The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-08-27
ChrOnOmetry of Mind.

Sir Henry Holland, in his recently
" Fragmentary Papers, " touches upon
some minor but very interesting ques-
tions of psychology. In one of these
disquisitions he treats of mental opera
tions in relation to time He says :
Within a minute 1 have been able to
coerce the mind, so to speak, into more
than a dozen acts or states of thought
so homogeneous that no natural associa
ton could possibly bring them into sue
cession. In illustration l note here GER
tain objects which, with a watch before
me, have succeeded in COMPRISING,
distinctly and successfully, within thirty
seconds of time-the pyramids of Chi
zeh, the OrnithOrhycus, Julius Caesar,
the Ottawa Falls, the rings of Saturn,
the Apollo Belvedere. This is an expe-
riment 1 have often made on myself,
and with the same general result. 1t
would be hard to name or describe the
operation of mind by which these sue
cessive objects have been thus suddenly
evoked and dismissed. There is the vo-
lition to change; but how must we de-
fine that effort by which the mind,
without any principle of selection or
association, can grasp SO rapidly sue
cession of images thus homogeneous,
drawn seemingly at random from past
thoughts and memories ? l call it an
effort because it is felt as such, and
cannot be long continued without ia
tigue.
In commenting upon this the writer
in Nature says: This is a curious sub
ject which easily admits of experiment,
but it will be found that the velocity
with which thoughts can be made to
succeed each other depends entirely
upon the degree of similarity or cOnnec-
don between them. Judging from my
own experience and that of three stu
dents, well qualified to test the matter,
I find that where the objects thought
of are as homogeneous as possible, the
number which the mind can suggest to
itself in a minute varies from twelve.
the result of Sir Henry Holland, up to
about twenty. Any one who tries the
experiment, however, will find that there
is an almost insuperable temptation to
go off on lines of association. 10 avoid
these, and yet to think rapidly, re-
quires a very disagreeable effort, be-
coming more and more painful by repe-
tition. When the thoughts are restricted
within certain grooves, as 1t were, the
result is more rapid succession. Thus
one student was able to think in a min.
ute of thirty different kinds of actions,
forty-six animals, fifty places, or fifty
persons. 1 can myself think without
much effort of thirty-two animals or
forty persons or places in a minute.
Even in these cases, however, 1t will be
found that the rapidity greatly depends
upon the degree in which the objects
have been associated. When thoughts
have been very closely and frequently
linked together, the number which may
be compressed within minute is much
greater. ] fad that can count about
ninety-six in half a minute, which, with
out allowing for the two places OF fig
ures, gives 1872 thoughts per minute. l
can think of every letter in the alphabet
in five seconds at most, which is at the
rate of more than 800 per minute. Fin
ally, by counting the first ten minutes
over and over again, have compressed
nearly 400 changes of idea within the
minute.