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king. When the convulsive affections come on, the patient is observed to laugh and cry alternately, and altogether without any cause of a rational or moral nature; so that he has almost the appearance of fatuity, or of be ing delirious. But apparitions or intensely vivid conceptions are among its most striking attendants. The subjects of it distinctly see every description of forms; trees, houses, men, women, dogs, and other inferior animals, balls of fire, celestial beings, &c. We can, without doubt, safely refer to the experience of those who have been much conversant with instances of this disease, in confirmation of this.

The existence of the states of mind under consideration might, without much question, be found, on further examination, to connect itself with other forms of disease. The subject is certainly worthy, whether considered in relation to science or to human happiness, of such further developements as it is capable of receiving.

CHAPTER XV.

DISORDERED INTELLECTUAL ACTION.

(II.) INSANITY.

◊ 227. Meaning of the term insanity.

In illustration of the general subject of disordered intellectual action, we proceed, in the next place, to the consideration of that more decided internal mental derangement which is known as INSANITY. The term Insanity, etymologically considered, indicates simply a want of soundness or want of health. In its application to the mind, it indicates an unsound or disordered state of the ✓ mental action); generally, however, of a more decided and deeply seated nature than that form of disordered intellect which has already been considered under the head of APPARITIONS.

As the mind is complicated in its structure, existing, as it were, in various departments and subdivisions of depart

ments, the disordered action, which we now propose to consider, may pervade either the whole mind, or exist exclusively in some one of its departments. Accordingly, Insanity may be regarded either as partial or total; involving either the whole mind, or only a part. The method which we propose to pursue in the investigation of the subject, is to consider it in connexion with the powers of the mind separately, as affording, on the whole, the most satisfactory view. And it is proper to add here, that we examine it at present only so far as it may naturally be supposed to exist in connexion with the Intellect, leaving the consideration of it, as it is occasionally found to exist in the Sensibilities, to a more appropriate place.

228. Of disordered or alienated sensations.

Beginning with the External Intellect, the power which first presents itself to our notice is Sensation. It is well known that all the outward senses are liable to be disordered, and, as the inward sensation corresponds to the condition of the outward or bodily organ, a disordered or irregular movement of the organ of sense necessarily communicates itself to the inward or mental state. A regular or healthy sensation always has reference to some outward cause, (we mean here outward, even in reference to the organ of sense,) but a disease in the bodily organ disturbs this relation, and necessarily gives to the inward mental state the character, as compared with other sensations, of being unreal, visionary, and deceptive. Not unreal and deceptive in itself, but because it intimates a relation which is obliterated, and tends to force upon our belief an outward cause which has no existence.

There are diseased or disordered visual sensations, existing in connexion with a morbid condition of the visual organ; but as this view of the subject was necessarily involved, in some degree, in what has already been said on the subject of excited conceptions or Apparitions, it is not necessary to enlarge upon it here. There are also diseased or disordered sensations of touch. A single instance, out of multitudes like it, will serve both to illustrate and to confirm the remark. In the Natural Magic of Dr.

Brewster is an account of a lady (the case which we have already had occasion to refer to) who was subject to spectral illusions, of whom it is expressly said, in connexion with her remarkable mental affections, that she possesses "a naturally morbid imagination, so strongly affecting her corporeal impressions, that the story of any person having suffered severe pain by accident or otherwise will occasionally produce acute twinges in the corresponding part of her person. An account, for instance, of the amputation of an arm, will produce an instantaneous and severe sense of pain in her own arm." There are also (and we might apply the statement to all the senses without exception) diseased or disordered sensations of hearing. The celebrated Mendelsohn was frequently subject to the attacks of a violent species of catalepsis. And it happened, if he had recently heard any lively conversation, a loud voice apparently repeated to him, while in the fit, the particular words, which had been distinguished from others by being pronounced with an emphatic and raised tone of voice, and "in such a manner that his ear reverberated with the sound."

