efforts of attention, and proceeded, with the utmost caution, I perceived that I uniformly spoke other words than those I intended. My soul was at present as little master of the organs of speech, as it had been before of my hand in writing. Thank God, this state did not continue very long, for, in about half an hour, my head began to grow clearer, the strange and tiresome ideas became less vivid and turbulent, and I could command my own thoughts with less interruption.

“I now wished to ring for my servant, and desire him to inform my wife to come to me; but I found it still necessary to wait a little longer to exercise myself in the right pronunciation of the few words I had to say: and the first half hour's conversation I had with her was, on my part, preserved with a slow and anxious circumspection, until at last I gradually found myself as clear and serene as in the beginning of the day, all that now remained was a slight headache. I recollected the receipt I had begun to write, and in which I knew I had blundered; and upon examining it, I observed to my great astonishment, that instead of the words fifty dollars, being one half year's rate, which I ought to have written, the words were fifty dollars through the salvation of Bra-, with a break after it, for the word Bra was at the end of a line. I cannot recollect any perception, or business which I had to transact, that could, by means of an obscure influence, have produced this phenomenon."

Reverie, when proceeding, as in this case, from excessive application, will seldom be difficult of cure: the removal of the exciting cause will of itself naturally constitute the remedy. When it arises from such a defect in education as that already mentioned, the cure will be more difficult, although even then it is not always impracticable. In such a case, the person should be strongly directed to those subjects in which he feels most interest, and never be made to study what he has not a positive liking for. Active employment and gay and pleasant society, may effect much in restoring the intellectual balance. In all cases, whatever, he should never be left long alone; as nothing has such a tendency to foster this state of mind as solitude.

CHAPTER XVII.

ABSTRACTION.

ABSTRACTION, or absence of mind, has been confounded with reverie, but it is, in reality, a different intellectual operation; for as in the latter a difficulty is experienced in making the mind bear strongly on any one point, in the former its whole energies are concentrated towards a single focus, and every other circumstance is, for the time, utterly forgotten. Such was the case with Sir Isaac Newton when, in a fit of absence, he made a tobacco stopper of the lady's finger, and with Archimedes, who remained unconscious and unmoved during the noise and slaughter of captured Syracuse. Though, in general, abstraction is easily broken by outward impressions, there have been instances where it has been so powerful as to render the individuals laboring under it insensible to pain. Pinel in his Nosographie Philosophique speaks of a priest who in a fit of mental absence was unconscious of the pain of burning; and

Cardan brought himself into such a state as to be insensible to all external impression.

Some men are naturally very absent; others acquire this habit from particular pursuits, such as mathematics, and other studies demanding much calculation. Indeed, all studies which require deep thinking, are apt to induce mental absence, in consequence of the sensorial power being drained from the general circumference of the mind, and directed strongly to a certain point. This draining, while it invigorates the organ of the particular faculty towards which the sensorial energy is concentrated, leaves the others in an inanimate state, and incapacitates them from performing their proper functions; hence persons subject to abstraction are apt to commit a thousand ludicrous errors; they are perpetually blundering-committing a multitude of petty, yet harmless offences against established rules, and forever getting into scrapes and absurd situations. Nothing is more common than for an absent man to take the hat of another person instead of his own, to give away a guinea for a shilling, to mistake his lodgings, forget invitations, and so forth. When the fit of abstraction is very strong, he neither hears what is said to him, nor sees what is passing around. "While you fancy,” says Budgell, in the 77th No. of the Spectator, "he is admiring a beautiful woman, it is an even wager that he is solving a proposition in Euclid; and while you imagine he is reading the Paris Gazette, it is far from being impossible that he is

pulling down and rebuilding his country house." In some cases the individual requires to be shaken before he can be brought to take notice of any occurrence; and it is often difficult to make him comprehend even the simplest proposition. Abstraction, therefore, bears an analogy to dreaming; inasmuch as, in each of these states, some faculties are active, while others are at rest. In dreaming, however, the organs of the quiescent faculties are in a much deeper slumber, and less easily roused into activity than in abstraction; hence in the great majority of cases, abstraction is broken with greater facility than sleep.

It appears from the observations of the Edinburgh phrenologists, that individuals who have a large development of the organ of Concentrativeness are peculiarly liable to fall into a state of abstraction. The effect of such a development is fixity of ideas—the power and tendency to think consecutively and steadily upon one subject. "In conversing with some individuals," says Mr. Combe,* "we find them fall naturally into a connected train of thinking; either dwelling on a subject which interests them, till they have placed it clearly before the mind, or passing naturally and gracefully to a connected topic. Such persons uniformly have this organ large. We meet with others, who in similar circumstances, never pursue one idea for two consecutive seconds, who

* System of Phrenology, p. 135.