the sleep consciousness overruled the normal working of his mind. Promises made in the trance are performed on awaking, not as promises but as irresistible im- pulses. Commands are obeyed under ill-defined sense of obligation, while suggestions become happy thoughts that demand heeding. Moll states that the longest time of successful post- hypnotic suggestion is recorded by Liebeault— one year. Where the suggestion is not carried out duly, the idea of it remains to torment the victim. 7. Hence the therapeutic value of hypnotism. Forel tells of an old drunkard and would-be suicide, whom he recovered : in the trance it was suggested to him that ardent spirits were a curse, and he was commanded to abstain. In consequence, when awake, he, seemingly of his own motion, became a total ab- stainer. This experiment has proved successful in many similar cases. Habitual aches, mostly neural- gias of various kinds, have been allayed in numberless instances. Baierlacher claims to have removed pain even in a case of cancer of the stomach and for days* Chorea and hysteria also seem amenable to this treat- ment. Bickford- Smith transferred a headache from Leonie B to himself, simply by so willing. These facts suggest an obvious danger. The sub- ject is slave of the operator, and may become his help- less victim or ready accomplice in vice or crime. It is evident that the practice should become matter for the THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 97 strictest legal regulation. Liebeault advises, as a pre- ventive of undue or unrighteous influence, that the person enslaved should seek rehypnotization at the hand of a thoroughly trustworthy operator, who is to suggest that no other party shall have power to induce the condition. This, it is claimed, will work complete deliverance from the bondage. 8. Two incidental dangers beset this method of experimentation : (1) Cross-mesmerism — w^here the patient is brought under the influence of more than one person at a single sitting ; when with sensitive subjects there are violent contortions and refusal of obedience to suggestion and command. From this state it is difficult to arouse the patient, and headache and physical discomfort result. (2) Imperfect awakening or oversudden rouse- ment, in the first place subjecting the patient to all the discomforts and mischances which may befall a person not in full possession of normal consciousness ; and in the second, startling and shocking the nervous system. 9. The general effect upon health is in dispute. Probably it injures some and benefits others. The author would advise that it be not resorted to witlK)ut cause, and that all aimless and frivolous experimenta- tion be strictly prohibited. 10. Hypnosis only develops, in the fullest degree, the natural- possibilities of the subconscious. Its lethargy is but deep sleep under control ; its catalep- sy nothing but intense dreaming, when the visions are suggested by another imagination ; its somnambulism ordinary sleep talking and w^alking, directed by an- other will. The powerful sway of the operator finds 98 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. ample analogy in what the world has ever recognized as in the scope of personal influence. Hypnotic hal- lucination is only exaggeration of a perfectly normal process which tends to go on in all of us, and is re- pressed only by memory, and a will trained by experi- ence. Nor are its grander performances entirely with- out parallel ; its outbursts of genius have been equaled by similar extemporization in dreaming, and by the accomplishments of the waking state, in exceptional persons. The fact merely indicates that very remark- able developments in multiple consciousness have long since been studied under the phrase " unconscious cer- ebration." Socrates had his " daemon," and many men have exhibited two contrasted natures. There was once a Swedish king who entered a ballroom, in the glow of healthful youth, to receive at the entrance a note warning him that his life was in danger. He tossed the missive contemptuously aside, only to fall a little later, and in the height of the festivities, under the treacherous blow of the very friend who penned the warning. The wretch in one breath would slay him and would deliver him, at once best guardian and crudest foe. Lacenaire, a famous French criminal, the same day he committed a murder risked his life to save that of a cat ! It is said of Eobespierre, that even while he was the terror of France, and wading knee-deep in the blood of innocence, to the two sisters with whom he boarded he was a modest, virtuous and estimable gentleman, and they mourned his loss sin- cerely. Indeed, we find hints of the same fact in quite rudimentary formes of automatism. James states that, in a perfectly healthy young man, who can write with the planchette, " I lately found the hand to be en- THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 99 tirely anaesthetic during the writing act ; I could prick it severely without the subject knowing the fact. The writing of the planchette, however, accused me in strong terms of hurting the hand. Pricks on the other nonwriting hand, meanw^iile, which awakened strong protest from the young man's vocal organs, were denied to exist by the self which made the planchette go." Binet has shown that in every one, at all times, subconscious potentialities exist, and can be aroused, interrogated and educated. In short, hypnotism offers no new field of research, but only a new method of exploiting facts which, without it, must be at least suspected. Some one has said that there is nothing new in hypnotism but the name. 11. The ethical bearings of the subject seem at first confusing ; but remember that somnambulism is only dreaming exaggerated, and that hj^pnotism is only somnambulism exaggerated, and the darkness will clear. One's accountability for wrong-doing in dreams is manifestly limited to the sinfulness of pre- vious errors in diet, and to the general trend of char- acter ; and in somnambulism it is evident that neither merit nor ill desert can attain a high degree. The same must be true of the hypnotic condition : the sen- sitive is so completely under controlling influence as to be practically non compos^ and can be blamed only. for such utterances of character as without compulsion flow forth from the nature within. In the stage of lethargy the patient is mere w^ax in the hands of the molder ; in catalepsy, the dream that goes on is con- trolled by another ; and even in the somnambulistic phase, so powerful is the suggestion of the operator 100 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. that resistance is generally useless, and hence responsi- bility at the lowest point imaginable ; and courts have so decided again and again. In cases of multiple per- sonality, freedom of action under the new conditions may develop, in time, into a self-control so genuine, and a life so varied, that accountability begins to re- cover its normal degree ; it is much as in the case of one who should be, during different periods of his life, a clergyman, a horse-jockey and a submarine diver ; though the same standards can not be used for each and all of his life phases, a just judgment of his sub- stantial personality can conceivably be formed. Leonie, Leontine and Leonore may exhibit different facets of character, but the three are substantially and ethically one and neither is soulless. 12. This subject should not be dismissed without some reference to its very interesting history. Hypnotism formed the ancient stronghold of nec- romancy and sorcery and in all ages has been the in- strument of priestcraft, charlatanry and superstition. Among old-time peoples, as now amid barbarous and savage races, the ignorant and credulous were hypno- tized, frightened, swayed, cajoled, injured and cured, by frauds and illusions innumerable. Sorcerers were both deceivers and themselves deceived : they dealt in the dreams, thought-transference and lucidity of hypnosis'; they naturally were feared, courted and per- secuted. Their necromancy, so far as it had any sub- stratum of fact, was based on what has been described. The " evil eye " was nothing but the mesmeric glance of the sorcerer, marring by command and sug- gestion the life of the hypnotized victim. Crystal vision was a picturesque form of the work- THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP PERSONALITY. 101 ing of the same phenomena. A cup of ink, a crystal polished, a mirror, or even the thumb nail, was used ; any reflecting surface would do, but crystal was pre- ferred. A boy or girl thrown into sleep was set to gaze upon this surface, and on it dreams appeared, rendered objective by hallucination. Sensitives could often mesmerize themselves by simply gazing into the crystal, with resulting dreams, apparently externalized. The sibyls and other oracles of antiquity were only sensitives who had displayed unusual gifts in thought-transference ; they were always hypnotized, unless able of themselves to fall into the trance. Sor- cerers secured lads, often by violence, put them to sleep, and forced them to see and prophesy. The girl of Philippi whom Paul freed was the wretched victim of such scoundrels, of whom Elymas and Simon Magus were fair specimens. Oracular performances occurred amid much impressive incantation — a dark- ened room, lamps burning low, clouds of incense, the sorcerer in flowing robes of much splendor, and the like. The black art of the Middle Age was only a res- toration of ancient practices under Christian auspices, with a new vocabulary. JSTothing occurred that science is not to-day studying under conditions favorable to solution. The witches of those times and later were but evil women, who, finding that they possessed a power they themselves deemed Satanic, used it to annoy their neighbors, to vent their spites, to earn a dishonest liv- ing and to make themselves feared. It was wrong to hang them, but most of them richly deserved to be handed. 102 ' THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. The history of sorcery, from the beginning until now, has been a dreary record of gross immorality and cruel wrong, the strong ever preying on the weak. The evils involved have always seemed so many and so great, that in all ages and lands it has fallen under the ban, in general forbidden on pain of death. Still, so prevalent has superstition proved, and such power- ful interests have antagonized repression, that prohib- itory statutes have been always and everywhere more or less evaded. The first g^/a^^'-scientific attempts to investigate, describe and classify the facts were made by Mesmer, in association with much magician's trumpery. His crude work proved of little value except to goad sci- entists to accurate study of the phenomena. In 1845 Baron von Reichenbach announced the dis- covery of a new imponderable force, which he called odyl^ and supposed to exist throughout the universe, and to be developed by magnets, by certain crystals, and by human bodies. Persons sensitive to odyl saw luminous phenomena near the poles of the magnets and about the bodies of others in whom the force was concentrated. Hence the term anitnal magnetism^ which attached itself to the whole class of hypnotic phenomena. Two American lecturers in 1850, broaching a new theory based upon electrical discoveries, sub- stituted the title of electro -iiology^ which became popular. Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, first subjected the facts to accurate study in 1842, and the science of hypnotism received from him both its name and its respectability. Carpenter became his faithful expos- THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 103 itor, examining and verifying his experiments and results. To-day many men of great shrewdness and some of eminence are pondering with deep interest the facts. CHAPTER XVII. THOUGHT-TRAKSFEKEKCE. 1. This remarkable psychic fact has long been anticipated in discovery by certain proverbs based on an obscure perception of the general law ; as, " Think of an angel and you shall see his wings," or " Think of the devil and you shall see his horns." Also by certain facts never well understood, as the power most per- sons possess of disturbing another's flow of thought by steady gaze, though the head of the observed be quite averted, or the instantaneous occurrence of identical ideas or words to two or more persons when together. The discovery itself, however, has been recent, and more so the demonstration. Thought-transference is now accepted as one of the subconscious gifts of the human mind, very gen- erally by those scientists who devote themselves to consideration of psychical phenomena. It is freely used as a good working theory in explanation of yet more occult facts. This theory is, that, subject to certain laws mostly unknown, thought leaps from one mind to another mind by processes unexplained. 