55 CHAPTER VII. QUOTATION FROM QUARTERLY REVIEW.-COMPARISON WITH A THEATRE.PINEL. DOUBLE VOLITION, FROM CEREBRAL DISTURBANCE, CAUSED BY GREAT ANXIETY. A writer in the Quarterly Review (Vol. XXVII., page 113), in a criticism on Dr. Reid's "Essays on Hypochondriasis and Nervous Affections," endeavours to draw a distinction between temporary delusions and real insanity. He says, “It may be said, if there is a moral as well as physical eccentricity, it is probable there is a moral as well as physical insanity.' We believe no such thing. Strange habits, by intellectual operations, may produce great eccentricity of opinion and action, but they will never produce madness in the true acceptation of the word, till they have affected physically the bodily organization." This is a complete begging of the question, unless he can shew that in hypochondriasis the bodily organization is never affected. The intellectual organs, for any thing we know to the contrary, may be as effectually disordered by reflex action from the ganglionic centres, as from disease within the cranium. "There is," he proceeds, "a condition of mind bordering on delirium, in which the patient is delirious enough to afford an example of that state, yet collected enough to observe and reason about it, which comes nearer than any phenomenon with which we acquainted to an experimental demonstration of the double nature of our being, of the physical and moral impulses of our thoughts, which are here brought into contact and comparison." So far, all is clear and easily comprehended; but he goes on with an unmeaning explanation, and the interpreter is the harder to be understood of the two." "In this state, the ideas are moved," says he, "one minute by the will, the next by something else; one minute we can command them, another we feel them slip out of our grasp, and whirl across the mind-[Has this any meaning?] with indescribable fleetness, guided, or rather hurried on, by some impulse strange to and stronger than ourselves." How simple and easy is the explanation of this incomprehensible description of the mental operations, if we concede the question, which it appears to me that I have already established beyond cavil-the posses sion of two complete and perfect organs of thought with opposing volitions. When the audience at a theatre sit impatiently waiting the drawing up of the curtain for a new piece, of the nature of which they are entirely ignorant, they cannot prevent themselves from trying to form an opinion (however limited) of the performance, from the little insignificant incidents which take place during the period of suspense. A spangled shoe makes its appearance under the curtain, and one man thinks the play will be preceded by a ballet; higher up the curtain is a projection which seems to indicate the shape of a man, or a hat and feathers are seen at the side, and another person thinks it will be a tragedy, and so forth; but he who has been behind the scenes, and especially a manager, or ex perienced player, knows what all these things mean. Even he who has been a regular frequenter of theatres, and has constantly observed that such and such appearances, however insignificant in themselves, are invariably followed by such and such kinds of performance, will be generally right in his conjectures. It is thus with the speculators I have named. I have been a close and attentive observer, and a constant frequenter of this great theatre of the mind, and fancy myself able, in some cases, to anticipate the nature of the performance. The curtain is the bony cranium which hides the proceedings; but a close attention to your own theatre, your own little microcosm, will enable you to foretel your own performances, and to give a shrewd guess at those of others. learning dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Hospitals for the insane, says Pinel, are never without some examples of mania, marked by acts of extravagance, or even fury, with a kind of judgment preserved in all its integrity, if we judge of it by the conversation: the lunatic gives the most just and precise answers to the questions of the curious. No incoherence of ideas is discernible: he reads and writes letters as if his understanding were perfectly sound, and yet he tears his clothes and bed-clothes, etc. "Here again," says Mr. George Combe," the difficulty occurs of reconciling such facts with the idea of only one organ, exercising all the functions of the mind." I agree with him; but that which he thinks proves a plurality of organs proves much more clearly a duality of brains-one sound, and, on ordinary occasions, controlling the other, and suppressing its manifestations; but, at other times, fatigued with the effort, and leaving the disordered impulse to pass unchecked. This is the more likely to happen at night, when the healthier brain is exhausted, and the other in diseased activity. "If (adds he) every part of the brain is concerned in every mental act, it appears strange that all the processes of thought should be manifested with equal effect when a great part of the brain is injured or destroyed, as when its whole structure is sound and entire." There is, I believe, no instance on record of any considerable injury to both brains being accompanied by full possession of the mental faculties. One brain, we have seen, may be annihilated, and the mind remain entire, but injury to both is incompatible with sound mind. To exercise all the mental powers and faculties, it is absolutely necessary that there be at least one sound and perfect organ. An intimate friend of mine, a man of education, character, and veracity, has been for many years subjected to a succession of calamities and misfortunes, such as can rarely have fallen to the lot of any other man; with strong principles of rectitude, he has been more than once placed in the position of complicated embarrassment, which gave the appearance of guilt, or, at any rate, of culpable indifference to opinion; while, in fact, he has been always morbidly sensible to it, and has allowed that feeling to exercise much too great an influence over his actions. He thus describes his case, in a statement drawn up at my request: "With an intense scorn and hatred of every thing mean or dishonourable, I had been for a long time haunted with the idea that I was looked on as a dishonoured man; and although, in moments of calm, I knew this to be a delusion, and the continued respect and kindness of friends shewed me that I had not forfeited their good opinion, yet, on any excitement or temporary overwhelming sense of proximate impending danger, I could not control a morbid conviction that I had been detected in some dreadful crime-of what kind I know not; but if my vigilance were allowed to sleep for a few minutes only, images of judge, jury, counsel and crowded court, would come before me, and unless by a very vigorous effort I could suddenly shake off the delusion, it went on till sentence of death was pronounced, and I felt all the deadly faintness which would have been produced by the real scene itself. "My distress was infinitely enhanced from my supposed entire inability to defend myself, in consequence of being utterly unable to discover the nature of the crime I was accused of; or it seemed to me that I could make a triumphant defence. "When alone, and in depressed spirits, from diffused gout and dyspepsia, I sank into a reverie, my mind. began to plan petitions to the Sovereign-addresses to the Privy Council, and to the two Houses of Parliament, on the cruel injustice of the laws which permitted a man to be arraigned and convicted of an offence of which he was not allowed to know the nature or the name. "The whole of this time I knew perfectly and continuously that it was an entire delusion, that I had committed no crime whatever, nor was in any such absurd predicament, but, at the same time, felt like a |