229. Of disordered or alienated external perception.

We naturally proceed from sensation to a power closely connected with it, that of External Perception. Indeed, what has been said of sensation will apply, in a considerable degree, to the last-mentioned power, because sensation naturally precedes perception, and is always involved in it. But perception, while it involves sensation, implies also something more, something additional; it involves the reference of the inward mental state to the outward cause or object, and not unfrequently implies also acts of comparison, by which it distinguishes one cause from another. And particularly is this the case in respect to those perceptions which are designated as ACQUIRED perceptions, in order to distinguish them from ORIGINAL. So that, in view of what has been said, it would seem to be the fact, in the first place, that, when our sensations are disordered, our perceptions will be so likewise. But this is not all. In consequence of some interior cause, such as an inability to attend to a thing for any length of time, or

incapacity of instituting comparisons, disordered and false external perceptions will sometimes exist when there appears to be no unsoundness in the sensations.

Agreeably to these views, we find that persons, in whom the power of external perception is disordered from the first of the two causes just referred to, sometimes have perceptions of colour which do not accord with those of mankind generally, being entirely unable, for instance, to distinguish blue from green. Other persons, again, have no distinct perception of minute sounds, and take no more pleasure in the harmonies of a musical composition of truly great merit, than they do in the most discordant screams. When the disordered action of the perceptive power originates from the second cause, the subjects of it are apt to confound times, persons, and places. They mistake, for instance, their friends and relations for others, and are at a loss as to the place where they are, although they may have been in it hundreds of times before. They exhibit particularly this species of alienated perception when they attempt to read a book. They no doubt see the letters no less than others, but the action of the mind, in other respects, not being such as to permit them to dwell upon them, and compare and combine them into words, they are unable to read; it is, at least, exceedingly difficult.

§ 230. Disordered state or insanity of original suggestion.

When we pass from the External to the Internal intellect, from the region of sensation and external perception to the interior domain of Original Suggestion, to the convictions involved in Consciousness, to the important powers of Relative Suggestion, Memory, and Reasoning, we are introduced, indeed, to a higher order of mental action, but we find no exemption from those disorders to which the human mind, in all its great departments, is occasionally exposed. In regard to Original Suggestion, which comes first in order, a power which deals with original ideas and principles merely, without professing to ascertain the relations existing among them, it must be admitted that it does not give so frequent and decided indications of disordered action as we find elsewhere. Never

theless, this is sometimes the case. The conviction, for instance, not only that we exist, but that we have personal identity; that we are now what we have been in times past in all that constitutes us rational and accountable beings, is obviously essential to a sound mind. But this elementary and important conviction, which obviously does not rest upon judgment nor the deductions of reasoning, but upon the higher basis of ORIGINAL SUGGESTION, is sometimes annulled, either in whole or in part. To this head, so far as the conviction of the identity of the mind is concerned, we may refer the interesting case of the Rev. Simon Browne, an English clergyman, who fully believed, for many years before his death, that he had entirely lost his rational part or soul, and was the possessor merely of a corporeal or animal life, such as is possessed by the brutes. He was a man of marked ability, both in conversation and writing; and this, too, on all subjects not connected with his malady, after his partial alienation. But so entirely was he convinced of the absence, and of the probably actual extinction of his soul, that, in a valuable work which he dedicated to the Queen of England, he speaks of it in the dedication as the work of one who " was once a man; of some little name; but of no worth, as his present unparalleled case makes but too manifest; for, by the immediate hand of an avenging God, his very thinking substance has, for more than seventeen years, been gradually wasting away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it be not utterly come to nothing.'

$ 231. Unsoundness or insanity of consciousness.

The basis of the various convictions or judgments of Consciousness, as that term is defined and illustrated by writers, is the antecedent idea and belief of personal identity. If this last conviction, therefore, be lost, as in the case mentioned in the last section, all that is involved in Consciousness goes with it. It is the business of Consciousness to connect the acts of the mind with the mind itself; to consolidate them, as it were, into one. But if, in our full belief, our mind is destroyed; if self or personality is obliterated, then it is clearly no longer within the

* Conolly's Indications of Insanity, eh. x.

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