2. The phenomena occur most persistently and vividly in the hypnotic trance, when between opera- tor and sensitive the freest mental interchange takes 104 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. place : the former may simply will the latter to sleep or to wake, to do or to forbear, without sign ; and even salt or pejoper on the operator's tongue will cause the patient to make a wry face. One instance, of thou- sands at hand, is that of a hysterical girl of fourteen, w^hom a certain Dr. Dusart could will into a mesmeric trance and arouse without a word of command. More than a hundred times he did this with perfect success. On one occasion he left her without giving the usual order to sleep until a particular hour next morning. Eemembering the omission, he issued the order men- tally when at a distance of seven metres from the house. In the morning, when he asked the patient how it was that she had slept without any command, she replied, ''True, but five minutes afterward I clearly heard you tell me to sleep until eight o'clock." He then told the patient to sleep until she received command to awake, and directed her parents to mark the exact hour of the awakening. At 2 p. m. he gave the order mentally, at a distance of seven kilometres, and afterward found that it had been punctually obeyed ; and this experiment was successfully repeated at different hours. This explains, in part at least, the power of spirit- ualistic mediums. Falling into trance, or at least a similar subconscious condition, they read the minds of sitters, and this forms their chief stock in trade. The author once, when four thousand miles from home, sat with a medium, an ignorant sailor and a total stranger, who gave him correctly his own name and the names of mother, wife and wife's father, besides fishing up many facts and names quite forgotten. THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 105 3. But hypnosis is not a necessary condition ; the phenomena may characterize any state or semistate of subconsciousness — dreaming, reverie, or unconscious cerebration. This will best appear in a tolerably full account of the most complete and carefully guarded of the many demonstrations. Key. P. H. Newnham, vicar of Maker, Devonport, a respectable and intelli- gent English clergyman, in 1871 instituted a series of experiments covering a period of eight months. The results appear as forty manuscript pages of notes, and among these three hundred and nine replies auto- matically written by Mrs. Newnham with planchette, to questions which she did not see nor hear and of which she could learn only telepathically. The wife always sat at a small table in a low chair, w^ith eyes shut, leaning backward. The vicar sat about eight feet distant, at a rather high table, with his back to the lady. Plan- chette would begin to write instantly, the answer often having been half finished before the question was completely written. Often the sensitive would touch the board with but a single finger, and this would suffice. She had no faintest conscious knowledge of what was in process of writing, and often no hint as to the subject or drift of the questions. The answers were a curious combination of knowledge and igno- rance, never beyond the mental powers of the percipi- ent, but on a lower moral level than her usual conver- sation. She would evade and even lie, when unable to respond correctly; though evasion and falsehood were utterly foreign to her character. The answers often did not correspond to the opinions or expecta- tions of either party. Here was instantaneous and accurate thought-transference extending over many 106 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. months, through more than three hundred formal trials, all successful. 4. On the range of these phenomena we can not speak positively, so little is known of the conditions necessary or favoring. Some persons seem more sus- ceptible than others. Twins are thus en rapport to a wonderful extent. Probably all have the gift as a latent potentiality ; with a few it is a very luminous feature. 5. No limit has ever been fixed to the distance over which transference can be effected : in the case of twins it has covered a separation of thousands of miles. Nor has any light yet been shed upon the nature of the medium nor upon the speed of transmis- sion. 6. The philosophical bearings of these facts are wide-reaching and important. As thought-transfer- ence can not be classed with sensations, and indicates a quite other inlet for human knowledge, the sensa- tionalism of Hobbes, Locke and Comte seems anni- hilated. The tendency of philosophy in both France and England for over three hundred years has been sensationalistic ; and nearly all the metaphysicians of these two countries have built their systems upon the postulate, that human knowledge comes only through the senses. It now appears that we must push out the stakes and lengthen the cords of our canopy of thought. It would seem that knowledge may enter unawares, in accordance with laws of which sensation- alists and positivists have known nothing. This discovery removes from the theological doc- trine of a divine inspiration the stigma of violating probabilities. Inspiration has become the most fea- * LUCIDITY. 107 sible and natural of religious processes ; indeed, it is no longer even an unlikely phenomenon. That an Intelligence above us should drop thoughts into the human mind seems the simplest and most reasonable method of communication between the seen and the unseen worlds. CHAPTER XVIII. LUCIDITY. 1. Correlated with thought-transference we have the very different though no less amazing fact of lucidity, or " second sight," which seems to be the working of a supersensuous subconscious vision, dis- cerning matters utterly beyond the reach of any known organ. 2. History gives us instances of the exercise of this kind of knowledge, but until recently science has treated them with contempt. Gregory of Tours tells us that Ambrose, having fallen asleep while saying mass in the cathedral of Milan, dreamed that St. Mar- tin had just died at Tours, in accord with the exact facts. Swedenborg claimed to have seen the great fire in London while it progressed, and though in Stockholm at the time. 3. This gift also, like thought-transference, mani- fests itself in a marked degree during the mesmeric trance, and is an important feature of genuine medi- umship. It has given to heathen sorceries and the art magic, to soothsaying and crystal vision their un- canny significance ; and it has always been a question 108 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. whether dreams do not derive a grave meaning at times from its exercise. 4. The evidence has of late years accumulated, and that such a gift is possessed by some at least seems no longer questionable. Madame B (Leonie-Leon- tine-Leonore), when hypnotized, possesses this power to a remarkable degree. Janet, Eichet and other ex- perts have subjected this woman to every variety of test. We give in Eichet's own words his methods of procedure and calculation of chances : " From the midst of ten packs of fifty-two cards each, I drew at hazard a card, which I placed in an opaque envelope. I did this in low light at one end of my library, which is nearly five metres in length, Leonie sitting at the opposite end, with her back to me. . . . The envelope was gummed, and I closed it at once. . . . The name of the card indicated by Leonie was written by her in full, or written by me before the en- velope was opened, and I kept an exact account of all the experiments made. No conscious or unconscious, mental or nonmental suggestion could be made by me, since I was totally ignorant of the card placed in the envelope." Thus proceeding, in sixty-eight trials Leonie sev- enteen times offered full description. Of cards en- tirely right, with an antecedent probability of only one or two, Leonie guessed twelve ; of cards with suit right, with antecedent probability of seventeen, she guessed forty-five ; of cards with color right, with an- tecedent probability of thirty-four, she guessed forty- five. The chances in favor of this, not allowing for a law of lucidity, were one in one billion of billions. Bickford Smith, a wealthy English gentleman, who LUCIDITY. 109 was permitted to hypnotize Leonie, asked her for a description of his father's country house in England. This she gave, with minute particulars in every regard correct. She expressed surprise at the size of the kitchen and the number of the books in the library. She placed several peculiar trees, and described the gardeners and other underlings at their work. On the 27th of a certain September, Leonie de- scribed a bicycle race, which did not occur until the 29th ; she named the winner, and said that there would be three prizes for him — a fact no one could rea- sonably have anticipated ; her improbable prophecy was fulfilled by a telegraphically added prize from the min- ister of war, which, with what was called the " lap prize," made three in all. Cases as remarkable multiply. Braid, of Manchester, an unimpeachable witness, narrates the story of an ignorant girl unacquainted with music and the^ grammar of her own language, who, hypnotized, in his presence sang songs in foreign languages with Jenny Lind, with a pronunciation and intonation so exact that persons not very near sup- posed there was but one voice, and that the Swedish Nightingale's. 5. Lucidity, also, aims a deadly blow at the sensa- tional philosophy. If a clairvoyant may learn the markings of concealed cards, see visions of what is yet to occur, describe houses and people hundreds of miles away, " speak with tongues," and anticipate the refinements of finished art, then the popular schools of modern psychologists are without a philosophy. Moreover, these facts, like those of telepathy, serve to remove a reproach of long standing from the Hebrew Scriptures, which have been arraigned by scientists 110 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. for recording unnatural displays of psychic power on the part of the prophets of Judaism. The prophetic insight of the Hebrew seers can no longer be stig- matized as unnatural. They snrqly saw visions and dreamed dreams ; the distant and the future appeared to them as a shifting panorama ; and if their behold- ings proved viridical, the facts did not contravene what we now know to be the bounds of reason. 6. Lucidity and thought-transference will account, in part, at least, for the rise of religion among prime- val savages. The seers became prophets of mystery, and in time rose to some little glimpse of the moral order of the universe : at first mere medicine men, deceiving and deceived, they slowly ascended into a lordlier realm of spiritual insight and religious guid- ance. CHAPTER XIX. hallucikatio:n". 1. We must distinguish hallucination from illu- sion. One may be deceived by his diseased senses — as when, during the sufferance of a cold in his head, he smells smoke constantly, and goes through his dwell- ing in search for fire ; as when, if a victim of catarrh of the middle ear, he hears drums, gongs and bells sound- ing loudly, and now and then is startled by the dis- tinct calling of his name ; as when — the retina hyper- sensitive — he sees the specter of some dear friend, in mere renewal of an old visual sensation : this is illu- sion. Hallucination, as we use it, is simply the exter- nalizing of ideas. HALLUCINATION. HI 3. Its history is a profound study in psychology. It begins with the savage condition, and because it pre-eminently characterizes childhood. One of the many difficult lessons of childhood is to distinguish between impressions from without and ideas within, notions are so vivid : easily the rag baby becomes a well-dressed living personality ; readily the hobby horse attains the size, grace, spirit and speed of a thorough- bred ; and if the imagination be unusually active, the child is in serious danger of becoming a gay romancer, in time to be branded as an arrant liar. The savage conditions representing the childhood of the race is beset by the same peril. Savages exter- nalize ideas and fill the world with their fancies ; they believe even their sleeping dreams. A savage dreams of his friend, of his horse, of his dog, of the trees, the landscape, the stars ; and he infers that not only friend and enemy, but that animals, inert things, the moon and the stars, have' shadowy souls, and that these va- porous spirits actually come to him in his sleep. Hence their almost universal belief in immortality, and the pathetic custom of placing on the graves of the dead weapons, utensils and food ; for the shades of these things, it is supposed, will accompany the soul of the buried into the land of shadows. Hence also the slaughter of wives and slaves, horses and dogs, over the burial place of a chieftain. So tenaciously does this superstition, based on hallucination, persist- and push up even into low grades of civilization, that down to 1781 the ancient funeral sacrifice of the war- rior's horse was recognized at Treves by leading a dead soldier's horse to his grave. A piece of money is still put into the hands of a corpse at an Irish wake ; and 112 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. in most countries of Europe may still be seen the set- ting out of offerings of food for the departed. All this time-honored superstition arises from the exter- nalizing of mere ideas. From the same cause arise fetich worship, Na- ture worship, and in time an elaborate mythology. The Fiji Islanders used to celebrate great sacrificial feasts to their gods. These religious ceremonies, how- ever, were mere orgies of gluttony, as all the animals slain were greedily devoured ; the deities were sup- posed to be satisfied with the souls of the departed beasts. " In India," says Dubois, " a woman adores her market basket, and offers sacrifice to it as well as to the rice mill and other household implements. A carpenter does like homage to his hatchet, adze and other tools, and likewise offers sacrifice to them. A Brahman does so to the st3de with which he is going to write, a soldier to the arms he is to use in the field, a mason to his trowel, and a farmer to his plow." The worship of plants, animals, stones, water, wind, sky, ocean, etc., is inevitable at an early stage of hu- man culture. 3. While savages externalize their dreams after they awake as well as before, even the most intelligent and civilized do so at least during sleep. A very Plato, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, must for the time fall under the sway of his own vagrant fancies and believe them real. The facts of dreaming, which we have fally presented, are largely the working of this simple law of hallucination. The same is true of both natural and induced som- nambulism, as we have observed : the mind, dreaming, externalizes its visions. HALLUCINATION. 113 4. Allied to the myth and dream fantasy of the mind, we must consider its romancing gift. The poets, novelists and artists have all been dreamers, their life work to produce in others a hallucination they voluntarily summon up in themselves ; they see fictions and make them real, as landscape, as history, as personal beauty. All great art creators come to know their own handiwork by a kind of recognition, scarcely to be distinguished from actual acquaintance. And active minds respond in a kindred hallucination, joyfully self-imposed. A Ulysses, a King Arthur, a * William Tell, a Pickwick, a St. Cecilia, a Venus de Milo, become as delightfully real to the imaginative, as though the legend, the novel, the painting or the statue were historical portrayal. 