Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/84

74 out a calculation on the blackboard, while continuing to speak of matters outside the subject of the calculation. It is more a matter of habit than an indication of any mental power, natural or acquired, to speak or write sentences, even of considerable length, after the mind has passed on to other matters. In a similar way some persons can write different words with the right and left hands, and this, too, while speaking of other matters. (We have seen this done by Professor Morse, the American naturalist, whose two hands added words to the diagrams he had drawn while his voice dealt with other parts of the drawing; to add to the wonder, too, he wrote the words indifferently from right to left or from left to right.) In reality the person who thus does two things at once is no more thinking of two things at once than a clock is, when the striking and the working machinery are both in action at the same time. Since the above was written we have noticed a passage in Dr. Carpenter's "Mental Physiology," p. 719, bearing on the matter we have been dealing with: "The following statement recently made to the writer by a gentleman of high intelligence, the editor of a most important provincial newspaper, would be almost incredible, if cases somewhat similar were not already familiar to us: 'I was formerly,' he said, 'a reporter in the House of Commons; and it several times happened to me that, having fallen asleep from sheer fatigue toward the end of a debate, I had found, on awaking after a short interval of entire unconsciousness, that I had continued to note down correctly the speaker's words. I believe,' he added, 'that this is not an uncommon experience among Parliamentary reporters.' The reading aloud with correct emphasis and intonation, or the performance of a piece of music, or (as in the case of Albert Smith) the recitation of a frequently repeated composition, while the conscious mind is entirely engrossed in its own thoughts and feelings, may be thus accounted for without the supposition that the mind is actively engaged in two different operations at the same moment, which would seem tantamount to saying that there are two egos in the same organism." An instance in the writer's experience seems even more remarkable than the reporter's work during sleep, for he had but to continue a mechanical process, whereas in the writer's case there must have been thought. Late one evening at Cambridge the writer began a game of chess with a fellow student (now a clergyman, and well known in chess circles). The writer was tired after a long day's rowing, but continued the game to the best of his ability until at a certain stage he fell asleep, or rather fell into a waking dream. At any rate, all remembrance of what passed after that part of the game had entirely escaped him when he awoke or returned to consciousness about three in the morning. The chess-board was there, but the men were not as when the last conscious move was made. The opponent's king was checkmated. The writer supposed his opponent had set the men in this position either as a joke or in trying over some end game. But he was assured that the game had continued to the end, and that he (the writer) had won, apparently playing as if fully conscious! Of course, he can not certify this of his own knowledge.

As an illustration of special mental power shown in health, by a person whose mental condition in illness we shall consider afterward, Sir Walter Scott may be mentioned. The account given by his amanuensis has seemed surprising to many, unfamiliar with the nature of literary composition (at least after long practice), but is in reality such as any one who writes much can quite readily understand, or might even have known must necessarily be correct. "His thoughts," says the secretary to whom Scott dictated his "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,"