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PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY
OF MIND.

HENEY MAUDSLEY, M.D. Lond.

PHYSICIAN TO THE WEST LONDON HOSPITAL J

LECTURER ON INSANITY AT ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCHOOL;

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON;

HONORARY MEMBER OF THE MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL 80CIETY OF PARIS, AND

OF THE IMPERIAL SOCIETY OF PHYSICIANS OF VIENNA;

FORMERLY RESIDENT PHYSICIAN OF THE MANCHESTER ROYAL LUNATIC HOSPITAL, ETC.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED.

$fttlf« :

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1868.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.]

LOS DOM :
BREAD STREET H1LI-.

603099

PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

rpHEEE are only two observations which it seems necessary to
make by way of preface to this edition. The first is, that it
has not been my conscious desire or aim throughout the work to
discard entirely the psychological method of inquiry into mental
phenomena, although the earnest advocacy of the physiological
method has, naturally perhaps, led some readers to assume
such a design. Hitherto, it must be remembered, the latter
has hardly had any place, the former having been exclusively
employed, in the study of mind. Now it is obviously impossible
to set forth the fruit-fulness and the rich promise of the physio-
logical method, and to elevate it to its rightful position, without
exposing the shortcomings and the barrenness of the psycho-
logical method, and degrading it to a lower rank than that
which it has unjustly usurped. The second observation is, that
this work may, by virtue of its plan and mode of execution,
rightly claim to be judged, not in parts, but as a whole.
Statements which in one place may appear too absolute, or
entirely unwarranted, will have their justification, or the show
of it, at any rate, in other parts of the book. It may not be
amiss, then, to allege that an adequate criticism of the First
Part cannot be made without some consideration of the Second
Part ; and that in like manner the study of the Second or
Pathological Part cannot be undertaken to the best advantage
without a previous study of the First or Physiological Part.

This edition has been carefully revised, with the view of
removing some inaccuracies, and contains additional matter, for
the purpose of elucidating certain obscurities, which occurred
in the first edition. An index has also been added for con-
venience of reference.

Hanwell, w.

March IG/h, 1868.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION,

THE aim which I have had in view throughout this work
has been twofold: first, to treat of mental phenomena
from a physiological rather than from a metaphysical point
of view ; and, secondly, to bring the manifold instructive in-
stances presented by the unsound mind to bear upon the
interpretation of the obscure problems of mental science.
Indeed it has been my desire to do what I could in
order to put a happy end to the " inauspicious divorce "
between the Physiology and Pathology of Mind, and to effect
a reconciliation between these two branches of the same
science. When I first applied myself, upwards of ten years
since, to the practical study of insanity, having laid up before-
hand some store of metaphysical philosophy, it was no small
surprise and discouragement to find, on the one hand, that
the theoretical knowledge acquired had no bearing whatever
on, no discoverable relation to, the facts that daily came
under observation, and, on the other hand, that writers on
mental diseases, while giving the fullest information concern-
ing them, treated their subject as if it belonged to a science
entirely distinct from that which was concerned with the
sound mind. This state of things could not fail to produce
an immediate mental disquietude, and ultimately to give
rise to the endeavour on my part to arrive at some definite
conviction with regard to the physical conditions of mental
function, and the relation of the phenomena of the sound
and unsound mind. Of that endeavour the present work is
the result. It can claim no more authority than what is due
to a sincere purpose faithfully pursued, and to such truth as
may be contained in it. The First Part, resting as it does
mainly on the physiological method of inquiry into mental
phenomena, will certainly not command the assent of those

A

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. vii

who put entire faith in the psychological method of interro-
gating self-consciousness ; it must appeal rather to those who
have made themselves acquainted with the latest advances
in physiology, and with the present state of physiological
psychology in Germany, and who are familiar with the writ-
ings of such as Professor Bain, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr.
Laycock, and Dr. Carpenter, in this country. The Second Part
of the book may stand on its own account as a treatise on
the causes, varieties, pathology, and treatment of mental
diseases, apart from all question of the proper method to
be pursued in the investigation of mental phenomena. Even
those who advocate the psychological method of interrogating
self-consciousness do not insist on the application of it to
the scientific study of the madman's mind.

In laying down the plan of this work, and in thus entering
upon a task not before systematically attempted, I could not
fail to experience the serious disadvantage, not only of having
no guide to follow, but of being compelled by the scope of the
work to deviate from the paths already made in metaphysics,
physiology, and pathology respectively. In order to bring
the results of the cultivate- of these different branches of
science into any sort of harmony, it was plainly necessary
not to travel too far on paths which diverged more and more
with every step forward. For this reason I have passed by
many interesting questions which have long occupied a large
space in metaphysics, and have deliberately omitted many
discussions which were at one time intended to form a part
of the book. In like manner, it seemed desirable, when treat-
ing of the physiology of mental action, to omit anatomical
description of the nervous system, leaving the knowledge of
it to be obtained in a more complete and satisfactory form
from books specially dealing with the subject. Lastly, the
pathology of diseases of the nervous system generally, although
throwing much light on the pathology of mental diseases,
could not fin" fitting place, and was after some hesitation
sacrificed, in order to preserve the harmony of design, and
to prevent the book growing to an immoderate bulk. Indeed,
as may be easily conceived, it has been throughout far more
difficult to determine what to leave out than what to put in,

viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

the proportion of material collected for the purposes of the
project, but not directly used, exceeding that which has been
actually used in its execution. I am fully sensible of the
disadvantages resulting from these omissions : an amount of
knowledge on the reader's part is taken for granted which he
may not have, and without which many things may appear
obscure to him, and many assertions unwarrantable. It may
well be, too, that either the metaphysician, or the physiologist,
or the pathologist, looking at the work from his particular
standpoint, will see reason to pronounce it defective. "Whoso-
ever will, however, be at the pains to compare the discordant
results of metaphysical, physiological, and pathological studies
of mind, remembering that they are actually concerned with
the same subject-matter, cannot fail to recognise and con-
fess the uselessness of an exclusive method, and the pressing
need of combined action and of a more philosophical mode
of proceeding. If the work now offered to the public be
successful in its aim, it will make evident how indispensable
is the method advocated, and how full it is of promise of the
most fruitful results.