5. Hallucination is produced by certain narcotics, which occasion mental conditions varying from the profound quiet of perfect sleep to the most vivid dreaming or the most active somnambulism. These drugs paralyze the will, deaden the moral nature, con- fuse the reason and dull the senses, at the same time that they more or less excite the cerebro-spinal gan- glia. If taken in doses appropriate to produce the effect, hallucination is inevitable. The narcotized per- son dreams, and, it may be, acts his dreams ; but the dreaming is intensely spectacular, and the acting often bitterest tragedy. Tobacco, though one of the least harmful of the narcotics usually abused, is yet noxious in every case and dangerous in many. Its first effect is to stimu- late the faculties and soothe the feelings ; its final re- sult is to lessen mental power and enfeeble the will. It is said that no young man has graduated valedicto- 114 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. rian at Harvard College who was an habitual user of this drug. Upon the young its action is peculiarly harmful. De Quincey has portrayed vividly the deleterious effects of morphine on the same line of mental disease. He says : '• Whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, im- mediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when once thus traced in faint and visionary colors, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into insufferable splendor that fretted my heart." Besides these phan- toms, projected against the darkness, there was a dream life of marvelous intensity. " Under the con- necting feeling of tropical heats and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, beasts, birds and rep- tiles, all trees and plants, all usages and appearances that are found in tropical regions, and assembled them together in China and Hindostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms. I was the idol, I was the priest, I was worshiped, I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia. . . . I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with can- cerous kisses by crocodiles, and lay confounded with unutterably slimy things among reeds and Nilotic mud." HALLUCINATION. 115 The fantasy of alcoholic intoxication, in time cul- minating in the horrors of delirium tremens, is known to all. In its first stages the ganglia narcotized are stimulated, and there are dancing, laughter and chat- ter. Later, the mind begins to externalize its throng- ing ideas, and the muscles to succumb to the second- ary stupefying effect of the poison. Now the inebriate staggers, unable to co-ordinate movements perfectly, and hallucination becomes a prominent symptom and may rise into mania. This is the dangerous stage, when victims become suicides and murderers. Finally, a lethargy ends all psychic phenomena. In the trem- bling delirium hallucination is the principal symptom. 6. Fevers, in like manner an.d degree, exciting the nerve cells of the brain, through a poison generated in the blood or through mere hypersemia, produce simi- lar results. 7. Madness caps_ the climax by persistent, intense and tragic externalizing of ideas, especially that form which is called intellectual insanity. Here hallu- cination is the chief symptom, and the phenomena those generally pertaining to incoherent and troubled dreaming. Emotional insanity is less characterized by objectivity of ideas, and rather rouses to white heat states of feeling. Some one has said that the intellec- tually insane are furious dreamers, the emotionally mad dreaming furies ; neither has self-control, nor is swayed effectually by judgment, reason or con- science, and both are prey to nervous disease. Insanity presents no new facts ; it gives us what we have abundantly in dreaming, hypnotism and the narcotic excitement, only more of it and for longer periods. It is chronic hallucination. 116 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. It is a very common affection. One of the authors's hobbies is, that every tenth person is insane and that every person is one tenth insane. That is, no one is perfectly mind-balanced, while many are seriously and up to the boundaries of chronic hallucination de- fective. Guiteau, who murdered President Garfield, though he seemed only a crank, in the autopsy dis- played marked departures in the condition of his brain. Probably all cranks would be found, on post- mortem examination, to have been afflicted with simi- lar lackings or disease of central nerve tissue. Any one can become insane by extreme and prolonged ac- tivity of the mind or by brooding over evils ; habits of health, laughter, sunshine, charity, patience and moderation are the preventives. 8. Hallucination is in itself a perfectly natural process ; the dangerous element in it is its tendency to disturb the rightful balance of related intensities. We shall see later that sensations are more intense than perceptions, and these are more so than memo- ries, while memories are more vivid than purely im- aginative ideas; and that the mind distinguishes between these grades of mentality by a nice discrimi- nation of intensities. Disturb the ratio, and the cor- rect discrimination becomes impossible. It is easily disturbed in the child, because not yet fully estab- lished ; and in the savage, because so far as subtler mental processes are concerned they are children. And with all men when outside impressions entirely fail, in dreaming no distinction can be made, and attention is rapt and deceived. Narcotics, fevers, and madness produce a like result by so overstimulating the ideational activity of the brain as to cause in the HALLUCINATION. 117 intense vividness of the conception an outdazzling of the distinction. With an inebriated, delirious, or mad man outside reality compared with inner fantasy is but as a taper in the noonday sunshine. And po- etry, fiction and other fine arts present the same un- balancing process, with delight self-induced. 9. Hence the great importance of guarding against our ideas. Sir William Hamilton well remarks : " Noth- ing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies in this respect may be compared to those an- gels whom the Scriptures represent as covering their eyes with their wings." SECTION IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISEASE. CHAPTEE XX. HYSTERIA. 1. This distressing malady chiefly attacks young and nervous women, and is marked by outbursts of emotional excitement, convulsive bodily movements, hyposesthesia and hyperaesthesia, and incomplete and transient paralysis. Intensely psychic in all its symp- toms, it is marked by inordinate egotism, hilarity, de- pression, assumption of pretended diseases, catalepsy, trance and ecstasy. 2. It is a contagious affliction, and simulates the manner and method of the zymotic disorders. Car- penter's story of the mewing sisters will illustrate this point. The malady began in the hysterical tendency of a young girl to mew just as the clock struck nine and the morning session of the convent school was about to open. Soon other nervous girls caught the infection, and the solo became a chorus. Finally, all the young ladies without exception mewed, and the father was at his wits' end. One morning, however, he appeared with a horsewhip and anticipated the HYSTERIA. 119 stroke of nine by threatening to flog the first who should commence the concert ; and his firmness was rewarded with silence. The dancing mania of the Middle Age, named after St. Vitus, was a much more serious malady. Fits of nervous jactation, leaping and convulsion spread like cholera over Europe. Groups of temporary lunatics went whirling along the roads and through the city streets attracting the ill-balanced and spreading dis- may. Those who came to look on and laugh stayed to dance and follow suit. As nearly all intense religious experience predis- poses to emotional excitement, it is not strange that with low-grade intelligence hysteria should accompany fanatical crusades, camp meetings and revivals ; the remarkable fact is that the disease seems to be " catch- ing "—one starts another, and a few excite many. Dur- ing the early camp-meeting period of Kentucky, when that State was on the border and civilization raw, it was customary to plant stakes throughout the praying grounds for support of those who caught the "jerks." 3. But we are not to press the analogy of contagion too far. Some experimental psychologists of eminence plausibly advance the hypothesis that hysteria is not so much the disease of any organ as a general disturb- ance of nervous equilibrium. Says Myers : " Hysteria is not a lesion but a displacement ; it is a withdrawal of certain nervous energies from the plane of the pri- mary personality, but those energies still potentially subsist, and they can again be placed by proper man- agement under the normal control." Janet insists that no amount of hysterical disturb- ance, however prolonged or profound, need be regarded 120 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. as incurable. At present the most approved medical treatment is by hypnosis and suggestion. 4. But better than cure is prevention. The hys- terical should receive early training in self-control. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that such tempera- ments morbidly crave notice, sympathy and attention. With them to cause an excitement, to stir a thrilling sensation, is simply an overmastering passion. Hence the need of systematic repression and sympathetic neglect. When a " crisis " approaches, incredulity, in- difference, contempt and even sarcasm are indicated. Indeed, it may be added that in chorea as v/ell as in hysteria, and likewise in all purely nervous diseases, observation of symptoms and unnecessary sympathy aggravate the evil. Nervous movements should never be commented upon nor even noticed ; and if medi- cally treated, it should be done, if possible, without the patient's learning the fact. CHAPTER XXL CRIMIJS^ALITY. 1. Traces of criminality may be found among animals — witness the " rogue elephant," which, once a member of some herd and now driven forth by the others, becomes morose, treacherous and murderous, much to be feared not only by men but also by its former associates. 2. Ellis defines criminality as a " failure to live up to the standard recognized as binding by the commu- nity. The criminal is an individual whose organiza- CRIMINALITY. 121 tion makes it difficult or impossible to live in accord- ance with this standard, and easy to risk the penalties of acting antisocially." 3. As such organizations are sure to occur, crimi- nality has ever been a marked characteristic of all social life among each race of men and in every age. No moral earnestness in any community, no political wisdom of any school of statesmen, has sufficed to eradicate these dark blots on human nature. " Per- sistency and inevitability are their most perplexing features. 4. There are distinct kinds as well as many degrees of criminality. We have the criminal of passion, the occasional criminal, the habitual and the congenital. This variation depends upon the causes of aberration, and these causes are immediate and remote. 5. The immediate causes may be viewed psycho- logically or pathologically. (1) Viewed psychologically, they are : (a) Overmastering passions yoked with selfishness of disposition. This gives us the criminal of passion. (b) A weak will and failure of principle. This gives us the criminal of occasion. (c) When these two causes combine — strong pas- sions and weak will — the habitual criminal results. (2) Viewed pathologically, the causes are : (a) Nerve defect. Nearly all criminals are de- ficient in sensitiveness of end organs, except in matters of sharpness of vision. In mental and moral endow- ment they are almost universally deficient. (b) Nerve disease, occasioning unhealthy action of nerve centers. Hardened criminals are generally dis- eased with far-reaching constitutional ailments, and it 9 122 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. is usually easy in post mor terns to discover serious brain lesions. 6. The remote causes are : (1) Atavism, or reversion to ancestral types. Ellis remarks that our own criminals frequently resemble in physical and psychical characters the normal indi- viduals of a lower race. These abnormal natures are simply organizations out of date, that in an early sav- age state would have proved current as good citizens. (2) Inherited virus, especially alcoholism, insanity and idiocy in parents. Indeed, criminality in this form is merely hereditary disease, which descends in moral scrofula, a horrid aptitude for evil-doing, from parent to child. We need only cite the case of the infamous Jukes family. The frightful story begins in the drunkenness, idleness and profligacy of one family, and continues through five subsequent gener- ations, tracing the careers of seven hundred and nine of the twelve hundred descendants, who were for the most part criminals and prostitutes, vagabonds and paupers. Of all the men, not twenty were skilled workmen, and ten of these learned their trade in prison. One hundred and eighty received outdoor relief to an aggregate of eight hundred years record- ed, and of (probably) twenty-three hundred years in all, at a cost to the public of one million dollars. Of the seven hundred and nine, seventy-six were crimi- nals, committing one hundred and fifteen proved of- fenses. More than half of the women for six gener- ations were notoriously unchaste. (3) Failure of education, leaving the child the vic- tim of idleness, poverty and contempt. (4) Unfavorable environment, by which is meant CRIMINALITY. 123 overcrowding, vicious and criminal surroundings, in- sufficient and unwholesome food, and all those con- ditions not sanitary which breed uncleanliness, im- modesty, rudeness and disease, (5) Excessive luxury, pampering the passions, encouraging selfishness, enfeebling self-control and diseasing the body, may bring about like results. So- ciety has been not badly likened to a mug of beer, the froth on the top and the dregs at the bottom. 