Now we know the real meaning of the condition. Mouth breathing is

possible, but it is inadequate. Insufficient respiration leads to

insufficient oxidation of tissues, and to lowered vitality in all

structures, and this is particularly notable in the brain, as well as

in certain other higher structures. It is not because the individuals

are lacking in intelligence that their mouths are open, but because

the same reason that compels the open mouth also affects their

intellectual activity. The blocking of nasal respiration lowers vital

activity of all kinds. Hence the lowered intellectual vitality. The

thick lips, which are supposed to be characteristic of a certain

passionateness of nature, and which usually are associated with a lack

of thorough control over animal inclinations, probably owe their

significance to the fact that this special peculiarity of feature

usually accompanies mouth breathing, and that the individual who

labors under this deficient respiration, is likely to lack control to

at least some degree. There is even a question whether the deficient

oxidation is not likely to be much more notable in its effect upon the

higher faculties than on the lower, and as a consequence the latter

develop somewhat to the detriment of the former.

These studies in physiognomy may, indeed, be correlated in many ways

with distinct physical conditions instead of as formerly with the

general constitution of the individual. For instance, large protruding

eyes used to be said to be characteristic of nervous, timid, sensitive

individuals, easily scared, and not well able to take up the harder

parts of the battle of life. Now we know that this feature is usually

associated with an excess of secretion of the thyroid gland, and that

the nervousness is not a matter of character so much as it is due to

the disturbance of internal metabolism consequent upon this

interference with the proper function of an important organ. It might

well be called a slight thyroid intoxication. In large amounts it

produces all the symptoms of Graves' disease.

Bodily Conditions and Stupidity.--We have many illustrations of the

influence of the body on the mind, when purely physical causes work

rather serious results on disposition and character and energy. A

typical example was the so-called tropical anemia which existed in

Porto Rico when the Americans took possession of the island. There

were so many cases of it that out of about 25,000 deaths reported in

1903, nearly 6,000 were from so-called anemia. Investigation of the

conditions soon revealed the real cause. It had been {107} thought to

be due to a combination of the climate, malaria and the lack of

nutrition on the part of the country people. The people were

absolutely without ambition, they had no energy, they seemed scarcely

able to keep body and soul together, and they cared for nothing except

to get just enough to supply them with a meager sustenance. Of

incentive to lift themselves up, there was none. This was largely

attributed by the first Americans who went to the island to the

conditions which had existed under Spanish rule, as the Spaniards had

not encouraged manufactures or industries in the island, and had left

the people without any incentives to the awakening of enterprise or

initiative.

_Hook-Worm Disease_.--Before long it was found that the real reason

for the anemia of the Porto Ricans was the presence in their

intestines in large numbers of the so-called hook-worm. These worms

exhausted the vitality of the sufferers and left them without surplus

energy and, indeed, with scarcely enough life to care whether or not

life itself continued. It was not a moral condition, but a very

definite physical cause that was at work. Shortly afterwards it was

found that the same disease existed in our Southern states among the

so-called "poor whites." Before this, these people had been supposed

to be a characterless, unambitious, lazy people, who cared not to get

on, who had sunk to about the lowest depths possible for civilized

people, and who were quite satisfied to remain there. The discovery of

hook-worm disease among them, however, soon made it clear that their

laziness was the result of the drain upon their systems due to the

presence of thousands of hook-worms. When these were removed, if

nature was not already exhausted, the "poor whites" became normal

human beings once more with ambition and initiative.

This story of pathology influencing racial qualities is not new in the

history of the world. It is not improbable that even certain periods

of decadence in Egyptian history which have ordinarily been attributed

to the so-called running out of particular ruling races or families,

or to the degeneration of the people consequent upon luxury, were

really the result of the spread of the hook-worm disease through

certain portions of Egypt. Dr. Sandwith, who has studied the disease

very carefully in Egypt, is sure that it has existed there for at

least four thousand years, and that the descriptions of certain

affections which occurred in Egypt in historic times were really due

to the same cause as now is known to produce the so-called Egyptian

chlorosis, the name that was used for hook-worm disease in Egypt.

Workers in soil, and in mines and in tunnels, are especially likely to

be affected by it, and whenever it is neglected it spreads rather

widely, as is seen in the mines of Germany and Hungary at the present

time. As the cause was unrecognized in the olden time, it is possible

that periods of supposed lassitude among the people were really due to

infection by this parasite.

_Malaria and Degeneration_.--In recent years it has come to be

generally recognized that the decadence of Greece, for instance, was

not due to moral causes so much, perhaps, as to physical reasons.

During the classic periods in Greece there are no traces of malaria.

After the invasion of Sicily, the expedition against Syracuse and

other attempts on the part of the cities of Greece to spread their

dominion, malaria seems to have been introduced among her people, and

as the _anopheles_ mosquito was already there, the malaria spread

widely, and in the course of a century affected so many of the people

that their energy and ambition and initiative were to a great extent

destroyed. {108} It is well known that these effects often occur as a

consequence of malaria, and as generation after generation is affected

by the disease, are emphasized more and more. The relaxing effect of

tropical climates, of which we have heard so much, and which is

supposed after a time to bring about the inevitable production of a

race eminently lazy and careless of the future, is probably much more

due to certain affections, such as malaria and those consequent upon

animal parasites, than to any constitutional change that has taken

place in the body, or any profound corresponding change in the mind.

It is a case of the body influencing the mind and producing an

apparently different race from that which existed before, though all

this may be changed for the better by some even slight amelioration of

bodily conditions.

In any attempt, then, to influence the human mind in order to use its

power and its reserve energy for therapeutic purposes, the place of

the body and its influence upon the mind must always be remembered. It

is quite impossible to lift people up to enable them to use their

mental reserve force if they are living in discouraging physical

conditions, which use up so much of energy as to make it impossible to

have any to spare. Many of the phases of mental discouragement and

lack of initiative which are reflected in what we call lowered

resistive vitality and lack of immunity to infection, are really

consequent upon physical states representing a drain upon the system

that can be removed, or at least greatly improved, if they are

discovered and properly treated. Victims of chronic malaria and of

hook-worm disease cannot be lifted up by psychotherapy. Neither can

sufferers from other forms of chronic physical debility. After the

removal of the debilitating cause, however, mental influence may be

brought to bear to encourage them to rise to their opportunities, to

literally take on new life, and gradually accumulate reserve energy

that will enable them to accomplish, not only the average work of

mankind, but even better, in the reaction that comes with the new

feeling of physical energy. And what is thus true in these extreme

cases is even more true of minor ailments and conditions.

CHAPTER IV

THE MECHANISM OF THE INFLUENCE OF MIND ON BODY

The question as to how mind influences body, and body mind, has always

proved a riddle to all but those with a special theory in the matter.

The facts of the mutual influence of mind on body are so obtruded on

observation that they could never be missed, but it is quite another

thing to reach a satisfactory explanation of them. How the will

initiates motion continues in spite of all our advance in psychology,

to be as much a mystery as ever. Just how sensation is transformed

into ideas is a parallel mystery. Since the mind is able to influence

motion, it is not surprising that it should be capable of modifying

secretion or inhibiting other kinds of functions. Any of these various

activities is scarcely more mysterious than the other. Since the

transformation of sensation into thought takes place, it is

comparatively easy to conclude that the mental processes are able to

exclude, or to some extent inhibit, sensation. All these activities

have actually been observed. How does this mutual influence of mind on

body take place? What principles underlie it?

{109}

At present, it would be futile to hope to outline the absolute

principles on which the mechanism of mental influence or suggestion

depends, but we can discuss recent explanations that have been

offered, and this will help us to understand, not the mystery itself,

but just where the mystery lies and what the physical mechanism

connected with it is.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--CORTEX OF HUMAN BRAIN ILLUSTRATING

COMPLEXITY OF THE SYSTEMS AND PLEXUSES OF NERVE FIBERS (Combination

of the methods of Weigert and Golgi--after Andriezen). _c, z.,_

clear zone free from nerve fibers; _M.P.,_ Exner's plexus in the

molecular layer; _A. str.,_ ambiguous cell stratum; _Subm, P.,_

sub-molecular plexus; _Gt. P. P.,_ great pyramidal plexus; _Pol.

P.,_ polymorphic plexus; _W.,_ white matter. (Barker.) ]

{110}

These explanations are as yet only theoretic, but theories have often

helped students in science to make their thoughts more concrete and

their investigations more practical. It would be a mistake to conclude

that because some of the theories advanced are very plausible, we

have, therefore, reached definite truth with regard to the mechanics

of the brain that underlie suggestion and mental influence.

Brain Complexity.--The most interesting feature of the discoveries in

brain anatomy during the past generation, has been that the central

nervous system is of even greater complexity than had been thought.

Because of this, these new discoveries, instead of solving the

biological mystery they subtend, or even helping very much to solve

it, have made it still harder to understand just how we succeed in

controlling and directing this immensely complex machine, of whose

details we are utterly unconscious, yet which we learn to use with

such discriminating nicety of adjustment and accomplishment. The

discoveries of Golgi and of Ramon y Cajal show us that the brain

consists of nerve cells with a number of ramifying fibers connecting

each cell and each group of cells with other simple and compound

elements of the brain, and sending down connecting fibers to every

organ and every part of the body. Dr. Ford Robertson calculates that

in an average human brain there are at least three billions of cells.

Without knowing anything of their existence, much less anything of the

infinite detail of their structure and mode of operation, we have

learned to use these for many purposes.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED PYRAMIDAL CELLS OF

THE VISUAL CORTEX OF A CHILD TWENTY DAYS OLD. Section taken from the

neighborhood of the calcarine fissure. A. plexiform layer; B, layer

of the little pyramid; C, layer of the medium-sized pyramid; a,

descending axis cylinders; b, ascending or centripetal collaterals;

c, stems of the giant pyramidal cells. (Ramon y Cajal.)

(This and the next three illustrations illustrate the complexity of

the central nervous system as observed in the very young child where

the development does not as yet obscure the interesting details of

dentritic branching. They serve to emphasize the much more

pronounced condition which develops in the adult.)]

Nerve Impulses.--We do not know even how nerve impulses travel.

Probably they do so by a mode of vibration, just as heat and light and

electricity are transmitted as modes of motion. The similarity that

used to be thought to exist between the transmission of nerve impulses

and of electrical energy is now known definitely to be only an

analogy, and not to represent anything closer. Waves of nervous energy

travel at a different rate of speed from electrical waves, and there

are other notable differences. Such phases as molecular action, or

motion, or vibration are only cloaks for our ignorance, A generation

ago Huxley declared that "the forces exerted by living matter are

either identical with those existing in the inorganic world or are

convertible into them." He instanced nervous energy as the most

recondite of all, and {111} yet as being in some way or other

associated with the electrical processes of living beings. As Prof,

Forel said in his "Hygiene of the Nerves," "the neurokym cannot be a

simple physical wave, such as electricity, light or sound; if it were

its exceedingly fine weak waves would soon exhaust themselves without

causing the tremendous discharges which they actually call forth in

the brain."

Law of Avalanche.--How great is the power of the nervous system or the

energy of it that may be set loose by some very simple reflex, as

suggested by Forel, is illustrated by what Ramon y Cajal calls the Law

of Avalanche. A single peripheral nerve ending is represented in many

different portions of the brain. An ocular nerve ending, for instance,

probably has direct connection with four or more portions of each

hemisphere. Each of these portions of the brain has association fibers

connecting it with other parts and so the stirring of a single nerve

ending may disturb many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of

brain cells; at least it affects them in some way or other. The older

psychologists used to insist on the similarity, or analogy, between

the cosmos ol the universe and the microcosmos that man is. The

English poet of the nineteenth century told us that there is no

moving of a flower without the stirring of a star, so intimately

connected by the laws of gravitation is the universe. In the microcosm

something of this same thing is true and a titillation of even the

most trivial nerve ending may produce, in Ramon y Cajal's phrase, "an

avalanche" of cell disturbances in the central nervous system which

may seriously disturb the whole system.

