Boris Sidis

“ A moment-consciousness is formed of high organizing and assimilating power. Any experience relevant and irrelevant entering consciousness is greedily absorbed and assimilated. Any flitting thought, any passing impression is worked in and organized into the moment. All other moments fall a prey to this dominant all-absorbing moment. ”

“ The delusion constituting the predominant moment-consciousness in the patient's life absorbs and assimilates most, if not all of the material that gains access to the patient's psychic life. The moment like a cancerous growth expands, grows, and develops at the expense of other moments, starves them by cutting off their mental food supply. What cannot be used by the moment is rejected as waste material. ”

“ The mental activity of the idiot resembles the lower types of animal psychosis. Although as we have already pointed out, the consciousness of the idiot and that of the animal are by no means identical, still both belong to a low type of moment, and as such, they may be put on the same level.
In pathological cases where mental degeneration sets in we also have a similar course. The moment of the higher type becomes degraded and falls to the level of lower and lowermost types, according to the advance of the process of degeneration. ”