7. All criminality tends to assume an infectious and contagious character. The evil act of one dull nature shows to other dull natures a line of least re- sistance for criminal instinct, and one evil-doer begets many. Thus crimes often seem " catching " ; they come in local visitations, and prevail in certain places as veritable epidemics, threatening the very existence of society. It is quite a common occurrence for epidemics of suicide to break out in regiments of the French army, and it has become customary, on first symptoms of this mania, to remove the body of troops so afflicted to some distant region in order to divert attention and improve the general sanitary condition. Dr. F. W. Eussell has stated that a lady patient of his, on reading a sensa- tional newspaper account of the suicide of a drunkard, became possessed of the idea, and in a few days took her own life. Another, a friend of both parties, caught the dreadful contagion, and followed in the same awful course of folly; At least two cases, and probably three, attended by circumstances perfectly hideous, one in Australia and one in the West, have been directly traceable to the Whitechapel horrors, perpetrated by the wretch who signed himself " Jack the Eipper." 124 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 8. Where conditions favor, as in large cities, a criminal class — professional assailants of society, from whose ranks the prisons are regularly supplied, and who admire and emulate everything base because it is base — comes to the front. 9. There is also a literature of vice and crime, yel- low-covered romances, dime novels, police gazettes, and daily newspapers, pandering to prurient imagiDations, in minute description picturing the criminal as a hero, and furnishing to dull, vulgar minds the needed de- tails for felonious action, all highly stimulant of brutal desires and purposes. We may be sure that, could the criminal items of the daily press be expunged, the rate of felonies would go down one half. 10. One of the most prominent features of the law- breaking temperament is its levity. The deep-plan- ning villains of romance have no existence in real life. Milton's magnificent Satan is a mere poet's dream. Criminals are often cunning but never wise : thought- less, illogical, the victims of a monstrous egotism, blown hither and thither by gusts of passion, they are lighter than vanity, their mental processes contemptible, their conclusions inconsequential, and all their conduct per- vaded by an insane unreasonableness. They are sel- dom personally or mentally interesting, and generally dull, gross, repulsive and incapable. 11. The remedies are : (1) Improved compulsory sanitation. We quar- antine cholera, vaccinate against smallpox and main- tain expensive boards of health. It has come to be viewed as a public duty to guarantee to citizens the conditions of bodily health ; and government is deemed society in its preservative and self -regulative functions. CRIMINALITY. 125 It follows that we owe it to the poor and ignorant, and as well to the luxurious, to regulate their methods of life in the interests of a moral sanitation. To prevent overcrowding, debasing poverty and discontent among the poor, and no less enfeebling luxury among the rich, is the right and duty of society. Cleanliness, decency, sobriety, industry and self-restraint should be, and in time will be, enforced upon all citizens. (2) Thorough education. The claim recently and often made that a large number of criminals are edu- cated, is utterly groundless. Superintendent Brock- way, of the Elmira Eeformatory, declares that he has labored over criminals in prisons for over forty years, and can count on the fingers of one hand all the edu- cated men he has found among them. Education is a powerful preventive. Our public- school system should reach down lower, and take the very infant into its care on the plan of the public nur- series, and thus the day nursery for babes should be the primary department. The secondary should be the kindergarten for children, especially of the poor. Education should be compulsory, and when the little one enters what is now called the primary, it should be well along in private or public training. The child should graduate from the grammar school with some- thing more than book learning, and rather in every wise prepared for useful grapple with the stern prob- lem of life. In short, education should train health- fully all the various nerve centers, not only those of the cerebrum but also of the entire cerebro-spinal column. (3) Social philanthropy, which should be personal, long-suffering and discriminating. Beggary can be 126 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. entirely repressed simply by an organized system of pxiyate relief, and at remarkably low cost, as is shown in the successful working of voluntary associations, called Union Eelief, in New England. Stealing and robbery disappear in proportion as wise and Just laws regulating property are enacted and enforced. And vice is very amenable to the influence of pure example and religious appeal. 12. The future of criminality can be prognosti- cated. It is not likely that atavism and occasional crime and the crime of passion will ever be elimi- nated. Inheritable virus, however, and habitual and professional wrong-doing ought to succumb to im- proved sanitation, wiser methods of education, and the elimination of those hard social laws which now work to reduce many to the level of the brutes. 13. One ought to distinguish between guilt and criminality. The former is an ethical, the latter a scientific, fact. Guilt may or may not be criminal ; crime may or may not be guilty. Many a man who breaks no human law, and is adored of the community, has on his record " a damned spot " that all the waters of earth may not wash out; and many a hideous malefactor is innocent as the babe unborn. Hence a just judgment of the criminal is exceed- ingly difficult. Several principles may, however, be applied safely, (1) Depraved heredity is palliative and not cumu- lative of guilt. If the fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, so much the worse for the fathers ; the guilt is theirs. The children are to be pitied ; their freedom is thereby crippled. CRIMINALITY. 127 (3) Unfavorable environment, also, is palliative of guilt. One is not worse because surroundings have been bad, but relatively better in the eye of justice. One's freedom has been compelled. (3) Guilt concerns the exercise of the will, within its limitations and possibilities. Doubtless criminals are generally and greatly to blame ; but we are prone to judge over harshly. " Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." PAET II. MIND IN DETAIL. SECTION I. THE SENSOKY AND MOTOE END OEGANS. CHAPTER XXII. THE EVOLUTION OF E:N^D ORGANS. 1. Irritability and contractility are primary functions of protoplasm, and hence in the lowest forms we have potentialities of that sense and motion found in the highest ; for in the progress of evolution it is the irritability which expands into the nervous system and the contractility which is built up into the muscle machine. The two systems, the irritable and the contractile— that is, the sensory and the motor — develop in harmony and mutual dependence, the ready instruments of the ever - expanding psychic factor. 2. End organs are the results of this process of specialization, and hence are either of the irritable or of the contractile order — that is, either nervous or muscular, sensory or motor. At the very beginning THE EVOLUTION OP END ORGANS. 129 of specialization they may be both, but this only in the lowest forms. They are evolved to mediate be- tween mind and both the outer and inner material world. 3. While protoplasm at its lowest does not see, hear, smell, nor taste, it is probably gifted with feeling, which we may conceive of as a dull, dim, perhaps only subconsciousness of itself and of the general effect upon it of environment. This primary feeling is the foreshadowing of sensation, and very likely similar to what in ourselves we name general sense. Corresponding to this primary feeling is the volun- tary action of rude forms, the mere self-change of po- sition within a cell wall or in the open by a streaming of molecules or by elastic contraction and extension of the entire shape. The power of self-movement fore- shadows all organs of action. 4. The earliest and rudest end organs are the false feet, lashes, whips and tentacles of protophytes and protozoa, already sufficiently described. These are at once irritable and contractile, of the nervous and of the muscular orders — that is, both sensory and motor — for they not only serve as limbs, they are also organs of touch. It must, however, be remembered that this primary touch is quite different from what we ex- perience as such in ourselves. It is a crude forerun- ner of several senses, and as truly a prophecy of our smell and taste as of our tactile and pressure sensibili- ties ; for its lowly possessors seek and find appropriate food, seemingly, by the aid of these simple members. Moreover, even our own smell and taste organs are but exquisitely delicate kinds of touch. The order of evolution undoubtedly was this touch of a rude sort, 130 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. followed by the same specialized, for heat, for smell, and later for taste. 5. The appearance of controlling or nerve cells must have given to this movement a great impetus. The sensory system separating from the motor under- went subdivision and elaboration. Temperature end organs must have come early, and have succeeded the general sense of hot and cold. Sight and hearing were at first less necessary, and received a compara- tively late expansion. The muscular sense and mus- cular end organs were of course sequent to the de- velopment of the muscle machine. 6. The design of sensory end organs in high forms and low is to acquaint mind with its physical environ- ment without the body and within. This sensory en- vironment is the play of forces upon living matter — of light, heat, electricity, chemical affinity, gravity, pressure, etc. Sensory end organs are the effort of mind to interpret, counteract and master these forces. 7. This result is accomplished in all the higher forms by specializing superficial cells to receive one or another kind of stimulus, which cells in front elongate into a hair or thread and behind are connected with the sensory nerve centers. The apparatus is merely a hairlike process extending outward and connected by a sensitive cell with a nervous filament extending inward. The function of the exterior thread is to gather up the stimulus and convey it to the sensitive cell; in this the stimulus is converted into nerve force, which speeds to the brain, where the excitation becomes a sensation. Even the wonderful senses of man are only an elaboration of this simple structure, THE EVOLUTION OF END ORGANS. 131 which proves ample to meet all the urgent require- ments of his complicated organization ; and much that we associate with them in thought is merely me- chanical, only designed to bring to bear the stimulus in the most effective way upon the sensitive thread. Noses, ears, eyes and tongues are mere mechanical aids to the vital operation of the concealed end organs. 8. The sensitive cells must be conceived of as loaded with explosives, and their stimulation is a kind of discharge, releasing energy. Some are fired by a slight pressure, some by the molecular vibration of odorous or sapid particles, some by undulations of air, and others by the waves of an ethereal surf. Hence we may classify the end organs according to the spe- cies of stimulus : Mechanical Touch. Chemical Taste and smell. Physical Sight, hearing, temperature. Muscular t . . . Muscular sense. Vital Vital sense. 9. It will be noticed that stimulus is in nearly all cases vibratory. This is beyond question with sight, temperature and hearing ; but it is scarcely less cer- tain with smell and taste, with the muscular and with the vital senses. Upon this fact depends the quantity and the quality of the impression. The form of the vibratory curve determines its quality, its amplitude the quantity. 10. General sense is described by Henle as "the sum total or the not yet unraveled chaos of sensations that from every point of the body are being inces- santly transmitted to the sensorium." Weber defines it as "an internal sensibility, an inward touch that 132 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. imparts information to the sensorium concerning the mechanical and chemico-organic state of the skin, the mucous and serous membranes, the viscera, the mus- cles and the articulated parts." Oondillac called this '* the basic feeling of existence." It is by general feeling that we know our bodies as our own, and its sensibility forms the physical basis of personality. It gives us sense of comfort or discom- fort, of malaise or healthful vigor. If general sense have any end organs of its own, they must be very simple, and probably nothing more than terminating fibrils passing through minute sen- sitive cells, and which, starting out from the brain, end everywhere in the human body. 11.^ When the general sense is diseased or dis- turbed, hallucinations result, bearing chiefly upon the physical personality. A man imagines that he is two men, lying in two beds ; or that he has long since died, and is but an inert thing. Esquirol describes a woman whose skin was completely insensible, and who believed that the devil had carried ofE her body. Ribot tells of a young man who, while maintaining that he had been dead for two years, expressed his perplexity in the following words : " I exist, but out- side of real material life. Everything in me is me- chanical, and takes place unconsciously." THE END ORGANS OF TOUCH. 133 CHAPTER XXIII. THE EKD ORGANS OE TOUCH. 1. These, as we have seen, appeared early in the evolutionary movement, and are found in very low forms. With the latter they may subserve the pur- poses of the temperature and the smell senses. The hydroid polyps, the Medusce^ and the sea anemones have touch tentacles, usually arranged about the mouth. Sea urchins are equipped with touch rods and suctorial feet. Crustaceans and insects have touch hairs, often with a sensitive cell at the base. In the vertebrates the nervous apparatus is simply of naked fibrils lost amid the cells of the skin or of sensitive bulbs of connective tissue in which nerves terminate. In the great majority of fishes feeling is limited to the lips, to the fins and to special members called barbels. The tongue is the chief organ of touch in serpents and lizards. All reptiles that possess climbing powers de- velop the sense in their feet. Birds have touch papillae on the soles of their feet to impart security of grasp. 