What is thus true for the brain is true, also, for the cord, and the

complexity of spinal cells needs to be seen to be properly realized.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--SERIES OF SECTIONS SHOWING THE FINE NERVE

ENDINGS AND BRANCHINGS OF THE FIRST AND SECOND LAYER OF THE VISUAL

CORTEX OF A CHILD FIFTEEN DAYS OLD. A and B, very thick nerve plexus

of the layer in which the little pyramids are contained; C, a plexus

containing a series of branches that is less thick and intricate; D,

small cells whose ascending axis-cylinders have resolved themselves

into a set of similar branches; E, arachnoid star cells whose axis

cylinders produce a thick plexus in the first layer; F and G, small

cells with short axis cylinders that have very few branches. (Ramon

y Cajal.)]

Psychic States.--There are a number of human states representing

extremes of sensory and intellectual conditions in man, that have

always attracted attention, and in recent years have been special

objects of investigation by physiologists. Natural sleep is one of

these; the unconsciousness of narcotism or anesthesia is another.

Hypnotism is allied to both of these, and would seem to lie on a plane

between them. Then there are various states of exaltation in which

sensations fail to produce their usual effect. Those {112} escaping

from a fire, or passing through a severe panic of any kind may sustain

all manner of injuries without being aware of them. Martyrs, for all

manner of causes, are able to withstand suffering with such

equanimity, and sometimes even joy, that it is evident that they

cannot feel, as would people under ordinary conditions, the pain that

is being inflicted on them.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD LAYER OF THE

ANTERIOR CENTRAL CONVOLUTION (THAT IS, OF THE ASCENDING FRONTAL

CONVOLUTION) OF THE BRAIN OF A CHILD ONE MONTH OLD. A, B, and C,

little pyramids; D and E, medium-sized pyramids; F, cells with two

sets of tufts; their axis cylinders resolved into end tufts; G,

protoplasmic layer that comes from one of the large pyramids of the

fourth layer; H and I, fine dentrites of the cells of the sixth and

seventh layer; J, small cells with two end tufts; K, spindle cells

with long axis cylinder. (Raymon y Cajal.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--LAYERS OF THE POSTERIOR CENTRAL OR ASCENDING

PARIETAL CONVOLUTION OF A NEWBORN CHILD. 1. plexiform layer; 2.

small pyramids; 3. medium-sized pyramids; 4. external large

pyramids; 5. small pyramids and star shaped cells; 6, deep layer of

large pyramids; 7, spindle and triangular shaped cells. (Raymon y

Cajal.)]

In the midst of intense mental preoccupation one may hold so cramped a

position as would be quite impossible for the same length of time with

the faculties normally engaged. There are pathological conditions,

like hysteria, in which the pain and fatigue sense may, for a time at

least, be quite in abeyance.

{113}

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--DIAGRAM OF CELLS OF CEREBRAL CORTEX (after

Starr, Strong and Leaming). I, superficial layer; a, fusiform; b,

triangular; c, polygonal cells of Ramon y Cajal; II, layer of small

pyramids; d, smallest; e, small; f, medium-sized pyramidal cells

with axones descending to the white matter and giving off

collaterals in their course; III, layer of large pyramidal cells; g,

largest (giant) pyramidal cells; k, large pyramidal cells with very

numerous dendrites; all pyramidal cells are seen to send long apical

dendrites up to I; m, Martinotti cell with descending dendrites and

ascending axone; n, polygonal cells; IV, deep layer; p, fusiform

cell; q, polygonal cell; V, the white matter containing the axones

from the pyramidal cells, d, e, f, g, and from a cell of the deep

layer q; r, neuroglia fibers. (Barker.)]

{114}

[Illustration: Fig. 8.--SCHEME OF LOWER MOTOR NEURON. The motor-cell

body, with protoplasmic processes, axis cylinder, side fibrils or

collaterals, and end ramifications, represents parts of a neuron. a.

h., axon hillock devoid of Nissl bodies, showing fibrillation; ax.,

axon. This process near the cell body becomes surrounded by myelin,

m., and a cellular sheath, the neurilemma (not an integral part of

the neuron); c, cytoplasm showing Nissl bodies and lighter ground

substance; d, protoplasmic processes (dendrites) containing Nissl

bodies; n., nucleus; n., nucleolus: n. r., node of Ranvier; s. f.,

side fibril; n. of n., nucleus of neurilemma; tel., motor end plate

or telodendrion; m., striped muscle fiber; s. l., segmentation of

Lautermann. (Barker.)]

Neurons.--With the advance in our knowledge of brain anatomy, various

explanations for these curious conditions have been suggested. The

discovery that the central nervous system is composed of a large

number of separate units, and not of a feltwork of continuous fibers

with cells here and there, revolutionized all previous attempts at

explanation of these conditions. We know now that it is not fibers but

cells that are the most important components of the brain and

spinal-cord substance, and that, indeed, the fibers are only

prolongations of cells. The central nervous system is made up of nerve

cells with various appendages, and each one of these cells and its

appendages is called a neuron. These appendages are of two kinds, one

the axon, the long conducting fiber which transmits the nerve force of

the cell, the other the dendrons or connecting elements by which the

cell is linked with the axon of another cell. The contact of the axon

of one neuron with the dendrons of another is called a synapse. Each

neuron does not extend to and from the brain and the periphery, but

series of neurons connect the surface of the body with the brain.

There is usually a group of neurons in the path from the surface to

the brain cortex. The peripheral neuron for sensation runs from the

surface of the body to the spinal cord, while for motion it runs in

the opposite direction. There is a secondary neuron in each chain that

runs up or down the spinal cord to and from the base of the brain. A

third--sometimes, perhaps, a fourth--neuron connects in the two

directions, afferent and efferent, the cortex and the base of the

brain.

_Neuronic Movement_.--Duval, the French anatomist and histologist,

suggested the possibility of voluntary and involuntary movement in the

neurons or nerve cells themselves, thus making and breaking

connections.

{115}

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--SCHEME OF THE VISUAL CONDUCTION PATHS (after

C. von Monakow). a, rods and cones; b, rods; c, nuclei of rods; d,

bipolar cells for the cones; e, bipolar cells for the rods; f, large

multipolar ganglion cells giving rise to the axons of the N.

opticus; g, centrifugal axon of a neuron, the cell body of which is

situated in the collieulus superior, its telodendron being situated

in the retina; h, Golgi cell of Type II, or dendraxon in the corpus

geniculatum laterale; i, neuron connecting the corpus geniculatum

laterale with the lobus occipitalis, its axon running in the radiato

occipito-thalamica (Gratioleti). The visual impulses are indicated

by the arrow. (Barker)]

{116}

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--SCHEMATIC FRONTAL SECTION THROUGH THE

OCCIPITAL LOBE ILLUSTRATING MANIFOLD CONNECTIONS IN A SINGLE LOBE

(after H. Sachs), v, cornu posterius ventriculi lateralis; f. c,

fissura calcarina; b, upper division: i, lower division; coll,

sulcus collateralis; s. o. I, sulcus occipitalis superior (fissura

interparietalis); s. o. II, sulcus occipitalis medius; s. o. III,

sulcus occipitalis inferior; c. a., calcar avis; g. l., gyrus

lingualis; g. f., gyrus fusiformis; g. o. s., gyrus occipitalis

superior; g. o. m., gyrus occipitalis medius; g. o. i.. gyrus

occipitalis inferior; c, cuneus; 1-10, forceps; 11-14, stratum

sagittale internum: 15, stratum sagittale externum; 16, stratum

calcarinum; 17, stratum cunei transversum; 18, stratum proprium

cunei; 19, stratum proprium s. o. I; 20, stratum proprium s. o. II;

21, stratum proprium. s. o. III; 22, stratum proprium, s. coll.; 23,

stratum profundum convexitatis. (Barker.)]

According to his suggestion, sleep would be due to a separation of the

neurons that run from the surface of the body to the brain cortex,

because the various neurons had become too tired for further function.

As a consequence of fatigue, their terminal filaments would fall away

from one another, external sensations would no longer be communicated

to the brain, because the peripheral neuron was not connected with the

next in the chain. As a further result, the brain, undisturbed by

sensations, would be left at rest so far as the body was concerned.

Within the brain certain connections through which flow thoughts that

would keep us awake, are also supposed on this theory to be broken,

and consequently all the nerve cells have a chance to rest, except, of

course, those concerned with such very vital functions as heart

movement, respiration and peristalsis.

{117}

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--ISOLATED CELL FROM HUMAN SPINAL CORD

(Obersteiner).]

Somehow, these vital neurons obtain their rest in the intervals

between the impulses which they send down, just as cardiac cells do

between heart beats.

_Neurons in Psychic States_.--This same explanation would serve for

narcosis, that is, for anesthesia, due to chloroform or ether, or any

other drug. As a consequence of the effect of the narcotic upon the

central neuron, they are brought into a condition resembling fatigue,

at least to the extent of breaking their connections with other

neurons so long as they are under the influence of the drug. While

sensory nerves at the periphery, then, are being stimulated by the

cutting of tissues to which they are attached, the message from them

does not reach the brain because of a disturbance of the connections

in the chain of neurons. Drunkenness illustrates the same phenomenon

in a less degree. The effect of the intoxicant upon the central

neurons disturbs sensation because it makes the connection much less

complete than before, and so it is easy to understand the familiar

occurrence of even severe injuries to drunken men without their being

aware of them, or at least without their suffering nearly so much as

would be the case if they were not intoxicated.

_Hypnotism_.--The same theory would also hold for the phenomena

observed in hypnotism. After all, the best explanation of hypnotism

that we have is that there is a turning inward of the patient's

attention, so that only those sensations are allowed to reach the

brain to which mental attention has already been called by suggestion.

Hypnotism usually begins with a certain fatigue of peripheral neurons

until these do not act normally, and then the cerebral neurons become,

as it were, short-circuited on themselves with a consequent internal

concentration of attention. The anesthesia so often noted in hypnotic

or hysterical states is explained by the same theory. For the time

being, at least, the connection between the peripheral neurons and the

central neurons is broken or but imperfectly made, and conduction does

not take place, or is hampered. There may be loss of motion as well as

of sensation, or of motion without sensation. In all these cases, the

discontinuity of the nervous system enables us to understand more

readily the mechanism by which these curious phenomena occur.

Exaltation or intense interest or profound preoccupation may so

concentrate nervous energy within the nerve centers themselves as to

inhibit the flow of sensory impulses from without and thus enable

{118} people to stand pain and fatigue that would otherwise seem quite

unbearable.

_Unconsciousness_.--The unconsciousness due to apoplexy, or to a blow

on the head, would be comparatively easy of explanation on the same

theory. The hemorrhage would actually push certain neurons apart

within the skull, or the intracranial pressure produced by it would

keep them from making proper connections. A blow on the head may

readily be supposed to jar neuronic terminal filaments so severely

that it would be some time before connections could be made, and the

injury might be serious enough to prevent certain cells from ever

again coming in contact in such a way as to allow the passage of nerve

impulses from one to the other. Concussion of the brain would, on this

theory, mean that neurons were so shaken apart as to produce some

confusion in their terminal filaments and consequent serious

disturbances of consciousness, if not its complete loss, and

corresponding disturbance of the power to move. In a word, this theory

would seem to afford a reasonably satisfactory explanation for most of

the extraordinary phenomena of mental life and, therefore, might also

be expected to be applicable to the ordinary phenomena, though these

are so elusive that it is difficult to satisfactorily apply theories

to them.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--NEURON FROM THE OPTIC LOBE OF THE EMBRYO

CHICK (after Koelliker). The axon n runs toward the center, giving

off in its course several collaterals. One of these, c, is much

branched. (Barker.) ]

_Tired States_.--When fatigued, it becomes extremely difficult for us

to follow a train of thought, especially if it is somewhat intricate.

