bell ought to be rung; he then returned to his room, that he might die in a proper way. But the exercise taken on this occasion proved so beneficial to him, that he soon recovered from his hypochondriasis. The sensations of approaching death, and the exercise of running to the belfry, were, in this example, not compared with each other; the strength required to ring the bell, and the attention necessary for ringing it properly, were disregarded by the student. He could not attend to them, and compare them with his morbid impression of approaching death; therefore the morbid impression remained, and so long as it remained he was insane. The unusual circumstance of a man ordering his own passing-bell to be rung was not attended to; that is, certain comparisons were not made which would have shown him that is was unusual. Yet his sensations were not lost; he heard the unskilful ringing, and rose in a passion to rectify it; but he could compare none of these things with the morbid sensations of imaginary death."- Conolly on Insanity, pp. 309-313. The defect of this theory seems to be, that it is properly applicable only to those cases of insanity which are attended with hallucination, and even here it does not describe the most characteristic feature of the malady. It does not extend to what we have called "moral idiocy," nor to impulsive insanity; for, in the former case, we cannot declare with certainty, that any one faculty of the mind is diseased, and in the latter, only the power of comparison is lost, and that only at the instant when the propensity masters the will. Again, it is only by an undue refinement of analysis, that the definition is made to cover many of the ordinary cases of insanity. A monomaniac fancies that his nearest friends have entered into a conspiracy to do him harm. Here is no illusion of the senses, and though, in ordinary parlance, the notion is said to be an imaginary one, there is, properly speaking, no general disease of the imagination, and no impairment of its wonted vigor. The unfounded belief is irrational, but it is not imaginative, as it would be, if the sufferer fancied, for instance, that he was an inhabitant of an enchanted castle, and was surrounded by gnomes and dwarfs obedient to his will. Nor is it a case of false sensation; the patient may not fancy that he sees his friends striking at him with daggers, or that he hears them loading him with jests and opprobrium. He sees and hears them just as other men do; but he puts a false construction upon all their He imputes the basest motives to them, and treasures up in his memory their most insignificant motions as parts of one great design affecting his peace. He often shows remarkable ingenuity in these forced constructions, and will argue the matter till he frequently succeeds in puzzling his opponent. To affirm that the power of comparison here is impaired is only to palter with words. As in the case of Hamlet, we should say that there is rather an excess than a defect of the comparing faculty. It seems to us, that the most characteristic trait, even of those cases which are cited by Dr. Conolly as exemplifications of his theory, is a loss of the indirect controlling power which the will usually exercises over the propensities and the processes of the understanding. We call this power indirect, because the will cannot immediately govern the belief, or the succession of ideas, so as to give distinctness to an imperfect recollection, or to put aside an unpleasant thought. But it can indirectly labor to these ends, and human reason differs from brute instinct in no respect so much as in this sovereignty, partial though it be, which the will and the conscience exercise over the swift currents of the thoughts, and the impulse of the desires. This is chiefly done through the faculty of attention, which is directly dependent on the will. We can stay the succession of ideas at any instant, in order to dwell upon a selected thought, till we have considered it in all its parts and relations. Comparison itself is rightly defined by Dr. Conolly, only as an act of alternate attention to two objects; and it is therefore impaired or lost only when we cease to have command of the attention, because the will in this respect has become powerless. We distinguish fancies from realities only by an effort of attention to our sensations, which manifest the difference between the imaginary and the true. If circumstances prevent us from making this effort, we live in an unreal world, heedless and unconscious of external things. The same relaxation of the power of the will, by which mental phenomena are converted into real existences, removes all control and guidance from the thoughts, which then become confused and incoherent, a mere stream of inconsistent fancies. It is so in dreams; every sleeper is a madman, and would appear as such, if the will did not lose its power over the body also, so that action no longer manifests the delusions of the intellect. In the case of somnambulism, the muscles remain subject to the volitions of the sleeper, while the mind is under no control. He is, therefore, really insane, and, as such, the law does not hold him responsible for his deeds. To remove the check which the will has over the thoughts is like taking away the balancewheel from a watch, which then runs down with a hurried and irregular motion, no longer taking note of time. Every thinker perceives this effect if he abandons himself to a fit of reverie, when the most heterogeneous ideas chase each other in quick succession through the mind, without coherency or method, and leaving hardly a trace on the memory. Startle him from this state of dreamy abstraction, and he looks round bewildered, and requires a moment of effort, before he becomes conscious of his situation, and of the presence