2. In human beings touch is specialized solely for the appreciation of mass pressure ; and the organs are numerous and in kind somewhat varied. These latter are located in the skin (integumentary or mucous), and consist of naked fibrils which end amid the cells or of fibrils ending in corpuscles. The tactile corpuscles are of three kinds : (1) Of Pacini, which are each a coating of many thin layers of connective tissue enveloping the termi- nation of a meduUated fiber, and are large (^ to ^ 134 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. inch in diameter). They occur most frequently in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. (2) Of Krause, which are small capsules of con- nective tissue in whose center fibrils terminate in a coiled mass or a swollen extremity {^^-^ to t^^oo" inch). They are found in the conjunctiva in the tongue, the lips, etc. (3) Of Wagner (^-^ to -^-^ inch), situate in- the papillae of the skin. Within these, fibrils form two or three coils, and finally join together in loops ; they are most numerous in the papillae of the finger ends. Meisner counted four hundred papillae in one fiftieth of a square inch on the third phalange of the index finger, and found Wagner's corpuscles in one hundred and eight of them. 3. The special function of the corpuscles has not been determined ; it is, however, highly probable that the protecting connective tissue modifies the impulse of pressure received, so as to convey it to nerve termi- nations in a form better fitted for delicate and signifi- cant excitation than in case of naked fibrils. But they are not necessary for simple touch, and if no bulbar terminals occur in any part, still even there will be found sensitiveness to pressure. 4. The human body is covered with what are called pressure spots— that is, with areas marking the pres- ence of some kind of touch organ. These are defined experimentally by pressing against the skin at every different point a sharp instrument. Light pressure excites a lively sensation, often accompanied by a sense of being tickled ; heavy pressure arouses pain as if of a grain of sand forced into the surface. Between the spots the point will cause feeling of contact but not of THE END ORGANS OF TOUCH. 135 pressure. Undoubtedly fibrils terminate underneath the pressure spots. 5. The intensity and therefore the delicacy of the sense of touch depends upon the thickness of the cellu- lar layer and the form and number of the papilla. The two points of a pair of dividers can be distinguished by the tongue, if only one twenty-fourth inch apart ; while on the cheek they may be one inch separate, and on the back three inches, and still give rise to only one impression. The tip of the tongue and ends of the fingers oJBCer surfaces crowded with touch organs and highly sensitive to pressure. There are men in whom this gift is so exquisitely discriminating that they can tell simply by feeling the make and grade of flour. Sleight-of-hand experts possess this tactile dexterity to a very remarkable degree. 6. Touch is one of the spatial senses. There is a field of touch as there is a field of vision. Those who are born blind, through touch have definite space con- ceptions; the three dimensions are correctly appre- hended. Indeed, in case of congenital blindness, touch, aided by the muscular sense, receives emphasis and plays a much more important part in life than when sight can be relied upon, and to some extent replaces the latter. Still, even as a spatial sense, touch is far more re- liable in its resulting sensations, perceptions and judg- ments, for having the assistance of vision. 7. In the blind, in the hypnotized and sometimes in the normal, touch attains exquisite sensitiveness. A Swiss blind man, among a group of w^ood-carving peasants, learned to carve in wood faces of men and women with a marvelous accuracy. 136 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. CHAPTER XXIV. MUSCULAK SE:^SE. 1. This phrase describes a certain sensibility con- nected with the muscles, the stimulus being of two kinds — either an innervation of some muscle or a re- sistance by environment to such innervation. Hence muscular sense is either of movements or of resistance. It keeps mind en rapport with its motory apparatus and cognizant of the obstacles encountered by its own attempted effort. It must be carefully distinguished from the senses of mere contact and of mere pressure. Bring your hand alongside a book and you are in contact with it. Lay your hand flat upon a table and place the book upon your palm, and you feel pressure. Now, if you will lift the hand and so raise the book, you shall have muscular sense of resistance, as well as muscular sense of the innervation necessary to accomplish the work. Landry tells of a workman " whose fingers and hands were insensible to all contact, pain and tem- perature, but whose sense of muscular activity v/as everywhere alert. If I made him shut his eyes and placed a large object in his hand, he was astonished that he could not shut it ; but his only idea was that there was some obstacle to the movement of his fingers. I secretly tied to his wrists a kilogramme weight ; he thought some one was pulling him by the arm." 2. In sense of muscular movement, the stimulation is probably central and occasioned by acts of innerva- tion in central nerve cells. Sense of resistance, how- MUSCULAR SENSE. 137 ever, receives its impressions through fibrils directed everywhere upon the muscles, and these are the true muscular end organs. 3. The muscular is one of the three spatial senses, by which we come to know the material universe ; its impressions acquaint us with the density, hardness and elasticity of matter. Indeed, sight and touch would fail in much of their usefulness were they not supplemented by the motility of the hand and eye muscles and the nice discrimination by successive movements of position, amount of innervation and force of resistances. These spatial properties of muscular sensibility are greatly enhanced in value by that keen judgment of durations which accompanies it. Thus we can esti- mate distances by the time it takes us to traverse them under allowance for the force of resistance. 4. The diseases of this kind of sensibility lead to curious results. Demeaux tells of a woman who, los- ing all sense of resistance, though retaining sense of innervation, could will muscular action, but neither could she know the nature of the actual movement nor could she even judge as to the position of her limbs. Persons whose muscles have been anaesthetized can not tell in what position their members are or have been placed. Carpenter describes the case of a woman whose sense of resistance in one arm was lost, while the power of innervation was retained ; she could hold her baby only so long as she gazed steadily upon her arm, vision taking the place of the lost sense in giving the requisite guidance to the sense of effort. 5. Muscular sense can be educated and attain won- derful keenness and precision ; hence the sleight-of- 10 138 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. hand conjurer, the acrobat, the equilibrist and the tumbler. In hypnosis it may become extremely alert and discriminating, as in the case of the lady who could select any one of twenty silver coins by poising them on a finger and so weighing them. CHAPTER XXV. THE EKB ORGAKS OF SMELL. 1. Odors are of value to the psychic factor thereby to gain acquaintance with environment, because ma- terial substances all readily give off superficial mole- cules and vary greatly in chemical quality. Odor end organs need to be specialized for reception of impres- sions conveyed by the chemical or physical energies of such molecules. How these energies are delivered so as to discharge the loaded sensitive cell, science has not yet explained ; there is, however, little doubt that the impact is vibratory, and either of ethereal waves of low rapidity or rhythmic movement peculiar to the molecule in question. 2. While something answering to the sense of smell must be possessed by even the lowest animals, the most simple apparatus for this purpose is found in the Me- duscBy in which we discover pitlike depressions lined with ciliated epithelium and supposed to be olfactory organs. Insects are abundantly provided with sensory hairs, knobs and cones on their antennae, often num- bering many thousands, which evidently are olfactory ; for if you amputate these structures or coat them with paraffin, the result is complete obtuseness to smell. A THE END ORGANS OF SMELL. 139 similar equipment of olfactory hairs and tufts of hairs is found with the moUusks ; though snails, forming an exception, seem to smell — in part at least — with their horns. In fishes we have a highly vascular folded membrane, covered by cilia, lining one or two pits ; and most fishes are attracted to bait not by sight but by smell. Amphibians have paired internal cavities. In birds the external nostrils are simple perforations, but in the cavities the sensitive surface is increased by projections and folds. In the mammals the olfactory surface is enormously increased by a bony labyrinth, carved into projections and depressions and covered with sensitive membrane. The simple idea which is gradually elaborated in this series — the " motive," as a musician might say — is that of a single fibril exposed cautiously to contact with infinitesimal particles of substances fioating on the air or dissolved in water. In each of the thou- sands of olfactory hairs on the antennae of a bee there ends a fibril ; while in olfactory cavities of more elab- orate forms few or many such fibrils end in exposure. With the highest animals the structure, though still simple in its details, is extremely elaborate in multi- plication of fibrils and provision for air passages. 3. In man the olfactory organs do not materially depart from those of his class, and are situated in the upper region of the nasal cavity, where there is an expansion. In this expansion there is a bony laby- rinth lined with a mucous membrane that is abun- dantly supplied with sensitive fibrils. Two cables from the brain — the first pair of cranial — divide into fibers, the fibrils of which end in sensitive cells ; these latter — spindle-shaped or columnar, with large nucleus 140 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. — penetrate the epithelial layer, and on the outer sur- face terminate in threadlike processes. Smelling is excited chiefly on inspiration, and to be keen the air must be breathed in deep draughts ; and snuffing, by creating a partial vacuum in the nasal cavity and so increasing the amount of air drawn into the olfactory region, intensifies the sensation. The atmosphere had best be damp, and the mucous mem- brane concerned should be moist. When the threads are well covered with odorous matter or coated with mucus, as during an attack of catarrh, or when the nose is filled even with an odorous liquid, the sensa- tion ceases. 4. Smell is excited by exceedingly minute particles of matter in the gaseous or vaporous condition floating in the air or the same dissolved in water. A grain of musk will scent an apartment for years, and at the end of that time no appreciable loss of weight can be de- tected. This accounts for the extraordinary acute- ness of smelling in certain animals, as the dog or the deer. Occasional instances of acuteness in men hint of the inexhaustible possibilities of the human nose, and -lead us to infer that the only reason we do not enjoy a sense of smell as keen and varied as our sight is the fact that human exigencies of life and growth have not required it. James Mitchell, born blind, deaf and dumb, chiefly depended on smell for keeping up con- nection with the outer world ; he readily observed the presence of a stranger in the room, and formed his opinions of persons apparently from their character- istic smells. Eelatively imperfect as our organs are, it is said that ^qq^ooo ^^ ^ milligramme of alcoholic ex- THE END ORGANS OF SMELL. 141 tract of musk and 4 ^0000000 ^^ ^ milligramme of mer- captan can be perceived, while a current of air con- taining ^o-qVfo ^^ vapor of bromine excites a strong, unpleasant sensation. Humboldt declared of the Peruvian Americans that on the darkest night they could not merely perceive through smell the approach of a distant stranger, but could say whether he were Indian, negro or European. 5. In animals, and to some extent in man, smell conveys knowledge as to direction of the exciting cause. Put your finger in water occupied by leeches and they seek it. Fishes will thus find bait they can not see. In man this peculiar gift usually lies dor- mant ; but that it exists appears in Braid's account of a lady who when hypnotized was so acute in smelling that she could, though blindfolded and at a distance of forty-six feet, follow a rose just as su.rely as a hound does a hare. 6. The olfactory sense may prove a source of decep- tion. When covered with mucus in catarrh the nerve endings fail to respond to the strongest stimulus, and in certain diseased conditions they send false impres- sions to the brain — as when during a cold the author for several days smelt smoke and went about the house seeking fire. 7. Science has not reduced to definite mathemat- ical, physical or even chemical relations the infinite possible varieties of olfactory impressions. As Wundt declares, these possess a " discrete manif oldness " which has an unknown arrangement. 142 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. CHAPTEE XXVI. THE E]^D OKGAlSrS OF TASTE. 