It becomes easy to forget things, even such as under ordinary

circumstances would be readily remembered. Names are much more likely

to be forgotten. Facts and, above all, dates, refuse to come as they

do under normal conditions. Efforts in the direction of recalling

details are eminently unsatisfactory. The command goes forth, but

there is {119} evidently hesitation about obedience. Other thoughts

intrude themselves. Ideas come unbidden. The connection of thought is

readily broken, and is hard to get at again. There may have been very

little mental work, but somehow the fatigue of the general physical

system is reflected through our central nervous system on the mind as

well as the body. The early morning hours are the best for mental

work, not, it seems, because the mind is fresher after its rest, but

rather because the physical factors that are important for mental

action are in good condition. Later they become disturbed by the

fatigues of the day. The delicate cells of the brain become fatigued

by sympathy with the somatic cells and it is harder to secure those

nervous connections necessary for thought.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--DEEP LAYER OF GIANT PYRAMIDAL CELLS OF THE

POSTERIOR CENTRAL OR ASCENDING PARIETAL, CONVOLUTION OF A CHILD

THIRTY DAYS OLD. a, axis-cylinder; c, collateral branch; d, long

basilar dendrites; e, end tuft. (Ramon y Cajal.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 14--PYRAMIDAL CELL OF CEREBRAL

CORTEX OF MOUSE (after Ramon y Cajal).]

_Voluntary Neuron Motion_.--This theory of Duval's supposes that to

some extent the neurons or nerve cells are possessed of voluntary

movement. At least during certain states of the mind, they are moved

and seem to have an inherent, if not quite voluntary, power {120} of

motion. There are many objections urged against the theory because of

this neuronic motion. It has been said that the movement of neurons

has been observed in certain of the _Medusae_. The observation has

been doubted and it lacks confirmation. In higher animals, of course,

the observation is impossible because an investigation of the nervous

system for this purpose would necessarily bring about the death of the

animal and the cessation of spontaneous mobility. Whether it occurs or

not, therefore, is a theoretic problem. So many objections tell

against Duval's theory that it is now only discussed because of its

subjective value.

Neuroglia Theory.--Ramon y Cajal elaborated a second theory of

explanation for the mechanism of the nervous system that has seemed to

many authorities in brain physiology much more satisfactory than

Duval's theory of the actual motion of the neurons themselves. The

Spanish nervous histologist had made a special study of the neuroglia

or connective tissue cells in the central nervous system. These are

very small in size but very numerous. Ramon y Cajal suggested that it

was because the terminal filaments of these neuroglia cells inserted

themselves between the neuronic filaments, thus insulating one from

another, somewhat as if an insulating plug were inserted between two

portions of an electric circuit, that the interruption of nervous

currents took place. This explanation is free from many of the

objections urged against Duval's theory.

The small size of the neuroglia cells makes it easy to understand how

movement may take place in them sufficient to bring about separation

of neurons. It would not be surprising if they should be more or less

actively contractile. Whenever they contract, neuronic filaments which

they have been holding apart, come together so as to permit the

passage of nervous impulses, if any are flowing at the time. When the

neuroglia cells become fatigued or seriously disturbed, they refuse

any longer to obey the will in any way, or at least gradually get

beyond control, and in their relaxation becoming prolonged, push

neurons apart. When a man is very tired it gradually becomes

impossible for him to keep awake. This is partly because poisons,

produced in the course of fatigue, exhaust the vitality of the

neuroglia cells and also of the neurons, so that less energy is

required to push these latter apart.

It is easy to understand that the neuroglia cells might well become

affected by the various narcotics and intoxicants in such a way as to

produce the phenomena of anesthesia and drunkenness. The rapid

recovery from anesthetics seems to indicate that it is not neurons, or

essential nerve cells, that are so deeply affected, but some

extraneous, and less important, mechanism within the brain. The

neuroglia theory explains this very well and does away with the

difficulty. Certain curious phenomena of hysteria are easily explained

on this theory. When there is anesthesia in a member because of

hysteria, this anesthesia does not follow the distribution of certain

nerves, but is limited by a line in the shape of a cuff drawn round

the limb. This indicates that the trouble is not peripheral but

central, and that owing to psychic disturbance, all the neurons that

receive sensory impulses from a particular portion of the body are so

affected by a psychic condition that they are no longer capable of

receiving impulses from the periphery. The neuroglia cells in a

particular area have passed from the control of the will and, relaxing

themselves, have {121} inserted their processes between the terminal

filaments of neurons, thus preventing conduction.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--NEUROGLIA CELLS OR THE FASCIA DENTATA; IN

THE NEW-BORN RABBIT (method of Golgi). A, molecular layer; B,

granular layer; C, layer of polymorphis cells; D. horn of ammon; a.

neuroglia cell furnished with a descending appendage; b, another

neuroglia cell; piroform; c. a cell more deeply situated; d, spider

cell; e, fusiform neuroglia cell. (Ramon y Cajal.)]

_Varieties of Neuroglia_.--The connective tissue cells are of many

kinds, each probably exercising a special function. Ramon y Cajal has

described and pictured a special kind of neuroglia cells for the gray

and another for the white matter. In his description of these cells he

has pointed out many interesting diversities of form, and probably

also of function. He has also described particularly a special form of

neuroglia cells which lie close to the blood vessels. These he calls

perivascular cells, and they seem to have an important function in

regulating the amount of blood that goes to a particular part of the

brain. He has written so clearly and yet so concisely with regard to

these that it seems better to cite his own words: [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: This article is a translation made by the author shortly

after a visit to Ramon y Cajal in Madrid, in 1900. See _International

Clinics_, Phila., Vol. II Series Eleventh.]

Under the term neuroglia are included at least three kinds of

cells,--those of the white brain substance, those of the gray

substance, and the perivascular cells, which have been described by

Golgi. The neuroglia cells of the white brain material are easily

recognizable, being large and with rather prominent, smooth, and

sharply outlined processes. As my brother seems to have shown, their

object appears to be to furnish an insulating, or, at least, a badly

conducting, substance to serve as an interrupter of nerve-currents.

They certainly do not represent interstices of true nerve substance

through which lymphatic fluid can conveniently find its way.

The neuroglia cells of the gray matter present a very special and

highly characteristic appearance. They are of manifold form,--at

times star-shaped, at times {122} like a comet drawn out in length.

These are the tall cells of von Retzius. They have very numerous

prolongations, with a large number of short branched collaterals

which give the whole cell the appearance of having feathers

projecting from its periphery. These cells have been observed in two

different conditions. One is that of relaxation, and the picture is

that given above. The other is that of contraction, during which the

cell body has more protoplasm in it, and the processes become

shorter and thicker, and some of the secondary branches disappear

entirely. These cells resemble, in certain ways at least, the

pigment cells which occur in the skin of some animals. By means of

their contractility, these pigment cells can stretch out their

processes while in a state of contraction. It must be remembered

that this form of neuroglia cells is most abundantly present in

those parts of the brain in which it might be expected that a number

of nerve currents would frequently come together. They occur, for

example, with special frequency in the molecular layer of the

cerebral cortex, where the bundle of pyramidal fibers, with their

immense number of terminal nerve-endings, come in contact with one

another.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--NEUROGLIA CELL FROM THE SUBCORTICAL LAYER

OF THE CEREBRUM FROM WHICH TWO PROCESSES GO TO A BLOOD VESSEL

(Obersteiner).]

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--NEUROGLIA CELLS FROM THE SPINAL CORD.

Longitudinal section (Obersteiner). ]

The third form of neuroglia cells consists of those known as the

perivascular cells. They are found only in the neighborhood of the

capillaries of the gray matter and they send one or more firm

prolongations to the outer surface of the endothelium of the blood

vessels.

These processes are inserted in the walls of the blood vessels.

Every capillary has thousands of these little pseudopod

prolongations, and from the vessel the cell reaches out in a number

of directions. The object of these cells undoubtedly is by

contraction of the prolongations to bring about local dilatation of

the blood vessels. This dilatation of the blood vessels causes

greater or less intensity of the psychical processes in certain

parts of the brain, because of the greater or less congestion of the

circulation in a part which it produces.

With the exception of these last cells the object of the neuroglia

cells is to insulate nerve fibrils and cells from one another. When

the cells are relaxed, the passage of a nerve current is either

entirely prevented or rendered much less easy than before. It is in

this way that the true nature of intellectual rest is explained.

Sleep--not only natural sleep, but also artificial narcosis, such as

is produced by narcotics, hypnotics or hypnotization--is evidently

the result of the same conditions.

During the state of contraction the pseudopod of the neuroglia cells

are drawn in; that is to say, the protoplasm of the cells absorbs

the processes, and so the true nerve cells and nerve fibrils which

were separated from each other by the interposition of neuroglia

come into contact. By this mechanism the brain passes from the

condition of rest into one of activity. These neuroglia contractions

may, particularly in certain parts of the brain, occur

automatically. Often, however, they are produced by the action of

the will, which, in this manner is able to influence {123} the

definite groups of neuroglia cells. As the result of this influence

of the will the association of intellectual operations can be guided

in various directions. The unusual course that the association of

ideas sometimes takes, the flow of words and of thoughts at certain

moments, the passing difficulty of speech, the recurrence of

tormenting thoughts, the disappearance of expressions or ideas from

the memory, even the increase of mental activity and of every kind

of motor reaction as well as many other phenomena of intellection,

can be satisfactorily explained on this hypothesis. It is only

necessary to suppose that in certain parts of the brain the

neuroglia cells are at rest, while at other parts they are in a

condition of active contraction.

To put it all in a few words, the neuroglia cells of the gray

substance of the brain represent an insulating and switching

apparatus for nerve currents. They are an insulation apparatus when

in a state of contraction, a switching and insulating apparatus when

in a state of rest. It is to be remarked, then, that according to

this theory the contraction of brain cells does not take place, as

in Duval's theory, during intellectual rest, but, on the contrary,

during the state of activity of the cerebral cortex. It is much more

probable that the action of cells coincides with the active stage of

intellection than that brain cellular activity--that is,

contraction--should correspond with psychic rest.

The application of some of these theories enables us to understand

just how short-circuiting may come about, how many of the curious

phenomena of memory happen, and what are the effects, as well as the

causes, of attention and distraction of attention and of diversion of

mind. It is particularly the latter portion of Ramon y Cajal's theory,

with regard to attention and the more or less voluntary though

unconscious and usually indeliberate control of blood supply to

various portions of the brain, that is of special interest. If the

neuroglia cells, whose end plates are attached to blood-vessel walls,

become over-contracted or lose their power of relaxation or of

contraction, many of the curious phenomena of over-tiredness in

neurotic conditions, and the lack of the power of concentration, and

sufficient attention to things, can be readily understood. In a word,

the theory enables us to translate many expressions that are vague and

indefinite, from terms of mind into terms of the physical basis of

mind--the anatomy and physiology of the brain.

While I have dwelt on Ramon y Cajal's theory, because for years it has

been familiar, of course I must re-echo his own warning that it is,

after all, only a theory. It presupposes an active interposition of

the glia cells between the axon of one neuron and the dendrons of

another. This cannot be demonstrated. A third theory of mental

operations, then, has been suggested, and the English school, so ably

led by Sherrington ("Integrative Action of the Nervous System,"

London, 1903) and McDougal ("Synapse Theory of Fatigue," _Brain_,

1910) has deservedly attracted wide attention. They contend that all

the phenomena can be more simply explained without postulating the

movement required for the Duval Theory or the glial activity of Ramon

y Cajal's hypothesis. They consider that each nerve cell has, as it

were, a certain potential energy which it sends forth in nerve

impulses. These are transferred from neuron to neuron through the

synapse. If what we might call, to borrow a figure from electricity,

the voltage of the cell impulse be sufficient to overcome the

resistance at the synapse, the impulse passes from neuron to neuron.