of surrounding things. Except the depression of spirits, he feels, for an instant, as Lear did, when wakening to a gleam of sanity, as the clouds which had obscured his intellect are for a moment parted. How admirably are the bewilderment of mind, and the effort to recall and fix the attention upon the bystanders, here depicted! It is the struggle of the will to regain its supremacy. "Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish, fond old man, Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man ; Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me ; To be my child Cordelia." In most cases of recovery, the patient retains no memory of what has occurred, or what he has done, during his madness; or, if any recollection remains, it is dim and perturbed, like that of a dream. Memory being dependent on attention, and that again on the will, this is precisely what we should expect when the power of volition is suspended. In cases of partial mania, the will loses its control over a particular thought, or set of ideas, which then occupy and harass the mind, being invested with a factitious importance, and leading to the most insane acts. A sane person, if an unpleasant thought or recollection comes upon him, can resolutely put it aside, and fix his attention upon other objects. But, if he be nervous and imaginative, irresolute of will, and defective in the power of attention, the unwelcome visitant especially if it be of a gloomy or exciting character, like the recollection of a calamity, a disappointment, or an insult usurps almost exclusive possession of the mind, and he sinks into habitual despondency. Every moment then increases his danger, and unless some counteracting cause, like the necessity for exertion, be applied, the train of thought at last entirely shakes off the sovereignty of the will, and the man becomes a monomaniac. The particular character of the delusion will be determined by the patient's former prevailing turn of mind, and by the chief emotions to which he was subject. A man's character is not altered by an attack of insanity; it is only developed and exposed, the check which was usually imposed on its free manifestations being now taken away. A person of sound mind soon learns to control his desires and propensities, from a regard to the opinions or the rights of others. His irascibility is repressed, his estimation of himself is carefully concealed, his lower appetites are governed, and he maintains that reserved and staid demeanour, through which only a penetrating eye, and observation sharpened by long experience, can detect the innate peculiarities of his disposition. This lesson of self-control is learned at so early a period, and is practised upon so habitually, that one is hardly conscious of effort in submitting to it, unless the primitive desires are of extraordinary force. Let the power of the will be destroyed by an attack of mental disease, and this veil is removed; the passions run riot, the leading emotion betrays itself in the grossest manner, and the sufferer appears like another being, even to his most intimate friends. The love of power, and an inordinate estimate of self, are among the most common infirmities of human nature; and nowhere are they so strikingly exhibited, though in a ludicrous light, as among the inmates of a lunatic asylum. Here comes a king of shreds and patches, with a paper crown on his head, and bits of tinsel showily disposed about his person, who announces himself as the Prince of Wales and emperor of the world, and greets his visiter with the utmost condescension, as he would a subject who had come to do him homage. But he suddenly breaks off in the midst of a pompous speech, to inform you, that he has just had a contest with the devil in that apartment, and had broken two of his ribs, this devil being an unfortunate keeper, to whose face he had taken a dislike, and whose bones he had actually broken. The walls of his room are scribbled all over, chiefly with the lofty titles of his greatness; as, "Supreme from the Almighty," "Mighty Prince," "Mighty General-in-Chief," "Great Mighty Grand Admiral," and the like. Another of the company is a poor, mad author, who, in one hour, has written an epic, embracing the universal history of Greece and Rome; has restored the Iliad to its state as it came from the genius of Kanki, who lived many millions of ages before the deluge of Ogyges; and accounts for his wonderful endowments, by saying that he is a son of Jupiter and Juno. Scott has given us an admirable portrait of a deranged female, whose brain-sick fancies are only the foibles of the weaker part of her sex grossly exaggerated, and displayed without the least reserve. Madge Wildfire is insane from an excessive love of admiration, and an insatiable desire to dazzle and captivate; and in all her ravings, her simpering manner, her fantastic costume, and bits of finery, we see only the ruling passion divested of any covering or control. The strange jumble of fancies, which a distracted person exhibits, is nothing but the perfectly loose and casual succession of ideas in a mind which has emancipated itself from the governing power of the will. It is precisely the incoherency of a dream, when the thoughts ramble on without any restraint from volition, or any voluntary pause for the exercise of judgment. The utterly passive intellect merely reflects like a mirror the images that float before it, without receiving any impression from them, or preserving any trace of their passage. Outward objects have no longer their usual power to check the current of loose thoughts, and recall the mind to a consciousness of its situation; the sleeper does not see them, and the insane person, from the defect in his will, can pay no attention to them. The dream of * Conolly on Insanity, p. 289. |