1. Taste and smell are allied, and were originally indistinguishable ; and now in all low aquatic forms the difference is hardly, if at all, discernible. Still, some think they discover taste organs in fishes, and Morgan is confident that they can be found in the maxillae and probosces of insects, in minute pits sup- plied each with a taste hair. It is, however, more probable that taste organs have been recent in evolu- tionary liistory. First in the mammals do we discover clear evidence of a special apparatus, and even with these the sense of taste is introductory. Man himself in this regard is but where insects are in the matter of eyes, or where fishes seem to be in the matter of ears. 2. The taste organs in man are situated princi- pally in the tongue. On the upper surface of the root of the tongue are found large papillae, called circum- vallate ; while on the tip and lateral margins may be seen other papillae named fungiform. In the epithe- lial lining of these bodies, at the sides of the circum- vallate, and at the sides and on the upper surfaces of the fungiform, are found gustatory buds. These open outward, and are ^ to -g-J-o inch in diameter. Shaped like a Florence flask, they are composed of two sets of cells — an outer, which lines the organ, and is made up of nucleated fusiform elements bent in- ward like the staves of a barrel, and an inner group, five to ten, also of nucleated cells, each pointed at the opening and branched below. The branched lower THE END ORGANS OF TASTE. 143 ends of the latter are continuous with nerve fibrils from the gustatory cable. 3. Taste is excited by soluble substances only, as the matter perceived must be minute enough to work its way into the terminal pores of the buds. Insolu- ble substances excite on the tongue only feelings of touch and temperature. Hence dryness of the mouth will lessen the sensation by preventing solution, and the neighboring secreting glands form an important part of the entire apparatus. 4. We may therefore surmise that the stimulus is molecular in action, the motion of impact being either an ethereal vibration or some rhythmic physical move- ment. 5. Taste seems a much more important function than it is, because constantly confused with touch and smell. A large part of what we call the taste of any- thing is its " feel " and its odor. A Shah of Persia once rebuked some^uropeans for eating with knives and forks ; he declared that the sense of taste began in the finger-tips (Hoffding). Blindfold the eyes and close the nose, and a slice of onion on the tongue will not be distinguished from a slice of apple. We all enjoy vanilla flavoring, but only the odor is per- ceived. When smell and touch are rigidly excluded, there remain as kinds of taste impressions only sweet, bitter, acid and saline. In short, the sense is incipient : it is clear that the exigencies of animal existence have not been such as to evolve its possibilities. There is nothing absolutely to forbid the gradual future multi- plication of kinds of taste impression. 6. The intensity of gustatory impression depends upon the number of buds excited and the concentra- 144: THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. tion of the solution, not to speak of attention. But with all conditions favorable, the sense seldom is keen. It is, however, occasionally so, as in the case of Valen- tin, who detected bitter in tofotfo" ^^ ^ solution of quinine. Moreover, it can be educated, as the nice discriminations of the professional tea- tasters show ; though in this case the dexterity, after all, is largel}^ of the olfactory sense. In subconscious conditions it is also often abnormally acute. 7. Like all the other senses, it may delude. Gal- vanic stimulation of the tongue simulates food im- pressions. A draft of cool air excites on the tongue the taste of saltpeter. Acetate of lead may be mis- taken for sugar. OHAPTEE XXVII. THE TEMPERATUKE E:N^D OKGAIsrS. 1. Mind perceives heat impressions through nerve fibrils terminating in the skin and mucous surfaces. The stimulus is to be sought in the invisible ethereal vibrations or heat rays which occur at the ultra-red end of the solar spectrum. The impact of this ethe- real surf upon the fibril cells occasions that discharge of loaded energies which constitutes temperature im- pression. 2. These fibrils occasion corresponding cold and hot spots, which are minute and very numerous. The cold spots are sensitive to low, the hot to high temperature. Some parts of the human body are more plentifully supplied with the one than with the other. Thus the forehead and the back between the shoulders are ex- THE TEMPERATURE END ORGANS. 145 tremely sensitive to cold, but only moderately so to heat, while the hands are equally excited by both con- ditions. 3. The fibrils are telaesthetic, and may be influ- enced by a body radiating heat from afar, even though as distant as the sun. You may prove this by holding your hand near a hot stove, but the while protecting it by a dense screen. Remove the screen, and in the fraction of a second, and ere the heat of the hand is appreciably raised, there will be a strong stimulation of temperature end organs. 4. There is a zero point at which fibrils produce no sensations. When they receive heat waves of any de- gree above this, the hot spots transmit inward the excitation of warmth ; when the heat waves fall below, the cold spots transmit the excitation of coldness. 5. This zero point is variable ; it changes for dif- ferent parts of the body, according as they are or are not exposed, according as they are or are not well sup- plied with arterial blood, pursuant also to variations in the temperature of the air or of other bodies in con- tact. Thus it is higher in summer than in winter, in a hot room than in a cold one, etc. The adjustment of the zero point to surroundings depends, of course, upon the evaporation of perspira- tion and the circulation of the blood, but also upon a certain power of accommodation. Plunge the hand into warm water, and having kept it there a moment- put it into still warmer ; this latter will seem warm only until the zero point is adjusted to the new con- ditions. Then, if the hand be returned to the first basin, the water in this will seem cold, though but a few mo- ments before it gave quite the contrary impression. 146 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 6. The fibril cells are most sensitive to changes lying near their own zero point. Intense cold and heat do not occasion impressions strong in proportion to the intensity ; indeed, overvigorous excitation, if prolonged, even reduces sensitiveness to slighter va- riations. 7. Delicacy of discrimination depends upon the locality and extent of surfaces involved. Thus water, in which the whole hand is immersed, seems warmer than some of a higher temperature into which only one finger has been plunged. There is a limit, however, to this nicety of judg- ment ; as the heat rays of the solar spectrum give us no such discernment of qualities as that afforded by the light rays, we simply feel gradations of quantity. The heat sense lacks what in other senses we mean by color, pitch, savor, etc. CHAPTER XXVIII. SIGHT. 1. The light organs receive impressions from the luminous portion of the spectrum, and are adapted to convert the ethereal surf that beats against the human body — hundreds of billions of waves a second — into nerve force, to travel to the nerve center for final ap- preciation by the psychic factor. Nature's method of accomplishing this great feat has been progressive ; hence — 2. An evolutionary history. First came a general sensitiveness to light not localized. Among plants the SIGHT. 147 desmids have a light sense, and are able thereby to find the sunshine, whether by some special organ or by general sensibility we can not yet say. The earth- worm is distinctly sensitive to light, and can even dis- tinguish between colors, though quite eyeless, prefer- ring red to green, and green to blue. The same is true of the blind proteus of the grottoes of Carniola. Some animals provided with eyes— the newt, for exam- ple — can distinguish between light and darkness by the general surface of the skin. The next stage is of pigment spots. Certain plants in the motile form possess pigment spots as the organs of a light sense (as Pandorina), These spots are the rude beginnings of eyes. Low animal forms also have such pigment spots to serve the same end of light-seek- ing. Euglena viridis is a case in point. Eyes proper began in eye-specks — in the worms, MeduscB^ etc. These are simply expansions of an optic nerve into a brush of fibrils, which are fronted by a transparent medium, the whole shut in by a rudi- mentary lens. Eye-specks afford only a luminous im- pression, without distinct vision. More fully developed are the ocelli or single eyes of spiders and kindred insects ; these are endowed with a lens, a transparent medium back of it, optic fibrils, a layer of pigment and optic ganglia ; and they no doubt afford something like true vision. In the insects, and also in the crustaceans, sin- • gle eyes — a great many of them, often thousands — are compressed and combined into compound eyes, which consist of transparent conelike bodies, arranged in a radiate manner against the inner surface of the cornea, with which their bases are united, while their apices 148 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. are connected with the ends of the opposite fibrils. Vision in this case gives a distinct image of the field in mosaic. In the vertebrates we find large, single eyes, in which the optical rivals the nerve complexity to pro- vide perfect organs of sight. An eye, so perfected, is a dark chamber with a self-adjusting lens and a sen- sitive nervous screen. There is time here to dwell only upon the retina or screen, where. the real end or- gans of vision are located, though the entire apparatus of diaphragm, ciliary muscles, muscles of accommoda- tion, eyebrows, eyelids, lachrymal glands, muscles of the eyeball, etc., might well occupy many hours of pa- tient consideration. 3. The retina or sensitive screen is the terminal membranous expansion of the optic nerve within the globe of the eye ; it consists of nerve cells and fibers imbedded in a spongy, supporting connective tissue. It is the inner tunic of the orb, and is composed of no less than ten different layers. It begins on the inner surface of the choroid, with a mosaic pavement of pig- ment cells ; resting on these is a layer of rods and cones, more than one hundred millions to the square inch. In front of the rods and cones are successive strata of nerve elements — fibers, nuclei and cells — connected with them. Foremost of all are multipolar nucleated nerve cells, joined by a network of fibrils to the optic cable, which enters the retina at a point of slight projection, near the center of the posterior hemi- spherical surface on the nasal side. The entire thick- ness of the retina is one thirtieth of an inch. At the center of the posterior hemispherical surface is a de- pressed yellow spot of superior sensitiveness, which is SIGHT. 149 the place of clearest yision, the organ of visual atten- tion. The neighboring elevation, where the optic nerve penetrates the retina to distribute itself over the inner surface, is, on the contrary, devoid of visual elements and totally blind. It is believed that the eye distin- guishes all the colors of the spectrum only at the yel- low spot, which, in consequence, is termed trichro- matic — that is, sensitive to the three primary colors and all their combinations. Not far from the yellow spot the retina becomes only bichromatic, and is green blind ; while on the periphery color is entirely indistinguishable, and only light and shade are ob- served. The yellow spot has within itself an area yet more restricted of most acute sensibility, only y^-g- of an inch in diameter, containing no less than two thou- sand cones. 4. Though the mechanics of vision is perfectly clear, its physiology is not well understood. The for- mation of the image on the retina is in accordance with well-demonstrated properties of light ; but how the retina converts each point of light into a nerve impression, to speed its way to the brain, we do not know. The fibers and cells of the retina are them- selves indifferent to light stimulation, unless of dan- gerous intensity. The rods and cones, in connection with the pigment cells, receive and register the ether waves, but just how has not yet been discovered. The process seem^ to be photo-chemical. The fibrils re- ceive their stimulus surely not from the light directly, but from the layer of rods and cones. The yellow spot is most sensitive, because here the cones are most numerous and delicate, while the blind spot is entirely 150 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. insensitive, because it fails utterly in rods and cones. An image large enough to cover one cone only is visi- ble, and Lockyer claims that the color of a star throw- ing such an image is discernible. 5. A line drawn from the yellow spot to the center of the pupil forms the axis of the eye, and gives the direction of perfect vision. As the yellow spot is the organ of attention, and therefore of research and dis- covery, it is the only part of the retina that can be said to examine anything. The mechanical contrivances of the eyes are largely designed to bring the object of visual attention upon this most sensitive portion of the screen. 6. The retinal images are small — only about -^js of the surface area of the object, at nine inches from the eye. The arc they subtend, the center of the lens being the center of the circle, is called the angle of vision. 7. The minimum limit of vision is conditioned by the distance of the retinal elements one from the other. Two stars can not be distinguished by the naked eye if nearer together than sixty seconds ; this corresponds to a visual angle whose arc subtends the least distance between the cones in the yellow spot. A line not much more than subtending this angle ap- pears uneven and knotted, because it falls at points on only parts of retinal elements, and lines of less diam- eter are not seen at all. Glass can be spun so fine as not to be seen even when magnified by the utmost powers of the microscope, and parallel lines can be drawn on glass that before all our efforts remain quite indistinguishable. 8. The impression made by light upon the retina SIGHT. 