[76] When I wrote these words I was under the impression that I was the sole originator of the physiological theory of attention therein set forth. Since the appearance of this book, however, I have read Alfred Lehmann’s work, Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten normalen Zustände, Leipzig, 1890, and have there (pp. 27 et seq.) found my theory in almost identical words. Lehmann, then, published it two years before I did, which fact I here duly acknowledge. That we arrived at this conclusion independently of each other would testify that the hypothesis of vaso-motor reflex action is really explanatory. Wundt (Hypnotismus und Suggestion, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 27-30), it is true, criticises Lehmann’s work, but he seems to agree with this hypothesis—which is also mine—or, at least, raises no objection to it.
[77] Brain, January, 1886, quoted by Ribot, Psychologie de l’Attention, p. 68.
[78] Ribot, op. cit., pp. 106 and 119.
[79] Legrain, op. cit., p. 177.
[80] Ibid., p. 156.
[81] In the chapter which treats of French Neomystics, I shall give a cluster of such disconnected and mutually exclusive expressions, which are quite parallel with the instances cited by Legrain, of the manner of speech among those acknowledged to be of weak mind. In this place only one passage may be repeated from the Vte E. M. de Vogué, Le Roman Russe, Paris, 1888, in which this mystical author, unconsciously and involuntarily, characterizes admirably the shadowiness and emptiness of mystic diction, while praising it as something superior. ‘One trait,’ he says (p. 215), ‘they’ (certain Russian authors) ‘have in common, viz., the art of awakening series of feelings and thoughts by a line, a word, by endless re-echoings [résonnances].... The words you read on this paper appear to be written, not in length, but in depth. They leave behind them a train of faint reverberations, which are gradually lost, no one knows where.’ And p. 227: ‘They see men and things in the gray light of earliest dawn. The weakly indicated outlines end in a confused and clouded “perhaps.” ...’
[82] ‘It is certain that the Beautiful never has such charms for us as when we read it attentively in a language which we only half understand. It is the ambiguity, the uncertainty, i.e.. the pliability of words, which is one of their greatest advantages, and renders it possible to make an exact [!] use of them.’—Joubert, quoted by Charles Morice, La Littérature de tout-à-l’heure. Paris, 1889, p. 171.
[83] Gérard de Nerval, Le Rêve et la Vie, Paris, 1868, p. 53: ‘Everything in Nature assumed a different aspect. Mysterious voices issued from plants, trees, animals, the smallest insects, to warn and to encourage me. I discerned mysterious turns in the utterances of my companions, and understood their purport. Even formless and inanimate things ministered to the workings of my mind.’ Here is a perfect instance of that ‘comprehension of the mysterious’ which is one of the most common fancies of the insane.
[84] An imbecile degenerate, the history of whose illness is related by Dr. G. Ballet, said: ‘Il y a mille ans que le monde est monde. Milan, la cathédrale de Milan’ (La Semaine médicale, 1892, p. 133). ‘Mille ans’ (a thousand years) calls up in his consciousness the like-sounding word ‘Milan,’ although there is absolutely no rational connection between the two ideas. A graphomaniac named Jasno, whose case is cited by Lombroso, says ‘la main se mène’ (the hand guides itself). He then begins to speak of ‘semaine’ (week), and continues to play upon the like-sounding words ‘se mène,’ ‘semaine,’ and ‘main’ (Genie und Irsinn, p. 264). In the book of a German graphomaniac entitled Rembrandt als Erzieher, Leipzig, 1890 (a book which I shall have to refer to more than once, as an example of the lucubrations of a weak mind), I find, on the very first pages, the following juxtaposition of words according to their resemblance in sound: ‘Sie verkünden eine Rückkehr ... zur Einheit und Feinheit’ (p. 3). ‘Je ungeschliffener Jemand ist, desto mehr ist an ihm zu schleifen’ (p. 4). ‘Jede rechte Bildung ist bildend, formend, schöpferisch, und also künstlerisch’ (p. 8). ‘Rembrandt war nicht nur ein protestantischer Künstler, sondern auch ein künstlerischer Protestant’ (p. 14). ‘Sein Hundert guldenblatt allein könnte schon als ein Tausendgüldenkraut gegen so mancherlei Schäden ... dienen’ (p. 23). ‘Christus und Rembrandt haben ... darin etwas Gemeinsames, dass Jener die religiöse, dieser die künstlerische Armseligkeit—die Seligkeit der Armen—zu ... Ehren bringt’ (p. 25.), etc.
[85] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile. Paris, 1891, p. 153.