Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/68

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

now ceased to be marked off, have dwindled away, the others still form the centres of integration for the higher members of the legal profession.

Then we come to the lower members, who in early days became incorporated.

"It was ordained by stat. 4 Henry IV. c. 18, that all attornies should be examined by the justices, and by their discretions their names should be put in a roll: they were to be good and virtuous, and of good fame."

Other groupings of more modern and less coherent kinds have to be named. There is the Bar Committee, serving as an organ for the practising barristers; and there are the relatively vague unions of barristers who go the same circuits. For solicitors there is in London a central Law Society, along with which may be named Law Societies in leading provincial districts; and there are also various benevolent associations formed within these larger bodies.

Nor let us omit to notice how in this case, as in all cases, the process of integration has been accompanied by progress in definiteness. Early in its history the body of barristers separated itself by its regulations from the trading community; and then, more recently, it has increased its distinctness of demarcation by excluding those not adequately instructed. So too, with the body of solicitors. This has fenced itself round by certain regulations respecting admission, conduct, and practice, in such wise that by striking off the rolls those who have not conformed to the rules complete precision is given to the limits of the body.

And then, as serving to hold together these larger and smaller definitely consolidated aggregates, we have various periodicals—several weekly law-journals, and now also a law-quarterly.



A curious case of dual consciousness is recorded in the English journal Brain, by Dr. Lewis C. Bruce, late of the Derby Borough Lunatic Asylum, Deterioration is going on in the brain of the patient, but at different rates in the two lobes. Sometimes the right side alone acts; and then the patient talks Welsh, takes little interest in life, does not care for money or tobacco or for anything but his food, is left-handed, and is almost idiotic. When that side of the brain is inert and the left side is acting, the patient speaks chiefly English, is eager for money and tobacco, being even almost ready to steal them, and is right-handed. For a short interval between these two conditions, he mingles Welsh and English words, uses both hands, and is about halfway active. Of specimens of his handwriting in both stages, the Welsh can hardly be read and goes from right to left, while the English is legible, from left to right, and is generally normal. In either stage he seems to have no knowledge of what has passed in the other. The case seems to suggest that the two sides of the brain may have action independently of one another, and may be organs of communication with the external world of often very different degrees of power.