[6]
The active condition of the muscles of the eyes is that of convergence;
and Professor Donders remarks, as bearing on their divergence during
a period of complete abstraction, that when one eye becomes blind,
it almost always, after a short lapse of time, deviates outwards;
for its muscles are no longer used in moving the eyeball inwards
for the sake of binocular vision.
[6] Gratiolet remarks (De la Phys. p. 35), "Quand l'attention
est fixee sur quelque image interieure, l'oeil regarde dqns le
vide et s'associe automatiquement a la contemplation de l'esprit."
But this view hardly deserves to be called an explanation.
Perplexed reflection is often accompanied by certain movements
or gestures. At such times we commonly raise our hands
to our foreheads, mouths, or chins; but we do not act thus,
as far as I have seen, when we are quite lost in meditation,
and no difficulty is encountered. Plautus, describing in one
of his plays[7] a puzzled man, says, "Now look, he has pillared
his chin upon his hand." Even so trifling and apparently
unmeaning a gesture as the raising of the hand to the face has
been observed with some savages.
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