It has been told of a modern astronomer that one summer night, when he was withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness showed a phenomenon. He passed the whole night in observing it, and when they came to him early in the morning and found him in the same attitude, he said, like one who has been collecting his thoughts for a few moments:
“It must be thus; but I will go to bed before it is too late.” He had gazed the entire night and was not aware of it.
(511)
See [Absorption, Mental].
CONCERT, LACK OF
Crazy people never act together, says the superintendent of a large asylum for the insane, quoted in The Medical Times. “If one inmate attacks an attendant, as sometimes happens, the others would look upon it as no affair of theirs and simply watch it out. The moment we discovered two or more inmates working together we would know they were on the road to recovery.” It is on this account that there are so few concerted mutinies in insane asylums; so that the number of attendants does not have to be large.
(512)
Conclusion, A Reasonable—See [Ethical Principle].
CONDEMNED, THE
“Vessels fitted unto destruction”—how many may be unconsciously so marked by their Maker! A vessel is condemned as unseaworthy; her sails are sold, her spars and rigging, and when all that can be moved is gone, the dismantled hulk is moored in some coaling station. There, black from stem to stern, with a great white number painted on her side, she floats until her timbers rot to pieces—