151 not only remains during the time of stimulation, but afterward for about one eighth of a second ; so that two luminous impressions no farther apart than this interval appear continuous as one. A pin- wheel light- ed and rapidly revolving appears as an unbroken circle of fire. 9. The excitability of the retina is soon exhausted : a bright light presently renders the part aroused tem- porarily insensitive. If the bright light be of one color, the part excited becomes insensitive to that color, but not to other rays of the spectrum. Look at a bright red cloth intently, and if the eyes be sud- denly averted to a white surface a greenish spot will appear; in this case the capacity to see red is weak- ened, and only its complementary color in the white is perceived. 10. In some persons the necessary apparatus for discriminating colors^ accurately is lacking : they see no red or no green or no yellow. 11. Illusory impressions may be made on the ret- ina. Press the closed eyeball on one side, and a light image appears on a dark ground. A blow will cause one to " see stars." Electrical stimulation induces light impressions of various sorts and degrees. The eyes are therefore the seats of possible illusions, and may become to the mind the sources of serious de- lusion. 12. Vision, through individual or ancestral educa- tion, can be brought up to a high degree of acuteness, and the same result may temporarily be secured by hypnosis. Jackdaws will perceive a hawk and show alarm when the sky is perfectly clear to human eyes. The author knew a young girl who possessed talent 152 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. for the painting of minute subjects so elaborate in detail that the result could be magnified four diam- eters without suffering in proportion or color. CHAPTER XXIX. HEARING. 1. The end organs of hearing are constructed to ac- quaint mind Vvdth its environment by means of sounds, and the sensitive cells are discharged by undulations proceeding from sonorous bodies through elastic me- dia. As sound is occasioned by the vibrations of bodies which, because they can vibrate, are called sonorous, and is transmitted in undulations through suitable media — air, wood, water, or any elastic sub- stance — we may expect to find the terminal filament, in this case, an elastic hair. 2. The evolutionary history has been very striking. Loxodes rostrum^ a beautiful ciliated infusory, ex- hibits along the back a row of small auditory vesicles, which probably afford a general sense of undulation, without discernment of pitch and timbre. The Medtisce^ in connection with their double ring of nerve matter, possess sense organs, which function, in some species, as eyes and in others as ears ; in the latter case, projecting tentacles are furnished with otoliths and vibratory hairs. In some species the tentacle lies in a vesicle imbedded in the gelatinous substance of the disk and close to its edge. Among invertebrates, auditory organs are very pro- miscuously located : in the foot of bivalves, in the an- HEARING. 153 tennules of lobsters, the forelegs of crickets and ants, the abdomen of locusts, the balancers of flies, the tail of My sis. These generally involve one or more sacs, with otoliths and vibratory hairs. Sonorous vibrations are communicated to the sac either directly through hard parts or by a membrane exposed to the surround- ing medium. If vibratory hairs be present, pitch is perceived, otherwise only intensity. Hensen, through a microscope, watched the two auditory sacs in the tail of a mysis, while a musical scale near at hand was sounded, and he found that special hairs responded to particular notes. When a note was sounded, the cor- responding hair was thrown into such violent vibration as to disappear. Among the vertebrates, the organ becomes increas- ingly complicated with evolution into higher forms. In the lower fishes there is a simple sac ; then, there is a sac — now called a vestibule — and a semicircular canal, each of which, filled with lymph and otoliths, receives filaments of the auditory nerve. In the lam- prey there are two semicircular canals. In the higher fishes there are three semicircular canals, and the ves- tibule enlarges into a double sac. In amphibians, rep- tiles and birds there are always three canals, and con- joined to these appears a new sac called the' cochlea ; there is also increasing perfection of apparatus, in middle and external ears, for bringing to bear effect- ively the atmospheric undulations. 3- Omitting all minute description of mechanical contrivance, the internal ear of man is composed of two membranous sacs, filled with lymph and floating in lymph, inclosed in cavities of hard bone forming part of the skull. These sacs are connected by open- 11 154 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. ings with one another, and by membranes with the middle ear, and in their interior contain small, mobile, hard bodies — the otoliths. The membranous cochlea, which is to hearing what the retina is to sight, is a double tube wound about a spiral bone. On its inner surface, extending into the lymph, is a most remark- able series of threads, called the fibers of Corti, con- necting tufts of hairs with fibrils of the auditory nerve ; there are about three thousand of these, each with its tuft of hairs, and they are very generally believed to form a keyboard, and to be a musical instrument ca- pable of responding to the utmost niceties of pitch and timbre. Whether the fibers vibrate, or the con- nected hairs, has not been decided ; it is, however, prob- able that the hairs vibrate, and that the fibers are the converting sensitive cells. 4. As to the functions of the different parts, it is undoubtedly safe to say that the outer ear conveys sound vibrations to the membrane of the drum, whose throbbings are passed on by three little bones (ossi- cles — the mallet, anvil and stirrup) to the mem^brane of the oval window, which, itself pulsating, sets the lymph of the labyrinth into rhythmic motion; this rhythm throws into undulation the lymph of vestibule and cochlea, which breaks upon the nerve endings like the sea on a pebbly beach, increasing the intensity of their effect by lifting and dropping the otoliths, just as a surf lifts and drops sand and shingle. The last vibrations in the series are those of the elastic hairs, which sensitive cells convert into nerve energy and send to the brain. It must be remembered that sound waves may reach the inner ear, though very imperfectly, through HEARING. 155 the bony parts of the skull and through the Eusta- chian tubes. 5. An auditory sensation lasts a short time after the cessation of the exciting cause ; hence, if sounds follow one another with sufficient rapidity, they ap- pear as one and continuous. There must, however, be at least thirty per second to secure perfect conti- nuity of impression. If these successive sounds be caused by regular and periodic impressions they form musical tones. There must be not less than thirty nor more than twenty thousand per second to insure perception. 6. Four qualities are discernible in musical tones — intensity, pitch, timbre and harmony. Intensity depends upon the amplitude of the wave. Pitch depends ujDon the form of the wave, and hence on the length of time in which a single vibra- tion is executed or the number of vibrations per sec- ond. Acute or high tone is produced by rapidly suc- ceeding vibrations, grave or low tone by very slow vibrations. The*six or seven octaves of a piano cover from forty to four thousand per second. Timbre or quality is that peculiar characteristic of a musical sound by which we may identify it as pro- ceeding from a particular instrument or from a par- ticular human voice. " It depends upon the number and intensity of other tones, called harmonic or partial " tones, added to the fundamental tone " (Ladd). Harmony describes the fact that several notes reaching the ear at once may, if the necessary rela- tions exist between the numbers of vibrations, produce a sense of concord. Soprano, alto, tenor and bass unite to produce a pleasing effect, not from any arbi- 156 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. trary arrangement of things, but because of the appli- cation in musical composition of certain numerical laws of vibration. 7. The functional passivity of the ear favors its*pre- ponderating influence in generating mental charac- teristics. " The extreme ease of the animal's control over the eye, and the absence of any control over the ear, made a difference in the degree in which the com- mon animal appetites dominated the manner of the reception of the two kinds of impression. The pas- sivity of the ear allowed auditory impressions to force themselves into consciousness in season and out of season, when they were interesting to the dominant desires of the animal and when they were not. These impressions got farther into consciousness, so to speak — before desire could examine their right of entrance — than was possible by impressions that could be anni- hilated by a wink or a turn of the head." Hence au- ditory communication of thought, and the enormous development of spoken language. CHAPTER XXX. THE MOTOR END ORGA:NrS. As a description of the various muscle machines constructed by Nature to serve as the apparatus of mind for voluntary response to stimulus would be tedious, and for our main purpose needless, we refer the reader for full treatment of the matter to the vari- ous manuals of anatomy and physiology. SECTION II. ANALYSIS OF THE COGNITIVE POWEKS. CHAPTER XXXL SYNTHESIS OF SENSE IMPRESSIONS. 1. Every stimulation of an end organ, if it reach the brain, occasions a change in the central brain sub- stance. This change is accompanied by a corresponding psychic activity. Here we leap the chasm and pass from matter to mind, from force to thought. 2. If the stimulations of any one end organ are successive and the intervals brief, the psychic activity is not successive and with intervals, but continuous. The sensation of a tone, for instance, is not complex, though its occasioning stimulus be composed of thou- sands of sound waves. 3. If many end organs of the same kind be stimu- lated at once, the resulting impressions are co-ordir nated — that is, they ultimately appear in consciousness as one color, or as one chord, or one landscape, some- where or somehow connected and co-ordinated for that purpose. Take a landscape. Millions of retinal rods and cones are involved, and each has its message of color for the brain. On the retina the landscape is a mosaic of many elements, but in the brain it is a unity. 158 THE PSYCHIC • FACTOR. Each stimulation of color must be referred to that part of the field to which it belongs, and all must be com- bined. The result is simple, because a psychic process of synthesis has gone on. This result we may term a construct. 4. Moreover, if different kinds of end organs be stimulated at the same time, the resulting constructs may themselves be co-ordinated, and the final psychic result still seem quite simple ; as when one suddenly grasps your hand, exciting both touch and muscular sense, or as when you eat chocolate, and touch, taste and smell are all at the same time aroused. 5. This work of noting, connoting and co-ordi- nating does not come into consciousness at all. It is a hereditary and instinctive gift, located in nerve apparatus, from which in the evolution of the nerve system consciousness has withdrawn. In its working we probably have a reminder of the psychical func- tions and mind activities of much lower stages of development than that of man. As it works in the dark, we can give account only of its causes and re- sults. Treatises on metaphysics have generally ignored its existence and potencies, the importance of subcon- scious activity only lately having been recognized. CHAPTER XXXII. se]s^satio:n'. 1. A SEXSATiOK is the psychic correlative of a synthesis of sense impressions. The synthesis acting as if it were simple, occasions in the brain substance a molecular rearrangement, and corresponding to this SENSATION. 159 molecular rearrangement occurs the psychic phenome- non of sensation. Of this stupendous correlation we can give no account. Well said Lotze : " All efforts to demonstrate how it comes about that the merely physical motion gradually passes over into sensation are wholly in vain. We must rather be satisfied with asserting that a necessity of Nature, which has hitherto wholly escaped our knowledge, has in fact united the two series of processes, the motions and the sensations — incomparable and irreducible to each other as they are — and has done this in such a way that a definite member of the one series always has for its consequent a definite member of the other." 2. Of the nature of the molecular rearrangement, also, we know nothing ; but we are permitted to infer that it is a change of great permanency, as sensations are nearly indelible brain records. This is proved by the memory phenomena of dreaming, somnambulism and hypnotism, to say nothing of the curious mnemon- ic experiences of those who are startled by accident. It is questionable whether anything short of organic brain disease, or the brain shriveling of old age, can erase the record of a sensation once become the prop- erty of the mind. 3. The process of sensation involves time — a brief period for the sensory impulse to reach the center, and a brief period for the psychic reaction in the center, which latter averages about one fifteenth of a second. Hence we need not be surprised that impressions en- tering very rapidly affect the mind as one continuous sensation. The cause is composite, the result simple — as when you rapidly swing around a lighted match in the dark and see only one ring of fire. 160 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 4. In order that impression result in sensation, it must contrast with what precedes. " The quite grad- ual increase in strength of an electric current will at length destroy a nerve subjected to its influence with- out any sign of sensation. By very gradual increase or decrease of temperature, a frog may be boiled or frozen to death without making the smallest move- ment. The pressure of air is noticed only when it varies. . . . There is no series of absolutely independ- ent sensations, but every sensation is determined by the one experienced immediately before it or at the same time " (Hoeffding). The necessary contrast may involve each or all of three differentia — quality, intensity and tone, all of which are relative. 