M. Féré, is that it yields another instance of a division of personality. The delirious speech and act belong to a second self, temporarily separated from the normal consciousness.—The nature and mechanism of attention are illustrated by the phenomena of 'fixed ideas.' Theories of attention fall under two heads: those which, like that of M. Ribot, emphasize the motor element, and make attention the result of affective states; and those which give preponderance to the intensity of a representation indetermining attention to it. The evidence of pathology is for the latter view. 'Fixed ideas' are by no means always of great emotional interest, and when they are accompanied by strong emotion, it is usually of an unpleasant nature,—the effect rather than the cause of their persistence.—Two principal theories of the mechanism of will are, according to the writer, that which maintains that a man will always act in the direction of his greatest pleasure, and that which believes action to take place in the direction of the strongest excitation, without regard to emotional coloring. Here again, it is the latter or mechanical theory that is upheld by the study of morbid states. In all cases of morbid impulse, pathological terror and aboulia, the idea which produces or inhibits action does so not through its interest, which is usually slight, but wholly through its persistence and intensity.—Lastly, further light is thrown on the problem of a divided self by the fact that two distinct kinds of delirium may co-exist in the same subject ; and by the numerous instances where the patient organizes a certain set of his hallucinations into another being, "for whose benefit he alienates a portion of his personality."
M. Ferrero proposes to apply the term "ideo-emotional arrest" to that stage in the history of a custom when its original significance is lost sight of, and it is perpetuated by the sheer force of conservatism. For example, there were primitively three conscious steps in the mind of one who performed an act of salutation:—
(1) The desire to win the favor of the man he saluted.
(2) The idea that the ceremonial act would effect this end.
(3) The idea that the act would serve the end, because the personsaluted would comprehend that one who performed it could have no hostile intention.—Later, the third step was dropped out, and the