In fatigue the potential energy of the cell is gradually dissipated.

The impulses become feebler till they cease to pass. This occurs in

the state we usually experience as tiredness and in analogous states

such as sleep, unconsciousness, narcosis and the like. Obviously this

{124} theory can be elaborated and applied parallel with the neuroglia

theory except that here we are substituting synapse resistance for the

hypothetical, undemonstrated action of the glial cells. But, as the

latter seems a simpler process upon which to explain the various

phenomena, especially to those not familiar with very recent

developments in nervous histology and studies in nervous mechanism,

and as it merely involves a question of the nature of the resistance

and not of its site, I have used it for explanatory purposes without

advocating either theory in the present state of our knowledge.

CHAPTER V

BRAIN CELLS AND MENTAL OPERATIONS

While the theories of neuronic action we have discussed do not

represent absolute knowledge, they are at least suggestive and helpful

in psychotherapy. Whenever there are disturbances of mental

operations, patients are likely to become very solicitous, lest these

represent organic and incurable changes. The application of Ramon y

Cajal's neuroglia theory serves to bring out the fact that most of

them can be very well explained as merely functional, due to passing

disturbances of activity, and not necessarily to tissue changes. When

patients become possessed of the fear that certain nervous symptoms

portend definite injuries to the nervous system, this unfavorable

suggestion keeps them from using, to its proper and full extent for

repair and convalescence, the nervous energy which they possess. This

disturbing influence can be counteracted by a straightforward

exposition of Ramon y Cajal's or the newer English theory of brain

mechanism.

Patients become very much disturbed if they observe a failure of

certain faculties in themselves, and are prone to think that such a

failure means serious exhaustion or enduring change. The power of

attention is one of the faculties often disturbed in neurotic cases

and causes patients needless solicitude. Disturbances of memory are

the next most alarming elements in these cases. There are then many

forms of mental distraction, absorption and preoccupation that

sometimes frighten neurotic individuals who have become solicitous

about themselves. Though only passing incidents, due to overattention

to themselves and their ills, real or fancied, and the consequent lack

of concentration of mind on a particular subject, the patients fear

serious deterioration of their mental condition, or at least of mental

control. The neuroglia theory of mental action throws a light on all

these phases of mentality that serves to lessen the solicitude of

patients and enable them to understand that, in spite of their fears,

there is nothing but functional disturbance. The condition can be

readily explained and it admits of complete restoration to health.

ATTENTION

Even more important, perhaps, than any other of the functions

attributed to the neuroglia cells, is the role they may play in

enabling the individual to concentrate attention on a particular

subject, or at least to use a particular {125} portion of his brain,

by bringing about a more active circulation in that portion than in

any other, Ramon y Cajal attributes this power to the perivascular

neuroglia cells. Every capillary in the brain has thousands of these

little pseudopod prolongations. When the cells in a particular region

contract, the blood vessels of the part are pulled wide open and a

larger supply of blood flows more freely, stimulating the nerve cells

by which it passes and supplying them with nutrition for the

expenditure of energy that they may have to make. This is the physical

process that underlies attention. When too much, that is, too

long-continued attention is paid to any subject, without diversion of

mind, the capillaries may easily acquire the habit of being open, and

cells the custom of contraction, so that relaxation does not readily

take place. Something of this kind is the most important element in

the etiology of many functional nervous disorders.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--AN ARTERY FROM THE CEREBRAL CORTEX.--One

can see numerous fine fibers passing over to the brain substance

(Obersteiner).]

Ease and Pleasure in Mental Operations.--On the other hand this same

set of ideas explains many things otherwise difficult of

understanding. For instance, we all know that habit enables us to

apply ourselves to a particular subject with ever growing ease. What

was extremely difficult for us at the beginning, may after a time

become comparatively easy, and later even positively pleasant. Study,

that is application of mind, is, at the beginning, for most people,

not agreeable. If persisted in, it almost inevitably becomes a

pleasure. Hard exercise of any kind is, at the beginning, sure to

require great energy of purpose, and requires some subsidiary motive

of approbation or reward to make us persist in it. But what was a

distinct labor at the beginning becomes pleasant after a while. This

may be applied to the neuroglia cells apparently as well as to the

muscle fibers. On this theory, the reason for the gradual acquirement

of an intense pleasure in the intellectual life becomes easy to

understand.

Dangers of Over-attention.--The danger of concentration of mind on

one's self, quite as much as on any other subject, becomes clearer

when this theory is accepted as explaining the physical basis of the

mental operations involved in attention. If people allow thoughts of

themselves and of their physical processes constantly to occupy their

minds, gradually that portion of the brain ruling over these becomes

over-fatigued and fails to respond to the calls for relaxation.

Insomnia may develop readily as a consequence of continued solicitude

and prove to be, as the worst forms of insomnia so often are, quite

unamenable to direct drug treatment, because, even during the enforced

sleep that comes from drugs, dreams with regard to self and the

supposed ills may still occupy the overworked portion of the brain.

Nervous people are, most occupied with those parts of the brain which

have something to do with the omission and transmission of trophic

influence to particular parts of the body. As a consequence of the

persistent hyperemia, too many trophic impulses are sent down. These

cause an exaggeration of physiological function, in the stomach, the

heart, or some other important organ. Hence these organs may become

oversensitive.

For all these reasons, this theory of attention, of the great Spanish

{126} investigator, deserves to be well known by those who hope to

treat neurotic affections, especially functional diseases of the

brain, and therefore I prefer once more to give it in his own words.

[Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: _International Clinics_, Vol II, Series 11.]

Ramon y Cajal's Theory of Attention.--Under usual conditions, the

motor apparatus of the gray matter suffices for the explanation or

the varied course of association of ideas and of the reaction

produced by voluntary motion. But as soon as attention is

concentrated upon an idea, or a small number of associated ideas,

there enters into the problem, besides the active retraction of the

neuroglia of the corresponding part of the brain, a new factor--the

active congestion of the capillaries of the over-excited region. As

a consequence of this, the energy of emotion reaches a maximum. The

heat and metabolism of the hyperemic parts is increased, which, of

course, makes these parts capable of more work.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--NEUROGLIA CELLS OF THE SUPERFICIAL LAYERS

OF THE BRAIN FROM AN INFANT AGED TWO MONTHS (method of Golgi). A, B,

C, D, neuroglia cells of the plexiform layer; E, F, G, H, K, R,

neuroglia cells of the second and third layers; I, J, neuroglia

cells with vascular pedicles; V, blood-vessel. (Ramon j Cajal.)]

This congestion of various parts of the brain has been experimentally

observed {127} by a number of physiologists. It can be best explained

by considering that the will has an influence upon the nerves which

produce a dilatation of the blood-vessels in different parts of the

cerebral cortex. The process of attention, however, by which

intellectual activity is concentrated upon a limited number of ideas,

seems to be but very little under the control of the sympathetic nerve

endings.

As a matter of fact, the capillaries of the brain are wanting in

nerves and smooth muscle fibers. Hence they are not under the control

of the sympathetic system. Only the relatively large arteries of the

pia mater, which possesses a tunica muscularis are under a certain

limited control of the sympathetic, which is able to produce in them

an incomplete and not very well limited congestion. One of the

difficulties of the problem of the activity of the sympathetic is best

realized when we recall that vasomotor activity is usually

involuntary. The process of attention, however, is entirely conscious

and voluntary.

In the hypothesis that we have given, most of the difficulties

disappear. Under the influence of the will, the pseudopod branches of

the neuroglia cells, which end in the walls of the capillaries,

contract. As the result of this, the bloodvessels, all of which are

surrounded by lymph spaces, dilate, and this dilatation may proceed to

such an extent that the vessels occupy the whole of the lymph spaces.

Thus we can easily understand how the very limited congestions which

are necessary for the concentration of thought upon a single idea may

be brought about.

The perivascular lymph spaces which exist in the brain seem to be for

the purpose of making these limited hyperemias easier. At the same

time they serve a very useful purpose in preventing pressure or

concussion, such as might be caused upon the neighboring nerve cells

by too great dilatation of the blood vessels of a part.

It is needless to add that we do not consider the hypothesis that we

have advanced to be absolutely without objection. On the contrary we

believe that, owing to the difficulty of the problem and our, as yet,

extremely slight knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the nerve

protoplasm, any theory as to the special mechanism of psychic

processes is sure to be faulty. Rational hypotheses, however, which

are supported by well-known facts, are not only justified, but are

often fruitful of suggestive ideas. A scientific hypothesis often

gives a new direction, suggests an untried method of observation, or

hints at new ways of experiment, and, though it may not lead directly

to truth, always brings us closer to methods of investigation and of

criticism that are invaluable. Even though our further investigations

should not confirm our hypothesis, the result will not be less

positive. Negative conclusions lessen the number of possible

hypotheses and therefore diminish the possibility of error in future

investigations.

MEMORY

It is evident that some of the physical mechanisms that are employed

for the lower grade mental processes at least can be explained on the

neuroglia theory. Memory we share to a great extent with the animals,

and for this the physical processes can be rather interestingly

studied. We have all had the experience of being unable to recall a

word when we wanted it. Commonly the word is a proper name with which

there are not many direct connecting ideas, so that, somehow, we seem

unable to trace the word to its depository in the brain. Occasionally

we are sure that we know the first letter of the word. Sometimes we

are able to name this letter, and, if we do so, the rest of the word

will usually turn up a moment later. At times, however, the word fails

to come and we grope for it. Then if we stop deliberately seeking it,

the word will often after a longer or shorter time, come up

spontaneously.

This experience is familiar to everyone. It is especially frequent

with public speakers. Certain words have a habit of slipping away just

when we {128} want them. At times by beginning a sentence confidently,

even though there is a feeling that there is a missing word ahead, the

word will turn up in time. Often it will not, and then a weak

circumlocution must be indulged in. If it is a proper name, a

description may have to be substituted, sometimes a confession may

have to be made that the name will not come and the audience, unless

it is very young, will sympathize with the speaker.

If we accept the idea that the memory has a definite location in the

brain, the process is easily understood. Just how we cannot say, but

somehow brain cells serve as the media by which our memory processes

revert to knowledge that has been previously stored up. If now we

assume that the repetition of things known is accomplished by bringing

brain cells into connection with one another, and with the organs of

speech, it is easy to understand that somehow the connection with a

particular cell or set of cells cannot be secured at a given moment.

This delay prevents us from being able to repeat things that we know,

and know that we know, though we cannot somehow get at them. The will

fails to reach the proper insulating plug of a neuroglia cell, which,

if acted upon, would put a cell or group of cells in communication

with others. As a result the message from it cannot flow down. We feel

that we have it on the tip of our tongue, as we say, that a little

effort may bring it to us and sometimes that effort succeeds. If there

is any disturbance of consciousness by secondary motives, however, as

by the excitement of public speaking or the flustering that comes to

some people when they try to introduce even old-time friends and

forget their names, then we cannot control the brain processes and

memory fails. We do not for a moment think of attributing this failure

of memory to the faculty of memory itself. We have the feeling that

there is some mechanical obstacle. Ramon y Cajal's theory enables us

to understand this obstacle better, perhaps, than any other.

An interesting phase of this lapse in memory helping us to a

revelation of something of the physical process which underlies the

faculty, is the fact that it implies a very intricate machine.

