ectly, 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.

If one wished to establish a scientific distinction between neuroses and
psychoses, I should say, in a summary fashion, that in neuroses the
reflection alone is disturbed, that in psychoses the immediate assent
itself is affected. The shrinkage of the conscience, doubts, aboulias,
obsessions, scruples are always disorders of the reflected will and
belief. On the contrary, irresistible impulsions, deliriums,
indifferences which suppress desires and only allow elementary
agitations to subsi