Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra11121883roya).pdf/159

 And now as to latah itself, derivation and origin apart.

The Malay acceptation of the word is very wide. It includes all persons of a peculiarly nervous organization, ranging from those who, from their mental constitution, seem absolutely subservient to another's will; down to those who appear merely of a markedly excitable temperament.

A pathologist would of course—and I trust I may now say will— differentiate and classify the different degrees of this mental peculiarity. As a non-scientist, I am content to treat the subject in the broad light in which it is presented to the Malay mind by their own unscientific and comprehensive word latah.

I suppose I am not taking too much for granted when I assume that, by this time, the general character of the Malay is more or less understood by the civilised world. He has recently been called "the Irishman of the East," with more happiness than generally marks the definitions of "Our Special Correspondent."

The only point of resemblance between "this and that," upon which I would lay stress here, is the intense impressionability of the Malay.

Externally impassive the Malays are, as a race, but no one can long have had intimate dealings with them without being struck by their extraordinary susceptibility and peculiar sensitiveness to the influence of what we should call the accidents of every-day- life.

No man, pace all Irishmen, is more "touchy" than a Malay.

It is this nervous impressionability which leads to those mysterious vendettas and unaccountable amoks, which so often place the European completely at fault in dealing with this otherwise charming and lovcable people. And it is this intensified nervous sensibility which is, I am convinced, at the base of the peculiarity of which I have to speak. I think it will best serve the purpose— the admittedly humble purpose—I have in view, if I begin at what appears to me to be the bottom of the whole of the phenomena I have to notice, and to work up to the top, noting the divisions into