Recalling has become such an obvious incident that we do not think of

the complexity of action involved. Many things are brought together,

and relations of all kinds serve to recall various facts and names and

dates. Some of these relations are most bizarre. Particular names

recall a definite series of facts. A color will bring up a scene or

the memory of an individual. An odor will recall scenes long since

apparently forgotten and will set trains of thought at work that are

quite unexpected. Sometimes we wake in the morning with a name or a

fact on our lips that we have been looking for for several days.

UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION

Some people actually learn to depend on unconscious cerebration. A

man, for instance, who has to make an address on a particular subject

or to write an article, will record that fact on a tablet and after

gathering a few basic thoughts in connection with the subject

proposed, will put it aside for the time being. He is confident that

various illustrations and thoughts in connection with the subject will

occur to him at intervals during the next few days, and that he will

thus without direct labor accumulate an amount of {129} material for

use. In the early morning hours he may find that thoughts on it come

to him unbidden. Sometimes he will find these thoughts precious germs,

that will develop during the course of the following days, and will be

of great help to him. If he is worried and preoccupied with other

things very much, this may not happen, but under ordinary

circumstances he can continue routine occupations which demand

practically all of his time, yet continue to develop the subject

selected for his paper or address. The more he has occupied his mind

with the subject at the beginning, the more will this unconscious

cerebration continue.

ABSTRACTION OF MIND

Features of the mechanism of mental operations are brought out in

certain phenomena of abstraction of mind, which show how the attention

can be so short-circuited that sensations from the periphery utterly

fail to penetrate to the consciousness. Most men have had the

experience of taking out their watches, looking at them, and then

putting them back. Presently somebody asks what time it is. Unable to

recollect what it was that they saw, they have to look again. There is

no doubt that they meant to observe the time.

The same thing is true for practically all the senses. A pickpocket

takes advantage of our being occupied with many other feelings in the

midst of the jostling in a crowd on a car, or before a show window, or

he has a confederate add to the sensations already streaming up to us,

calling attention particularly to the other side of the body, and then

inserts his hand into our pocket and extracts what he finds. Sometimes

we have a faint memory of something having happened to that pocket,

but our attention was occupied elsewhere.

In hearing we have the same experience. When thoroughly occupied with

a book, a person may talk to us or ask us a question and we have no

idea of what was said, sometimes utterly failing to hear the voice;

sometimes we hear the sound of the voice, but do not comprehend the

meaning of the words.

When we are unprepared for a question we nearly always have to have it

repeated to us. Sitting in a railroad train, if the person behind us,

whom we did not expect to talk to us, asks a question, it is very

probable that on the first asking we shall not notice it at all,

considering that it is addressed to someone else. On its repetition,

it may appeal to us as addressed to ourselves, but even then we

readily lose its significance because our attention has not been

called to the wording of it soon enough to enable us to comprehend it

thoroughly. These experiences, so familiar that we have probably all

had them at some time or other, indicate how universal is the power of

the mind to concentrate itself upon itself to the extent of neglecting

sensations from the outer world, even though they may pass the

periphery of the organism and manifestly affect the first neuron of

the chain that leads up to our brain and consequently to

consciousness. They do not reach the center with sufficient intensity

to be understood, and a conscious act of attention must be made before

we comprehend their meaning.

{130}

PREOCCUPATION OF MIND

This is true, not only for ordinary sensations, but even for such as

would ordinarily be presumed to be so insistent in their call that

they could not be neglected. The concentration of mind necessary for

this is not common to all mankind; it is possessed only by a few

individuals whose intellect represents the larger portion of their

personality. Certain of the great investigating scientific geniuses

have had the faculty of so concentrating their attention upon the

questions with which their intellects were engaged, that even the call

of appetite did not make itself felt. Newton was one of these. Over

and over again, he was known to neglect to take his meals, even though

they were brought to him, and, occasionally, he would entirely forget

whether he had taken a meal or not. But Newton is not an extreme

exception. Most of the great mathematicians have had experiences of

this kind and, indeed, mathematics seems to be that special branch of

intellectual work which most readily brings about a preoccupation of

mind sufficient to completely shut out the outer world for the time

being. Archimedes, the great ancient mathematician, lost his life

because of preoccupation with mathematical problems that kept him from

telling the Roman soldiers, who had strict orders to spare him, who he

was.

Complete absorption of mind to the exclusion of all external

sensations is not, however, confined to the mathematicians. Mommsen,

the historian, was famous for his fits of mental abstraction. Once he

patted a school-boy on the head and asked whose boy he was, to be told

rather startlingly, "Yours." Lombroso, the criminal psychologist, was

subject to abstraction in almost as great a degree. Men have become so

preoccupied in study as not to appreciate the significance of

warnings, indicating that a serious accident was about to happen, such

as a fire or the fall of some object that they should have avoided, or

some other danger to themselves. The tendency to such abstraction is

responsible for many accidents on busy city streets. When so

preoccupied, painters walk off scaffolds, and such preoccupation of

mind is extremely dangerous, not only for the man himself, but for

those who are working with him.

Everyone knows that a slight headache frequently disappears in

pleasant company. There is sometimes the suspicion, though it is quite

unjustified, that because a person has a headache which can be cured

by engaging in a favorite occupation, the headache is more imaginary

than real. The common experience with toothache shows the falsity of

this opinion. There is no imagination in regard to toothache, yet it,

too, except in very severe cases, will be so modified as to be quite

negligible if the victim has some mental occupation that is very

absorbing. Pains of other kinds that are just as real, may be modified

in the same way. I have known a boy to suffer enough from the presence

of an unsuspected kidney stone to give up play and come into the

house, yet he could be made entirely to forget his discomfort by a

game of checkers. On account of the ease with which the pain was thus

dispelled, the suspicion was harbored that his ache was more imaginary

than real. The ache continued and at the end of about a year there was

an acute exacerbation which justified an operation, and the stone was

removed.

In all these instances there is evidently a question of the unmaking,

or at {131} least imperfect making, of connections between the

peripheral and central neurons, because of the existence of

connections between different portions of the brain itself which take

up the attention. This attention to mental things may become

exaggerated, and must be guarded against, but it represents a valuable

psychotherapeutic remedy. Whenever the peripheral connections are

unmade, external sensation is unfelt. Even though the peripheral

neuron may be suffering to some extent, this is true. It is this law

of attention that must be taken advantage of for psychotherapeutics.

People who are liable to be too much concerned with their sensations,

must be taught to occupy themselves with interests that will absorb

the attention. Central neurons can, except under very serious

circumstances, be made to connect with one another so intimately as to

bring about the neglect of many bothersome external sensations.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--COMPLEXITY OF CELL OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS

SYSTEM. A Golgi cell after Andriezen. (Barker.)]

On the other hand, when the connections with the periphery are well

made, external sensations flow in on us to the exclusion of thought

and then even simple sensations may be exaggerated so as to become

painful. Anything that attracts our attention so much that we cannot

think quietly about it, is likely to be a disturbance rather than a

pleasure. Music is distinctly pleasant, yet very loud music becomes

painful. The reason is that the peripheral neuron is so much disturbed

that these excessive vibrations are communicated to other neurons

connected with it and they are unable to occupy themselves with

anything except this over-strenuous sensation. A very bright light has

something of the same effect, and the same thing is true for all the

other senses. A pleasant odor, if over strong, becomes disgusting. A

very sweet taste is cloying. This over excitation of neurons may come

from without, or may come from within. If the central neuron is so

much occupied with itself, and the sensation that is flowing into it,

that it is prevented from making such connections as would communicate

and distribute the sensations properly, then the sensory phenomenon

becomes painful, though it may not be exaggerated in the peripheral

neuron.

VITAL ENERGY BEHIND BRAIN CELLS

In all of these phenomena there is something more than brain cells at

work. Brain cells are guided, co-ordinated, controlled, and even

overseen, in their labors. The same conclusion becomes inevitable with

regard to the action of the cells of the body generally. A generation

or two ago it was the custom to attempt to explain all the processes

in the body by chemical and physical principles. Respiration, for

instance, and absorption of gases into the blood in the lungs and the

expiration of gases that have been generated within the body during

vital processes, were supposed to be entirely explicable on the

principle of the diffusion of gases. The absorption of various

substances into the body proper from the intestinal tract, and the

excretion {132} of various substances from within the body into the

excretory organs, as well as the process of secretion, were supposed

to be nothing more than varying phenomena of osmosis and exosmosis.

There has since been a general recognition of the fact that these

principles do not explain many of the incidents within the body in its

relations to its surroundings, and that vital processes are something

much more than merely manifestations of physics and chemistry.

The lungs are not mere laboratories in which refinements

of the laws of the diffusion of gases may be studied, for under

varying pressures from without that would vitiate the ordinary

laws of diffusion, inspiration and expiration continues. Fishes

live at depths where the pressure is so great that expiration

would seem to be impossible, yet they succeed in eliminating

harmful gaseous material. Prof. Haldane of Cambridge has

called attention to many of these processes. Animal stomachs

are not test-tubes. Animal excretion, and above all, secretion,

is carried on sometimes in accordance with but, almost more

often, in defiance of chemical and physical principles. The

individual, even in the lower animals, counts for much more

than the chemical constituents of the tissues and the physical

principles involved.

Besides, all the parts of the organism are co-ordinated, and

there are wonderful checks and counterchecks which show that

animals are much more than colonies of cells fortuitously

growing together and habituated to such common life by many

generations of heredity and environment and training. In a

word, the old vitalistic principle has become popular once

more and even great physiologists have insisted that there is a

principle of life which guides and controls and co-ordinates the

different portions of the body. Especially does this seem to be

true of the brain. We have here an intensely complex machine,

composed literally of billions of parts which work together, and

in doing so accomplish wonderful results. Of the existence of

this machine, much more of the great intricacy of its parts

and mechanism, we are quite unconscious. We learn to use it

in very early years with an assurance and a perfection that is

amazing, considering how complex it is. The less we think

about it and its workings, the better does it work and the less

disturbance of function is there in its accomplishment.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.--SECTION THROUGH THE CORTEX OF THE

GYRUS OCCIPITALIS SUPERIOR. (Hammarberg. Barker.)]

If a vitalistic principle were needed to enable us to understand the

workings of the ordinary body cells, how much more is it required for

the workings of brain cells. There is something behind that guides and

rules the brain, and through which it accomplishes its work. It is

this that brings about an unconscious cerebration accomplishing

intellectual results for us even when the brain machine itself is at

rest as when asleep, or fails, for some reason, to be in readiness to

take up the work that we demand of it. It is this vital principle that

coordinates the movements of brain cells which represent {133} the

physical processes underlying memory and the nervous elements of the

sensitive and motor phenomena of the organism. Reflection on the

physical mechanism underlying mental operations of various kinds,

demands the vitalistic explanation much more than the physiological

phenomena which have converted physiologists to the old way of

thinking in our time. Our individuality is probably largely due to the

physical basis of our mentality, but there is something more than that

required for any theory of mental operations that would satisfy all

the questions that come to us. There is, then, actual proof of the

existence of a force that is part of us, that constitutes a bit of the

essence of our personalities, yet is capable of accomplishing results

that we cannot understand, and of managing a machine that transcends

any physical powers that we can think of.

[Illustration: FIG. 22--MOTOR CELL OF VENTRAL HORN OF SPINAL CORD

FROM THE HUMAN FETUS, THIRTY CENTIMETERS LONG (method of Golgi;

after von Lenhossek. Barker.)]

