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, ch. x.

power of consciousness to recognise our various acts of perception and reasoning as having a home and agency in our own bosoms. Self is destroyed; and the mental acts which are appropriate to self are mere entities, floating about, as it were, in the vacuities of space, without the possibility of being assigned to any locality or ascribed to any cause. The instance, therefore, mentioned in the preceding section, which may be regarded as of a mixed kind, (that is to say, showing a perplexed action, both of Original Suggestion and Consciousness,) will serve to illustrate what is said here.-Another instance, not less striking, is that of a celebrated watchmaker of Paris, who became insane during the period of the French Revolution. This man believed that he and some others had been beheaded, but that the heads were subsequently ordered to be restored to the original owners. Some mistake, however, as the insane person conceived, was committed in the process of restoration, in consequence of which he had unfortunately been furnished with the head of one of his companions instead of his own. He was

admitted into the hospital Bicêtre, "where he was continually complaining of his misfortune, and lamenting the fine teeth and wholesome breath he had exchanged for those of very different qualities."

Instances also have probably, from time to time, occurred, in which, although the conviction of personality and personal identity has remained, yet in the fixed belief of the insane person the bond of connexion between the mind and its powers has been dissolved; and the memory perhaps, or the reasoning, or the imagination, which once belonged to himself, has been transferred by some mysterious agency to an intellect more favoured than his own.

232. Insanity of the judgment or relative suggestion.

Pursuing this subject in its connexion with the powers of the Internal Intellect in the order in which they presented themselves to our notice in the Second Part of this Division, and which seems to be essentially the order of nature, we next proceed to Relative Suggestion. The power of Relative Suggestion, like that of Original Suggestion, is exceedingly simple in its action, being limited

to the mere matter of perceiving relations; but it is dif ferent in this respect, that while mental disorder but seldom reaches original suggestion, there is scarcely an instance of decidedly disordered intellect, in which relative suggestion (that is to say, JUDGMENT in its simplest form) is not affected in a greater or less degree. And this seems to be unavoidable. For relations always imply the existence of something else, of other objects. And if mistakes, in consequence of a wrong mental action in other respects, exist in regard to those other things, whatever they may be, they necessarily either annul or greatly perplex the results of the power by which such relations are perceived.-Besides this, the power in its own nature, and independently of perplexities from other sources, is liable to be, and is in fact, sometimes disordered. But as this subject is closely connected with that of reasoning, and as they reciprocally throw light upon each other, we shall say nothing further here.

§ 233. Disordered or alienated association. Light-headedness. The laws of the mind, the great principles which regulate its action, as well as its mere perceptions or states, may be disordered; for instance, the law of association. The irregular action of this important principle of our intellectual nature is sometimes greater, at others less. There is one of the slighter forms of mental alienation from this cause, which may be termed LIGHT-HEADEDNESS ; otherwise called by Pinel, demence, and by Dr. Rush, dissociation. Persons subject to this mental disease are sometimes designated as "flighty," "hair-brained;" and when the indications of it are pretty decided, as a "little cracked."-Their disorder seems chiefly to consist in a deficiency of the ordinary power over associated ideas. Their thoughts fly from one subject to another with great rapidity; and, consequently, one mark of this state of mind is great volubility of speech and almost constant motion of the body. This rapid succession of ideas and attendant volubility of tongue are generally accompanied with forgetfulness in a greater or less degree. And as the subject of this form of derangement is equally incapable of checking and reflecting upon his present ideas,

and of recalling the past, he constantly forms incorrect judgments of things. Another mark which has been given is a diminished sensibility to external impressions.

234. Illustrations of this mental disorder.

Dr. Rush, in his valuable work on the Diseases of the Mind, has repeated the account which an English clergyman who visited Lavater, the physiognomist, has given of that singular character. It accurately illustrates this mental disorder. "I was detained," says he, "the whole morning by the strange, wild, eccentric Lavater, in various conversations. When once he is set agoing, there is no such thing as stopping him till he runs himself out of breath. He starts from subject to subject, flies from book to book, from picture to picture; measures your nose, your eye, your mouth, with a pair of compasses; pours forth a torrent of physiognomy upon you; drags you, for a proof of his dogma, to a dozen of closets, and unfolds ten thousand drawings; but will not let you open your lips to propose a difficulty; and crams a solution down your throat before you have uttered half a syllable of your objection.

"He is as meager as the picture of famine; his nose and chin almost meet. I read him in my turn, and found little difficulty in discovering, amid great genius, unaffected piety, unbounded benevolence, and moderate learning, much caprice and unsteadiness; a mind at once aspiring by nature and grovelling through necessity; an endless turn to speculation and project; in a word, a clever, flighty, good-natured, necessitous man."

§ 235. Of partial insanity or alienation of the memory. Among other exhibitions of partial insanity, using the terms in the manner already explained, we may include some of the more striking instances of weakened and disordered memory. Every other part of the intellect may be sound and regular in its action, (for it will be recollected that we confine ourselves here to the disorders of the INTELLECT, without anticipating those of the Sensibilities and the Will,) the powers of perception, of association, of imagination, of reasoning, at least so far as they are able to act independent of the memory, while