to special actions in which man takes in account remembrances of former acts and of their results, in which he enforces on himself by a special effort obedience to logical and moral laws.  A little fatigue and a slight degree of exhaustion are sufficient for such an action to become difficult and impossible to prolong for a long time.  Furthermore, the disorders of the experimental conduct or of the rational conduct are very frequent.  These disorders only reach the superior actions which are not absolutely necessary to the conservation of social order.  They can be easily repaired by inferior acts:  if the man does not obey pure moral principles, at least he can conduct himself in appearance in an analogous manner through fear of the prison.  Also, these disorders of the superior functions are considered as slight; they are called errors, or faults, and it is admitted that the subjects remain normal beings.

At the other extremity of the hierarchical series of tendencies the acts are simply reflex.  When the disease descends to this level, when the elementary acts can no longer be executed correctly, we do not hesitate either, and we consider these disorders (related with known lesions) as organic diseases of the nervous system.  But between these two terms we note disorders in behavior which are more difficult to interpret.  These disorders are too grave and too difficult to modify by our usual processes of education and punishment for us to consider them as mere errors or as moral faults; they are variable; they are not accompanied by actually visible lesions and we have trouble in classing them among the acknowledged deteriorations of the organism.  There is the province of neuroses and psychoses, intermedium between that of rational errors and that of organic diseases of the nervous system.  It corresponds to the disorders of medium psychological functions, to the group of these operations which establish a union more or less solid between the language and the movements of limbs and which give birth to our wills and beliefs.

Can one establish, in this group, a distinction between neuroses and psychoses that rests on some more precise notion and that is not limited to distinguishing them in a legal point of view?  A more profound knowledge of the mechanisms of the will and belief would perhaps permit us to do so.  We are capable of wills and beliefs of a superior order when we reach decision after reflection.  The operation of reflection which hinders tendencies and maintains them in the shape of ideas, which compares ideas and which only decides after this deliberation, constitutes the highest form of the medium operations of the human mind.  Lower, still, there exists will and belief, but they are formed without reflection, without stoppage of ideas, without deliberation; they are the result of an immediate assent which transforms verbal formulas into wills and beliefs as soon as they strike the attention, as soon as they are accompanied by a powerful sentiment.  The immediate assent is the inferior form of these tendencies.