This vital force behind the nervous system contains stores of energy

that can be called on for therapeutic purposes. It is the directing,

co-ordinating and energizing force which controls the central nervous

system, and enables it to accomplish its purposes. It is the

disappearance of this force at death which leaves the body without

vital activity, though no physical difference between the dead and the

living body can be demonstrated. Changes in the body _follow_ death;

they are not simultaneous. This vital force supplies the energy that

we call the will, and underlies the process called "living on the

will" which so often serves to maintain existence when there is every

reason to think that a fatal termination is due. The amount of energy

thus available is limited, {134} but is much more powerful than has

been thought. It is of the greatest possible service in preserving

health and eliminating disease. Its existence, demonstrated by the

complex nervous system which we employ with such confidence, though we

know nothing of it, furnishes the best possible basis for confident

attempts at rousing the patient to use the vital energy he possesses

for the strengthening of weakness, the correction of deficiency and

the control of evil tendencies.

CHAPTER VI

UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION

Many of the exhausting neurotic and psycho-neurotic affections so

common in recent years are largely due to the failure of patients to

secure such mental relaxation as will permit complete repair of

nervous waste. We are proud of being a generation of specialists. Some

men never get completely away from the set of thoughts with which they

are occupied in their particular specialty. Waking or sleeping these

thoughts are with them. It is almost impossible, then, for cells of

the central nervous system to secure such rest as they need. Cells

must be put at absolute rest so that nutritional processes may go on

entirely undisturbed, and every portion of the cell be renewed in

vigor. Re-creation, in its original meaning, is exactly what must be

provided for nerve cells.

The trouble is not alone that men occupy a very narrow set of brain

cells with their special interest, and make all their energy pass

through that set, but among men who are lacking in a certain

insulation in the nervous system, this particular set of cells

continues to be active, even at times when they think they are resting

or diverting themselves. Unconscious cerebration (the occupation of

the mind with subjects when we are not deliberately giving our

attention to them) is a common phenomenon in human psychology. With

the rise of extreme specialization, it has become even more dangerous

than before. In the past unconscious cerebration might mean any

occupation, with any one of a number of interests. At the present it

is likely to mean concentration of thought on a particular subject

with which the brain is prone to be occupied more than is good for it,

even during the hours of ordinary labor. It seems worth while to

discuss at some length, then, the subject of unconscious cerebration,

because it constitutes the pathological physiology of many nervous

states that we see in modern life.

Frequency of Unconscious Cerebration.--The mind, having been set to

work over a given thought, continues at it sub-consciously, even while

apparently completely occupied with something else. Most people who

devote themselves to the intellectual life have experienced phenomena

more striking and going much farther in unconscious cerebration than

this. Most writers have a common experience: if they arrange their

thoughts on a given subject and then turn aside to something else,

they find, when they go over the same subject next day, much more

material than came the day before. The thoughts for an article will

often gradually accumulate by unconscious cerebration after the

process has been consciously started.

{135}

At intervals during the next few days succeeding the determination to

write a certain article (at moments when no conscious thought is being

given to it), ideas crop up that help to fill out the original scheme

of thought, and if these are jotted down, a good deal of intellectual

work is accomplished without the necessity for that labor over a desk

that most of us scheme to avoid. The more familiar literary work

becomes, the more frequent are these experiences, and one occasionally

wakes up with a thought that opens up a new vista and adds valuable

material to what has already been accumulated. If the subject is a

large one, as for a book, then most writers will probably confess that

some of their best thoughts have come in this "hit and miss" fashion

rather than at the times when they were seriously applying themselves

to elaborating their theme.

Inspiration.--Some of the great literary writers have felt that their

brain work was so independent of themselves that the word inspiration

properly suited what they were accomplishing. Thackeray destroyed

sheet after sheet of manuscript, utterly dissatisfied with it until,

as the result of keeping at it, inspiration would come. Then he would

be able to fill up rapidly many pages with work so finished that it

needed little correction or polish. George Eliot, at times, became so

absorbed in her writing that it almost appeared to her that some other

personality than her own was wielding the pen. Her imaginary

characters became real to her, and it was while under the stimulus of

this impression of living in an imaginative world with them that she

succeeded in accomplishing her best work. Many other authors were, of

course, very different. Some of them ridiculed the idea of waiting for

inspiration. Most of them, however, found it difficult to begin their

task at certain times, yet if they forced themselves to it, and once

got their minds going, the line of thought ran on easily and, at the

close of the task, they looked back with pleasure and wonder that they

were able to accomplish so much.

_Illustrations_.--This is true not only of literary work, whose main

purpose is the arrangement of details of information of various kinds

with personal opinions concerning it, but also of original thought of

any kind. Many stories of poets are told illustrating this. They

wander round with pencils and jot down thoughts that come here and

there at what are called moments of inspiration. The poets dream over

their subjects, catch fleeting thoughts that, vague at first, sing

themselves into musical expression. Music seems to be on the same

plane with poetry, for there is the well-known story of the

distinguished German musician who, walking with his wife in the park,

found himself without paper at the moment when he had an inspiration.

He used his own cuffs to write upon, and then finally impressed those

of his wife into the service of carrying home the precious musical

motifs that he was afraid might not come again if he allowed the

favorable moment to pass without recording them.

There are stories of Tennyson finding some of his most perfect lines

in the fields, after hours of seclusion and effort in his study had

failed to round them out to his satisfaction, or dreaming them into

shape, or waking to find one ready made to be written down. The

letters of Wordsworth tell how often such incidents happened in his

life.

{136}

SLEEP COMMUNICATIONS

Any one who has been thinking much for several days about a problem is

likely to wake up with the thought that he has dreamed a solution of

it, though unfortunately the solution has not remained in his memory.

It seems as if a communication has been made to him during sleep. I

have discussed dream life with many men engaged in serious work, and

practically all of them confess to such experiences. Preoccupation of

mind with a subject during the waking hours leads to at least some

occupation of mind with the same subject during sleep. This

unconscious occupation must often require rather strenuous attention,

exhausting nutrition, using up nerve force and hampering the rest that

is so important for tired human nature. [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: A number of poetic products of dreams are in our

literature, some of them interesting for more than their curious

origin. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, in his latest volume of poems, "The

Comfort of the Hills," made an interesting contribution to the

psychology of dreams by publishing two poems which were composed by

him while asleep. The little poem, "Which?" has all the curious

alliterativeness and frequent rhyme that is so likely to be noted in

expressions that come during sleep, or just as we awake. The other

is more like a somnambulistic effort. What we might suggest here is

that the habit of poetizing during sleep would surely be dangerous

to any one less eminently sane than their author. We give them as

curious examples that will interest patients who complain that their

dreams are too vivid.

APRIL FIRST

Come, let us be the willing fools

Of April's earliest day.

And dream we own all pleasant things

The years have reft away.

'Tis but to take the poet's wand,

A touch or here or there,

And I have lost that ancient stoop,

And you are young and fair.

Ah, no! The years that gave and took

Have left with you and me

The wisdom of the widening stream;

Trust we the larger sea.

WHICH?

Birth-day or Earth-day,

Which the true mirth-day?

Earth-day or birth-day,

Which the well-worth day?

For further details on this subject, see the chapter on Dreams.]

Art in Dreams.--Many a painter testifies that as he slept interesting

details have been added to his scheme for a picture. Mr. Huntington,

who was for so long president of the National Academy, once told me

that some of the arrangements of his famous picture, "Mercy's Dream"

in the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington, had come to him during

sleep. Giovanni Dupre, the French sculptor, confessed that the ideas

for his beautiful _pieta_ had practically all come to him in a dream.

He had been thinking for a long time how he should arrange it, without

allowing any of the ideas of sculptors whose treatment of the subject

was well known to influence him too much, and had almost felt that it

would be impossible to make anything individual. While deeply occupied

with it one day he fell asleep, and when he awoke the whole scheme was

clear.

Mathematical Dreams.--Such phenomena of unconscious cerebration are

not uncommon in the exact sciences. Some of the best examples of these

{137} curious phenomena that we have are to be found in the history of

them. We all know the stories of mathematicians who, occupied deeply

with a problem which they have been unable to solve, have gone to bed

still thinking about it, have slept deeply and, as they thought,

dreamlessly, and yet they have waked in the morning to find by the

bedside the problem all worked out in their own penciling--all

accomplished during a somnambulistic state. Missing factors have been

found in dreams; mistakes in the working out of problems have been

clearly pointed out in dreams, so that, on awaking, the calculator

could at once correct his calculations, and even serious errors have

been thus corrected.

Agassiz's Experience.--Some examples of these experiences in other

sciences are striking. One that is likely to be impressive because it

occurred in the experience of Professor Louis Agassiz, seems worth

reporting. [Footnote 18]

[Footnote 18: "Louis Agassiz, His Life and Correspondence,"

edited by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1885.]

It is interesting both as psychological fact and as showing how,

sleeping and waking, his work was ever present with him. He had been

for two weeks striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression

of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary

and perplexed he put his work aside at last, and tried to dismiss it

from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that

while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features

perfectly restored. But when he tried to hold and make fast the

image it escaped him. Nevertheless he went early to the Jardin des

Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the impression he should

see something that would put him on the track of his vision. In

vain--the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw

the fish again, but with no more satisfactory result. When he woke

it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping that the same

experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil

and paper beside his bed before going to sleep. Accordingly toward

morning the fish reappeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but

at last with such distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to

its zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness,

he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside. In

the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features

which he thought it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He

hastened to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a

guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under

which the portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly

exposed, it corresponded with his drawing, and his dream, and he

succeeded in classifying it with ease. He often spoke of this as a

good illustration of the well-known fact that when the body is at

rest the tired brain will do the work it refused before.

Hilprecht's Sleep Vision.--Quite as surprising a dream was that of

Prof. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been trying

for some time to decipher certain characters on ancient cylinders from

the Orient. In spite of much hard mental labor he had been utterly

unable to reach definite conclusions. In the midst of work on the

subject he dreamt one night that a priest of the olden time appeared

to him and read off the inscription that he had in vain been trying to

decipher. Immediately after waking he told his wife of his dream and

wrote down the interpretation that had thus been given. It was quite

different from anything that he himself had obtained any hint of in

his previous studies. When he got back to the inscription he found

that this interpretation would satisfy the conditions better than any

other, and there seemed no doubt that it represented the missing

solution.

{138}

Somnambulism.--These curiously vivid dreams are occasionally

associated with somnambulistic phenomena. Sometimes very definite

purposes, requiring careful adaptation of means to ends, are

accomplished in the somnambulistic state, and yet the actions are

completely forgotten. I have recently been consulted about a case in

which a young woman, on a visit to a family, had been shown some

pretty though not expensive jewels. Evidently the guest envied their

possession, for she got up during sleep and took the jewels and hid

them. There seems no reason to doubt her statement that she remembered

nothing at all about the incident. The taking was not attributed to

her. There had been previous experiences of the same kind with things

belonging to this young woman's sister. Somnambulism represents a

degree of unconscious cerebration that may have serious results.

Combinations of intellectual work with somnambulism are not

infrequent, though many of the stories that are told are exaggerated.

Some of them are authenticated. Ribot has a typical example of

intellectual accomplishment, in a somnambulistic condition, that shows

how far this may go:

A clear case of somnambulism was that of a clergyman, whom his wife

saw rise from bed in his sleep, go to a writing table, and write

rapidly for some minutes. This done he returned to bed, and slept on

until morning. On awaking, he told her that in a dream he had worked

out an argument for a sermon, of which he now retained no

recollection whatever. She led him to the writing table, and showed

him the written sheet upon which he found his argument worked out in

the most satisfactory manner.

PATHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Unconscious cerebration is not, then, a trivial matter, and not an

unusual experience. It probably occurs in every individual to a much

greater extent than he thinks, unless he is engaged in analyzing his

mental processes and their ways rather carefully. This constitutes one

of the dangers of the intellectual life, which must also be guarded

against in business life or in any absorbing occupation. When the mind

has become intensely occupied with a subject, it is not easy to

relinquish it. Even when we turn to something else, mental activity in

the old groove continues to some extent, and so will prevent the rest

that is necessary for the repair of tissue. Under these conditions the

_re-creation_ that is so important does not take place quite as well

as it should, and even sleep does not relieve us from the burden of

mental work. Mental exhaustion will result as a consequence of

constant occupation, and so mental relaxation must be secured.