5. The quality of a sensation depends first upon its complexity, and second upon the nature of the stimu- lus. Thus, in hearing, a sensation of simple tone dif- fers from a sensation of harmony, owing to the varying complexities of the sense impressions, though all of a kind. And ether vibrations cause light or heat sensa- tions, according as the length of the wave classes it in and above or below the red ; the stimulus, though in both cases vibratory and ethereal, varies greatly in its impact, and hence in its result. 6^ Quantity (or degree) depends upon the strength of the impression. An impression must attain a cer- tain intensity in order to occasion any sensation at all, or, in other words, a certain inertia of resistance must be overcome. This point is described as the threshold of sensation. The extreme maximum limit of percep- tible impression is called the height of sensibility. In between lies the range. SENSATION. 161 Increase in quantity depends upon increase in the intensity of impression. But the ratio of increase for sensation is not the same as for stimulus — rthat is, if you would have more sensibility you must increase the stimulus not in the same ratio, but in a much greater ratio. If a stimulus s produces a sensation ^, 4 ^ will not produce 4 x^ but 3 x and 8 s only 4 x. This fact, formulated first by Weber, and later more accurately by Fechner, is generally stated by psychologists in these terms : " The strength of the stimulus must in- crease in geometrical progression in order that the sensation may increase in arithmetical progression." It must, however, be noticed that "Fechner's law" is only approximate ; it holds for a medium range of sensations, and provided, in the cases compared, the attention be constant. Ribot's opinion is that it is " verified within certain limits for visual and auditory sensations, that it is contested for pressure, and does not hold for the other sensations." It must also be re- membered that all sensations in threshold and height, as well as in intensity, are subject to considerable va- riation, due to physiological causes and personal tem- perament. 7. Moreover, the increasing intensity of a sensation is discontinuous. "A weight three must increase to at least four in order to give a new sensation of pressure ; it gives no new sensation if only 3^, 3|-, 3f " (Lotze). No explanation is forthcoming. 8. The tone of a sensation — that is, its pleasurable- ness or painfulness — primarily depends upon its relative intensity and quality. Timeliness, heredity, habit, training, and intellectual, aesthetic, and moral appreci- ation, however, come in for a large share in deter- 162 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. mining both the relative quality and the relative in- tensity. Sensations have no absolute tone. 9. Sensations may not enter into consciousness, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred probably do not do so. They make a subconscious record, and, unless circumstances call them forth, never emerge from the deep into the sunshine. And of sensations that come into the purview of consciousness, by far the vast majority attract no attention and directly sink beneath the surface, as when one is passing over the country in a railroad train, listlessly gazing out upon the ever-varying landscape. To insure the notice of consciousness, and especially to attract its attention, a sensation must possess some degree of novelty or some measure of attractiveness. Familiar sights, sounds, tastes, etc., remain unnoticed ; if we feel them consciously at all it is to pass them by as a matter of course, unless they be of the sort to habitually appeal to love, vanity, fear, or some other strong motive. A savage often hears the paring of wild beasts, but this is never received with inattention. A sweetheart often hears her praises sounded by her lover, but never with indifference. If, however, sensations be only habitual, monotonous, or stupid, they never venture to obtrude. 10. The freshness and vividness of sensations are intensified by attention. An absent-minded person, though a lover of music, may lose the pleasing effect of the most beautiful symphony or aria through sud- den distraction of attention to some wonted train of thought. Either painful or pleasurable sensations may be dulled or quite ignored by persistent distrac- tion. Consciousness turns the yellow spot of its men- tal eye upon the sensation, and it is seen more clearly. SENSATION. 163 Attention modifies the working of Weber's law to dis- turb the ever- varying ratio between stimulus and sen- sation in favor of the greater intensity of the latter. Moreover, it lessens reaction time. 11. Sensations may be illusory ; they may not re- sult from external stimulation, or they may not be normal. Quite frequently the end organ in a reversed reflex action is aroused by the brain, and the mind plays pranks on itself. The optic nerve quivers with a message not communicated by the ether waves, the olfactory signals an odor not on the breeze, the tongue tastes when no food is in the mouth, etc. The simulation may be occasioned by disease of the end organ, as in deafness, when one hears bells ring and gongs sound and voices call, or as in a cold, when one smells nothing but imaginary smoke. Many persons are subject to auditory spectra ; they hear unaccountably music or words or their own name. Huxley says : " I know not if other persons are simi- larly troubled, but in reading books written by authors with whom I am acquainted I am always tormented by hearing the words pronounced in the exact way in which these persons would utter them, any trick or peculiarity of voice or gesture being also very accu- rately reproduced. And I suppose that every one must have been startled by the extreme distinctness with which his thoughts have embodied themselves in apparent voices." Moreover, such illusions may be at will produced by artificial combinations of sensations. Ventriloquism is a good illustration of sensory illusion, deceiving the ear by simulated tones, and the eye by corresponding gestures. Optical illusions are very numerous, because 164 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. what we ordinarily consider simple yisual sensations are often complex aggregates not only of various sen- sations tactual as well as visual, but also of recollec- tions and judgments. If a continuous series of pic- tures of one object be impressed upon one part of the retina, the mind judges that they are due to a single object undergoing changes. This is the principle of the zoetrope. It is commonly said that one must believe one's senses ; it is evident from the foregoing that this claim fails of an absolute validity. In general true, it needs careful delimitation ; and much of the superstition that has ever cursed the human mind has based itself upon mere sensory illusions, through misinterpretation be- come delusions — voices from heaven, spectral music, ghostly apparitions, and so on. 12. It must always be borne in mind that a sensa- tion is utterly different from the things or motions that cause it. The ear is excited by sound vibrations, and the eye by light vibrations, but neither sound nor sight is in the least like any series of vibrations. Moreover, the same stimulus may excite different end organs so as to produce sensations which shall not in the least be like each other. If a man squeeze your hand you feel his friendly touch ; if he squeeze your eye you " see stars." Electricity will occasion lumi- nosity, taste, smell, or touch, according to its point of attack. Different stimuli, on the contrary, exciting the same end organs, may also occasion utterly differ- ent sensations. On the eye light produces vision, elec- tricity a mere luminousness, heat only pain, and sound no effect whatever. 13. Sensations may themselves blend together in SENSATION, 165 groups which seem simple, as when one listens to a symphony or an oratorio. Here the sensation of hear- ing is composed of a vast number of sensations of successive chords of music, and differing qualities of voices and instruments. 14. Sensations form the ultimate material for thought. " Systems about fact must plunge them- selves into sensation, as bridges plunge their piers into the rock. Sensations are the stable rock — the ter- minus a quo and the terminus ad quern of thought" (James). 15. Pure sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life, when the babe's experience, again to quote James, " leaves its unimaginable touch upon the matter of the convolutions, and the next impres- sion which a sense organ transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last im- pression plays its part. . . . The complication goes on increasing till the end of life, no two successive im- pressions falling on an identical brain, and no two successive thoughts being exactly the same." Wundt claims that " pure sensation is an abstraction, which never actually occurs in consciousness " ; he urges that "every presentation (Vorstellung) is a synthesis of a plurality of sensations." 16. Sensations develop affinities, behaving much like the molecules of substances : as these associate themselves in series and groupings called compounds, so sensations spring into one another's arms, embrace, join hands, and form series and groups. Even if they enter in comparative isolation, as in case of the sudden report of a gun, directly they associate themselves with other and relevant sensations. 166 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 17. There is nothing, seemingly, to forbid the rise of new kinds of sensation, divaricating branches of those already possessed or based upon entirely novel end organs yet to arise. Some animals do apparently possess senses not enjoyed by man, and in man there are manifest gaps to fill, as a sense to interpret the ultraviolet rays of the spectrum, a magnetic and an electric sense. Indeed, within a few years able sci- entists have announced the discovery of a new series of end organs in the semicircular canals; which, com- monly considered instruments for gauging the direc- tion of sound, are now claimed for a sense of rotation. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE PERCEPTIVE PROCESS. 1. Is complex. We have been taught to name it perception, and assured that it was one of " the fac- ulties " ; but really it is a composite of many and dif- ferent mental habitudes. It is the whole mind in the act of acquiring knowledge. The characteristic feature, however, is the exter- nalizing of sensations. We have seen that sensations are subjective. The perceptive process externalizes them. A solitary perception is an aggregate of sen- sations externalized. This is why Kant's famous dic- tum is true, and the mind does not know anything " in itself," but in its qualities. 2. Mind is equipped for the perceptive process by certain original and certain acquired gifts. The original gifts are the ideas of time and space, THE PEECEPTIVE PROCESS. 167 which seem to be necessary and universal forms of thought. The acquired gifts are the mind's practical wisdom, the results of previous observation and experience, which latter are largely ancestral — that is, instinctive — knowledge crystallized in inherited brain structure. We receive as a bequest the accumulated practical wisdom of countless generations of sentient beings, and upon this depends the methods and accuracy of our perception. To this ancestral dexterity we grad- ually add the acquired dexterities of our own lifetime, beginning with early infancy. But all this is under the pervasive reign of the ideas of time and space. 3. The evolutionary history of perception, could we know its true inwardness, would be one of the most fascinating chapters in psychology ; but we may only surmise the storyof that dawning knowledge of the world which gradually shone — more and more unto the perfect day — upon primeval mind, and in course of ages, in ever-expanding forms, approached man's intuition of the universe. No doubt it is, how- ever, in the after-stages, at least dimly recapitulated to us in our own infancy and childhood. The babe at first experiences sensations, but scarcely perceives. Soon, however, the sensations of light and sound, of warmth and touch, which at first were felt without recognition, begin to excite a responsive smile or cry, and the infant is joyfully observed to " take notice." From this point onward to manhood life is largely a training in perception. 4. The perceptive process is threefold : it localizes sensations in or on the body ; it projects them into 168 THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. space, attributing them to things ; it arranges them, where they permit of it, in order of sequence or in spatial perspective. To do all this it marshals sensation, memory, im- agination, judgment and every mental habitude in its service. (1) Localizing of sensations in different parts of the body is the result of observation and experience, partly ancestral and partly individual. That it is the nose which smells, the tongue which tastes, the eyes which see, and the ears which hear, is the inevitable conclusion of reasoning based upon touch and mus- cular perceptions. Thus to smell accurately one must sniff, and sniffing calls attention to the nose. We have good reason for believing that subconscious lo- calization has become very precise and minute. Lotze supposes that every feeling point has acquired a " local sign " of its own, whereby it is distinguished at the nerve centers from all the others. The particular im- pressions at first are intensive merely, but the mind gives to them an extensive significance. This famous theory of "local signs" is Lotze's principal contri- bution to modern psychology. Or, to state it in the philosopher's own words : "Every impression of color, r — for example, red — produces on all places of the retina which it reaches the same sensation of redness. In addition, however, it produces on each of these differ- ent places, a, 5, • • ., . "W ..•J '■!>,■» "m 1^* ^' ,\ .^> •"'iV^ ' * . iv'V .VA1^ J^kfi'."* 'U'/'J ;,-■ ■;.v','^..;k;i ;i^> '?';': r,^? ill