Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/156

152 which mental excitation moves. Trains of sensations thus arise which can not be called either adjustive nor disjustive. They move through the brain along the line of greatest surplus energy and of themselves yield results of neither value nor detriment. The child would live, think, remember and forget; he would neither gain nor suffer by this automatic thought. Only after bones grow can it make the motor coordinations on which adjustment depends.

Very different effects follow strong, vivid impressions to which the motor powers are not ready to respond. These strong stimuli passing over into action prematurely tax the motor organs and disarrange them. Such effects are permanent, and motor strains are brought on that render future development abnormal. When a child walks too soon, the strains are readily seen, and it is generally recognized that the ill effects endure. If this is true of a child a year old, would not strong mental excitement in a child four weeks old produce even greater disorders, disturb motor development, and, reacting on the mental life, make it abnormal? Mental disorders are usually interpreted as wrong association of ideas bound together by strong sensory connections. The derangement is thought to be confined to the sensory system. The disorders are, however, not sensory, but motor. The premature activity of motor powers caused by sensory excitement produces strains that persist. The abnormal parts when excited arouse trains of thought that are disjustive. A strong person can repress them; he can even exclude them from consciousness; but when he sleeps or is weakened in any way, they intrude into his consciousness and disturb the normal flow of ideas.

Another way of presenting this thought is to contrast it with the theory of a subconscious mind. Here it is assumed that a sensory underworld exists in which ideas are stored. From this mental cavern, they break forth to disturb the normal consciousness on which adjustment depends. The connection between thoughts should not be associations, but movements. Subconscious trains of thought are in reality movements. They are, however, morbid disjustive movements, performed beyond the realm of consciousness. Could we really see what takes place, their motor origin would become apparent. The subconscious is a disjustive motor realm deprived of normal external connections.

Sensory excitement in an infant starts premature motor reactions which strains the unformed parts. It thus leaves permanent effects that appear in consciousness as disjustive trains of thought. There is thus a disjustive world in the background of every individual who has experienced sensory storms in infancy. The shock he then felt was not a shock to his mental associations, but to his motor coordinations. The child should live in his present sense impressions, and forget them when other agencies start new trains of thought. The lasting impressions have another origin. Strong stimuli, whether coming from the external