Deliberate means and methods must be employed in order that we may not

deceive ourselves into thinking we are securing mental recreation,

though all the time certain exhausting mental processes continue to be

active.

Dual Mental Occupation.--Many are inclined to think that reading,

especially the reading of newspapers and magazines, which has become

so popular in our time, furnishes an occupation of mind that enables

one, for a time at least, to get away from cares and worries. This is

probably true when the news is of special interest, or there is some

form of excitement, or at the beginning of such reading before one

grows accustomed to the usual {139} formula of the magazine stories;

but as years go on and cares increase, such reading does not afford an

occupation of mind that enables one to throw them off. It helps to

pass the time, but the cares and worries keep insistently presenting

themselves, and the effort to inhibit them, and at the same time pay

some attention to what we are reading, makes a double task. Such

reading, then, far from being restful, rather adds to the burden of

care and to the labor of the mind, for besides the conscious

cerebration, there is the undercurrent of subconscious cerebration

disturbing the rest of cells that should be free from labor. The

constant renewal of effort to keep one train of thought from

interfering with another is itself a waste of nervous energy. This

whole matter of reading is coming to occupy a new place in the minds

of educators, especially of those who are trying to realize the

scientific significance of various phases of education. In his address

as the President of the British Association for the Advancement of

Science, at the Winnipeg meeting in 1909, Prof. J. J. Thompson, the

British physicist, sums up the value of reading as an intellectual

exercise in a way that would not be gratifying to those who, in recent

years, have apparently accepted the doctrine that in much reading

there is much information and, therefore, much education. He says:

It is possible to read books to pass examinations without the higher

qualities of the mind being called into play. Indeed, I doubt if

there is any process in which the mind is more quiescent than in

reading without interest. I might appeal to the widespread habit of

reading in bed as a prevention of insomnia as a proof of this.

Social Duties.--So-called social duties are, in this respect, very

like reading. When we meet new people who are interesting, we get

diversion of mind in their company. When the people with whom we are,

however, already familiar, and perhaps most of them a little tiresome,

then what is presumed to be a social diversion becomes merely a bore,

all the problems of the day obtrude themselves, of real rest there is

none, and re-creation can scarcely be possible. Nearly the same thing

is true of the present-day theater, after we have become used to its

offerings. A serious play, well constructed and with life's problems

touched deeply, may grip us and take us out of ourselves, constituting

a complete and magnificent diversion. For a limited number of people

music accomplishes this purpose. Unfortunately, the number is very

limited, and for those for whom music is the greatest diversion, it

sometimes constitutes in itself a poignant source of mental

exhaustion. Music may be a very trying thing, especially for women,

and for those who have souls extremely sensitive to its manifold

effects.

Upon these considerations, the importance of unconscious cerebration

is brought home to the physician. It is impossible for a great many

people to keep their minds inactive, and this is particularly true of

two classes of people: those who have superabundant mental energy and

those who lack self-control. To both of these classes of men and

women, the physician must point out the dangers of unconscious

cerebration--the occupation of mind with some subject, even at times

while they imagine they are occupied with something else, or even

during sleep. Such continuous occupation with a single subject is

dangerous. Physicians must emphasize that many supposed {140} mental

occupations are really so superficial that they allow other more

exhausting processes to continue below them in the sphere of

consciousness. As a consequence, the mind, instead of being relaxed,

is really more tense than before, because occupied with two sets of

thoughts. Very often it would be better for such people to continue

with the more serious problem until its solution came, or until they

realized that they must divert themselves.

MENTAL RELAXATION

What is important for mental relaxation, apparently, is not that a man

shall try to set his mind at absolute rest, for that seems to be

impossible, if a man really has a mind; nor that he shall occupy it

with trivial things (because his interest will not be caught by them

and will revert to the last serious thing that he was doing), but that

he shall have an outlet for mental activity in entirely another

direction from that to which he usually devotes himself. In other

words, it is important that a man shall have a hobby, and that he

shall ride that hobby whenever his ordinary business, whatever that

may be, will permit him, and the more interesting the hobby, the

better.

REMEDIAL MEASURES

The most important general remedy for over-prolonged mental occupation

with a single subject, is some outdoor sport or form of exercise that

requires all the attention. Horseback exercise is particularly

valuable; boating, especially where the man has charge of the boat

himself and where he has to have his wits about him, and the various

sports. It is particularly important that men should not be alone

during the taking of their exercise and diversion of mind. Above all,

human interests take a man outside of himself and keep him from

disturbing his mental equipoise by too much devotion to a single

subject.

CHAPTER VII

DISTANT MENTAL INFLUENCE

There is a very general impression that it is possible, at least under

certain circumstances, for one human mind to influence another at a

distance without any of the ordinary known means of communication.

Many people have had the experience of thinking about a friend whom

they have not seen for a long while, and shortly after meeting him.

Sometimes it is found that the friend was making up his mind to bring

about the meeting just about the time that the thought of him came.

Many have had the experience of writing a letter and having it cross

in the mails with another from their correspondent, evidently written

within a few hours, though there had perhaps been no communication for

weeks or months before. There are people who insist that they can, by

concentrating the mind and fixing their eyes on the head of a {141}

person some distance in front of them in a theater, or a railway car,

cause the person to turn around. There are others who say that by

thinking strongly of some person in a distant part of a large room,

that person can be made to think of them. In general, there are many

persons who are quite sure that there is evidence enough to indicate

the possibility of distant mental influence, or, as it has come to be

called learnedly, telepathy.

Telepathy, from the two Greek words, _tele_, at a distance, and

_pathos_, feeling, has been much discussed in recent years. Many

people who use the word glibly are inclined to think they know much

about it. A long word, however, is not an explanation, and, just here,

George Eliot's expression "we map out our ignorance in long Greek

names" is worth recalling. There are a number of phenomena that seem

to require some such theory as that of telepathy, but the phenomena

are still under discussion and their significance is by no means

clear. As we understand it, telepathy may mean either thought

transference or mind reading, that is, either the active process by

which we communicate our thought to someone at a distance, or the

passive process by which we receive communications from others. These

thoughts include the idea of mental influence at a distance; that is,

we can by willing influence the wills, or at least the motives to

action, of people at a distance and they may, in turn, influence ours.

The further thought has come, that since the mind largely influences

the body in matters of health, so mental influence from a distance by

affecting mind, may either improve or injure health.

Some sensitive people are disturbed by the thought that they may be

influenced from a distance by others, or at least that suggestions

that come to them, may be due to telepathic influence. Investigation

would probably show that there are at least as many persons disturbed

by real or supposed telepathic influences as there are of those who

have hallucinations. Sometimes it is said that such persons are not

quite sane, but the more experience a physician has with them, the

more he dismisses the thought of insanity and proceeds to use contrary

suggestion and frank discussion, in order to counteract the mental

influences. Insane persons think they are being influenced from a

distance just as they hear voices and see visions, but such

hallucinations may occur to the sane, as apparent telepathic

experiences may also.

Witchcraft.--It used to be a common belief that people could be

influenced, even at a distance, by the mere evil wishes or intentions

of others. After all, the old beliefs in witchcraft that were so

common in Europe and in America until well into the eighteenth century

represent the conviction of mankind that at least certain people

might, from a distance, seriously influence them for evil. Always the

fear of malign influence was uppermost in people's minds and literally

hundreds of thousands of witches were prosecuted, and many thousands

of them put to death, because of this belief in the possibility of

their working evil to others at a distance, merely by willing it.

Occasionally some such material auxiliary to malign purpose as an

image in wax of the one to whom the evil was to be done was used. Into

this the ill wisher stuck pins according to the part that he or she

would want to be affected in the enemy, but as a rule the will, and

nothing more, was used.

Absent Treatment.--In our own time a system of healing, that has

attracted many followers, has taken up the idea of beneficent mental

influence at a distance. "Absent treatment" has now become a familiar

expression. {142} That those who believe in such favorable influence

at a distance should also believe in unfavorable influence seems

inevitable. As a matter of fact, we know that the founder of this

special sect always insisted on the power for evil over herself and

her followers of those who want to exert the injurious influence of

animal magnetism--malicious animal magnetism as it is called. A very

definite attempt was made to bring a case of this kind before the

courts, the subject matter of which exactly resembled some of the old

witchcraft trials in New England! And in spite of the insistence and

emphatic assertion that no such thing is intended, from the principles

that are accepted the necessary logical conclusion is a return to the

belief in witchcraft.

Malignant Magnetism.--As a number of persons are likely to fear such

evil influence of others upon them, the question of the possibility of

it must come up for discussion in order that its status may be clear

in the physician's mind, for by just as much as he can make certain to

the patient that modern psychology refuses to accept distant

influence, will he be able to reassure his patient. Of course, the

patients who come with such complaints have usually some element of

mental trouble. The alienist sees any number of people who are sure

that enemies at a distance are working spells upon them, some by

electrical, some by magnetic means, and some by telepathic absent

treatment, or absent ill-wishing. Such notions are the delusions of

the disequilibrated and these persons often cannot be reasoned with.

Yet very often a distinct delusion may be reasoned out of even a

subrational person, if it is taken seriously, and some striking

expression of its irrationality and of its total disagreement with

scientific views can be shown to the patient.

Action Without a Medium.--The medieval scholastic philosophers quoted

as an absolutely accepted principle the Latin axiom, _"actio in

distans repugnat."_ Literally translated this means action at a

distance is repugnant to reason. Expressed less technically, the

principle declares that any action of one body on another, where there

is no medium connecting them, no link that in some way places them in

contact with one another, is absurd. The expression _in distans_ means

that the two bodies are separated from one another and stand in two

places having no connection of any kind. This principle would

ordinarily seem to preclude the possibility of one person acting on

another, unless there is some mode of communication.

Crookes' Theory.--Sir William Crookes, at a meeting of the British

Association for the Advancement of Science about ten years ago, in

discussing telepathy, directed attention to the fact that there exists

by scientific hypothesis, generally accepted, a definite medium of

communication by which minds at a distance might influence one

another. The medium is the ether which, according to physical

theories, besides carrying light, also carries heat and electrical

waves, and in recent years is recognized as transmitting the impulses

of wireless telegraphy. It is possible that when the cells of certain

human minds are stimulated to a particular phase of vibration, they

may, even at long distances, affect the cells of other individuals

that resemble them, or are attuned to them, that is, have the same

moment of vibration. This is the principle which underlies wireless

telegraphy. Whether the vibrations of living nerve cells can be made

thus to radiate out over the ether and arouse in any way other cells,

especially to the extent of communicating ideas, is a matter still

open for investigation. The possibility of this occurring {143} cannot

be denied. We are, however, still in the presence of a condition and

not a theory. The question is whether minds are thus influenced at a

distance--whether we have data enough to establish the occurrence of

telepathy or mental communications of any kind at a distance.

No Practical Thought Transfer.--At the beginning, it is of the

greatest importance to recall that, while many people think there must

be something in telepathy and presume that the investigations of

recent years have shown not only the possibility of the communication

of ideas from mind to mind and of the mental influence of one person

over another, even at long distances, but also its actual occurrence,

yet all our ordinary life is founded on the absolute negation of any

such phenomenon. For instance, our courts of law are conducted in

direct contradiction of the possibility of anything like telepathy.

Juries are summoned of twelve good men and true who, as far as

possible, know nothing about the prisoner and as little as may be

about the case. They are supposed to get all their information in the

court room. We do not believe that any of them by any wonderful

process might be able to know what was going on in the prisoner's mind

in spite of his plea. Nor do we think for a moment that they can know

what is going on, apart from what he communicates in evidence, in the

mind of any witness. Neither is there the slightest presumption that

the judge or any of our lawyers can know anything about what is in the

minds of any of the persons present, except as they reveal it by

outward signs.

A lawyer who could employ telepathy with success would be simply

invaluable. Before a month had passed, he would have all the business

of the criminal courts in his hands.

Mental Retention.--In answer to this it may be said that these

represent conditions in which determined effort is made to keep all

possible information that may be in the minds of all concerned from

passing to others. Everyone concedes the power of such absolute self

retention of our thoughts, when we deliberately wish to keep them from

being known to others. When people wish to communicate their thoughts

to others, then it may be different. In that case the sending and

receiving minds are both active and the conditions for interaction, if

it were at all possible, would be favorable. Just this condition

obtains in the court room every day. An innocent prisoner wants with

all his heart and soul to communicate the idea of his innocence to the

judge and jury. Of course, he does not succeed by telepathic means in

transferring to them any inkling of the truth. On the contrary, his

very nervousness and anxiety to set himself right before them will

sometimes actually cause prejudice.

The rule that has thus been exemplified in our courts of law holds for

all business transactions. The ordinary customs of business presume

that the buyer does not know what the seller paid for the particular

article that is being exchanged, and it is on the strength of this

that profit becomes possible. A few telepathic merchants or customers

would work serious havoc in business life.

What thus holds for important affairs in life is just as strikingly

exemplified in the trivial round of social existence and in our

intercourse with friends. Suppose one woman knew what another woman

thought of her!

That charming, old-fashioned institution "courting" would go entirely

by {144} the board, if there were any such thing as real telepathy. In

general, social life in all its features would become very, very

different to what it is.

How Much Slight External Expression Conveys.--Mrs. Coventry Patmore,

the English poet's wife, once told a little story of some people who

lived in a distant island where the inhabitants possessed tails. These

tails were, as they are on the animals, organs of expression, but of

involuntary and quite unconscious expression. It was utterly

impossible for the people there to say nice things to one another when

they had quite other things in mind, because if they did not like the

person their tails hung down behind; if they did like them they wagged

rather vigorously, no matter what their owner might be saying. This

simple revelation of feelings, so much less than even the slightest

degree of telepathy would occasion, was quite enough to work a

revolution in the social affairs of this romantic island. It made the

people truthful and candid in their relations with one another.

Negation of Telepathy.--There is, perhaps, some evidence of the

occurring of telepathy in special cases, but all of our present-day

life is organized on a firm basis of complete negation of the

existence or occurrence of telepathy to even the slightest degree.

Every-day experiences teach us that husbands and wives, even those who

have the greatest love and confidence toward each other, do not really

know their life partners, for it frequently happens that something

turns up which reveals an unsuspected side of character even after

many years of intimate union.

We human beings are "infinitely repellent particles," to use the

phrase, of Matthew Arnold. We never get close enough to one another to

have a real glimpse into the depths of other minds. The information

that is supposed to pass by telepathy from one person to another is so

often just the kind that we would most sedulously conceal. There is

extreme unlikelihood then that any such passage of information takes

place. The cases cited, as proof of this transference of thought, are

much more likely to be coincidences than any evidence of true

telepathy.

Supposed Examples of Telepathy.--In the first place, though there are

opportunities for the exhibition of the phenomena of telepathy every

day and every hour of existence, the cases in which it is supposed to

occur are extremely rare and are distant from one another, both in

time and place. Even the people who claim to have had the phenomena of

telepathy happen to them once or twice, do not pretend that it is at

all a common occurrence with them, and as for the supposed exhibitions

of telepathy upon the stage, these have been exposed over and over

again as the simplest fakes.

As to the cases of telepathy that have been reported, with careful

collection of evidence, to the psychic research societies, and which

are few in number, though some of them are very difficult to explain,

there is no reason why they should not be striking coincidences rather

than startling examples of telepathy. An example will illustrate what

I mean:

A few years ago what seemed to be a complete case of telepathy was

reported in connection with a railroad accident. A Western man about

to take an express train for the East was the object of a good deal of

solicitude. There had previously been a series of accidents to this

very fast train which he was to take. This fact had been discussed in

the family, and did not tend to allay the fears of those who remained

at home. During the night the {145} train actually left the track, and

the car in which the subject of the story was asleep rolled down the

bank.

At the moment his train went down the bank the thought of his wife and

daughter came very vividly to his mind. For a moment the awful

position in which they would be placed if anything serious happened to

him occupied his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. As soon

as he could, he telegraphed home that he was unhurt, with the

understanding that the telegram should not be delivered before the

following morning.

During the night mother and daughter sleeping in adjoining rooms were

wakened at the same moment, and very seriously disturbed, by

something, they knew not quite what. They rose at once to go to each

other and met at the door. They felt vaguely that father was in some

way connected with their awakening and disturbance of mind. After they

received his telegram they were sure that what disturbed them during

the night was the telepathic communication of father's danger. Each

had, however, deliberately kept from speaking of her impression. When

they found that he had passed through the danger unhurt, they were

sure that it was a call from him that each had heard.

This bears most of the ear-marks of a genuine case of telepathy. Here

are minds whose cells by custom and inheritance are finely attuned to

those of a distant mind that is suddenly very much disturbed. If the

perturbations of that first mind were carried through the ether by a

sort of wireless telegraphy, it would apparently not be very

surprising. So carried, they woke the receptive cells of similar minds

at a long distance, and mother and daughter felt the thrill at the

same instant. Vague though it was, there was a telepathic message.

But there were other passengers in this train who had near and dear

relatives, yet none of them received communications. There have been

literally hundreds of thousands of other accidents in the past fifty

years of railroading in which passengers who have been put in very

serious danger, have thought intensely of their loved ones, and yet,

there has been at most only a dozen or so examples of vague telepathy

of this class. Similar cases to this are extremely rare, though

accidents in America are very frequent. At most, then, we are in the

presence of a very exceptional case. Such cases would mean nothing as

evidence for a scientific law, since they occur so rarely as to aptly

exemplify the old adage that the exception proves the rule. The rule

evidently is that there is no communication at a distance, hence the

surprise when there seems to be some reason for thinking that a

communication has actually taken place. Instead of proving that

telepathy occurs, such cases make it clear, to the limit of

demonstration, that telepathy does not occur unless some extremely

special conditions intervene to make it possible.

How much more easy it is to explain such a case on the score of

coincidence! Of course, mother and daughter, with father absent, and

absent in the midst of what they thought was danger, would go to bed

anxiously thinking of him. They would sleep lightly because of the

worry. Any slight unusual noise would wake them, and at once the

thought of father and his danger would occur to them. If the noise was

sudden, and not repeated, and therefore inexplicable to one awakened

out of sleep, they would probably be so disturbed that it is easy to

understand that they would arise at once and seek each other's

company. Their meeting, therefore, in the doorway between their rooms

would be readily explicable. Neither would say much {146} about the

subject uppermost in her thoughts in order to shield the other. The

telegram in the morning would throw a glow of retrospective light on

the events and seem to give an entirely new significance to their

thoughts. The whole affair, though only a coincidence, would seem to

be a demonstration of telepathy.

Even more marvelous instances of coincidence, in which there was no

question of anything more than coincidence, have been related. The

English Psychical Research Society reported the case of a young man

sent to find some trace of his brother who had disappeared

mysteriously from a steamer sailing from Plymouth to Lisbon. On board

the steamer late at night he stood by the rail thinking of his lost

brother and wondering what could possibly have become of him. Suddenly

as he looked down into the ocean a body came bobbing up out of the

waves almost directly under his gaze. He reported it to the officers

of the vessel and it was grappled for and lifted aboard. It proved to

be the body of his brother. Is this an example of telepathy, that is,

of the mental influence of the perturbed spirit of the live brother

upon the dead brother's body floating below the surface? No one would

stretch supposed telepathy to that extent. The steamer disturbed the

body which had been floating below the surface, as bodies do,

gradually developing within themselves the gases of decomposition.

After a time any slight disturbance, as, for instance, the booming of

a cannon or the passage of even a small boat, will bring a body up. It

so happened that the brother was on the spot, and actually thinking of

the body, but that was the merest coincidence. There was no connection

of cause and effect.

Most of the cases of so-called telepathy can be explained in this way.

As we have said, no source of error is so copious as that of

concluding that because one thing happens after another therefore the

second is caused by the first. People who are so inclined will still

continue to accept such a notion of connection of cause and effect,

however, and we shall have many cases of supposed telepathy exploited

for us on no better grounds than this.

Twins and Telepathy.--There is a definite popular impression that

twins are gifted with the power of telepathic communication much more

than others. Accepting Sir Wm. Crookes' theory, the possibility of

mental reciprocal influence, even at a distance, is greater for them,

since their brain cells must be considered as having corresponding

moments of vibration. Twins of the same sex, especially those who

resemble one another closely, are usually born from a single ovum. The

intimate relations of two such beings to each other can be readily

understood, so that we have many stories of mental communication at

long distances and curious warnings, forebodings and communications of

danger, and especially of sickness and death.

Especially does one find stories of wraith-like appearances of one to

the other of such persons at the moment of death. A series of these

stories, apparently well authenticated, is published by the Psychic

Research Society. There are also a number of tales, seemingly well

attested, of cloud-like shapes of other persons at the moment of

death. As a consequence, there has been developed an idea that there

is some evidence of the distinct possibility of such appearances when

the soul leaves the body. It, however, seems very doubtful whether

these are anything more than a very striking coincidence. Twins are

likely to be almost constantly in one another's minds, so there is

abundant {147} room for coincidences. But any number of twins have

died at a distance from each other without there being any such

warning. Occasionally such startling appearances occur in connection

with people who are so slightly related, or whose existence bears such

slight importance to each other, that it is hard to understand why the

appearance may have come. Whether they are anything more than the

figment of an excited imagination remains to be seen, for, while we

have a little positive evidence, this only emphasizes the possibility

of coincidental day-dreaming in nervous persons.

Negative Tests.--We hear much of the possibility of reading minds at a

distance, or of getting definite information from sealed documents and

the like, but it must not be forgotten that whenever definite

conditions have been set down, so that all the actions of the supposed

clairvoyant could be controlled, then telepathy has always failed to

be manifested. Sir James Simpson, for instance, publicly offered to

give a five-hundred-pound note, which he had placed in a safe deposit

vault, to anyone who could read its number which he had carefully

impressed on his own mind. Needless to say, no one got it. In the days

when Bishop, the exhibiting mind reader, was creating such a furore in

New York and London by supposedly reading people's minds, Labouchere,

the editor of London _Truth_, offered a similar opportunity to Bishop,

but advantage of it was not taken. Bishop's power was entirely due to

muscle reading. People make involuntary movements of muscles that are

very slight, but sufficient for a trained observer to notice,

especially if his hand is on the individual experiencing the emotions,

and the consequent muscle reflexes. [Footnote 19] About the middle of

the last century, the French Academy made a labored investigation of

telepathy and found that whatever there seemed to be in it, when

control was not properly kept, it at once was demonstrated to be

impossible when conditions were planned so as to prevent deception.

[Footnote 19: The story of Hans, the calculating horse, shows that

even animals usually thought rather dull-witted may catch muscle

movements so slight as to be scarcely visible to any but one looking

particularly for them.]

If patients are worried over disturbing influences from others or the

reading of their thoughts or telepathic suggestions, a calm review

with them of the practical side of this subject, as we have come to

know it in the modern time from actual investigation, will do more

than anything else to relieve their apprehensions. Most of these

patients are unfortunately insane, but the reasoning will help even

some of these. There are some quite rational believers in such

manifestations who will be greatly benefitted.