In conclusion, I am glad to add a sincere expression of thanks
to my friend Dr. Blandford, for his advice and assistance
during the passage of the book through the press.

The Lawx, Harwell, W.
Feb. 5th, 1867.

CONTENTS.

PAET I.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MIND.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE METHOD OF THE STUDY OF MIND.

Aspects of nature terrible to man in the infancy of thought ; whence supersti-
tious feelings and fancies regarding nature. As these disappear metaphysical
entities are assigned as natural causes, and man deems himself the " measure
of the universe." Finally, the interrogation and interpretation of nature,
after the inductive method, begin ; fruitful results of this method. Is the
inductive method, objectively applied, available for the study of Mind ?
Difficulties in the way of such application. Development of biography, and
absence of any progress in metaphysics, are evidences of its value. Psychological
method of interrogating self-consciousness palpably inadequate ; contradictory
results of its use, and impossibility of applying it inductively. Self-conscious-
ness unreliable in the information which it does give, and incompetent to give
any account of a large part of mental activity : gives no account of the mental
phenomena of the infant, of the uncultivated adult, and of the insane ; no
account of the bodily conditions which underlie every mental manifestation ;
no account of the large field of unconscious mental action exhibited, not only
in the xmconscious assimilation of impressions, but in the registration of ideas
and their associations, in their latent existence and influence when not active,
and in their recall into activity ; and no account of the influence organically
exerted upon the brain by other organs of the body. Incompetency of self-
consciousness further displayed by examination of its real nature. Physiology
cannot any longer be ignored ; henceforth necessary to associate the Physiolo-
gical with the Psychological method ; the former being really the more im-
portant and fruitful method. The study of the plan of development of Mind,
the study of its forms of degeneration, the study of its progress and regress,
as exhibited in history, and the study of biography, should not be neglected.
The union of empirical and rational faculties, really advocated by Bacon aa
his method, is strictly applicable to the investigation of mental as of other
natural phenomena. The question of relative value of inductive or deductive
reasoning often a question of the capacity of him who uses it ; difference
between genius and mediocrity. — Conclusion Page 1 — 40

CHAPTER II.

MIND AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

The term "Mind" used in different senses : in its scientific sense as a natural
force ; and in its popular sense as an abstraction made into a metaphysical
entity. The brain certainly the organ of the Mind, and the nervous cells the
immediate agents of mental function. Mental power an organized result in
the proper centres— a mental organization. No nerve in lowest animal forms ;
perception of stimulus being the direct physical effect in a homogeneous sub-
stance. The differentiation of tissues in higher animals demands special
means of intercommunication : the nervous system, at first very simple, sub-

x CONTENTS.

serving this function. With increasing complexity of organization, a corre-
sponding complexity of the nervous system. Organs of special senses appear
in very rudimentary form at first ; corresponding central nervous ganglia
constitute entire brain in Invertebrata. Rudiments of cerebral hemispheres
and rudimentary ideation in fishes. Convolution of the grey matter of the
hemispheres in the higher mammals, and corresponding increase of intelli-
gence in them. Differences in the size of the brain, and in the complexity of
its convolutions, in different races of men, and in different individuals of the
same race ; corresponding differences in intellectual development. Human
embryonic development conforms with general plan of development of Verte-
brata. Discrimination of nervous centres : (a) primary, or Ideational ; (b)
secondary, or Sensorial ; (c) tertiary, or Reflex ; (d) quaternary, or Organic.
The evidence of the different functions of these centres is anatomical, physio-
logical, experimental, and pathological. Lockhart Clarke on the structure
of the convolutions in man. Discriminating observation of mental phe-
nomena necessary, and metaphysical conception of Mind no longer tenable.
Mind the most dependent of all the natural forces ; relations of mental force
in nature. Concluding remarks Page 41 — 70

CHAPTER III.

THE SPINAL COKD ASD REFLEX ACTION.

Spinal cord contains the nervous centres of many reflex or automatic movements.
Earliest movements of infant are reflex ; automatic acts of anencephalic infant
and of decapitated frog. Analysis of Pfluger's experiments on the frog. So-
called design of an act not necessarily evidence of consciousness. Spinal cord
the centre of many acquired or secondary automatic movements ; illustrations.
The motor faculties mostly acquired in man by education and exercise, but
innate in many animals. Bearing of instances of acquired adaptation of means
to end on the doctrine of final causes. Motor faculties are exhausted by exer-
cise, and require periodical rest for restoration of power by nutrition. Quan-
titative and qualitative relation of reaction to the impression. Hereditary
transmission of acquired faculties implants the germ of innate endowment.
Pfluger's laws of reflex movements. Causes of disorder of function of spinal
cord : (a) original differences of constitution ; (b) excessive action ; (c) quantity
and quality of the blood ; (d) eccentric irritation ; (e) interruption of its con-
nexion with the brain. Close sympathy between different parts of the nervous
system. Clear conceptions of Um functions of spiual centres indispensable to
the study of the functions of the higher nervous centres . . . Page 71 — 98

CHAPTER IV.

THE SENSORY CENTRES AND SENSATION.

Collections of grey matter constituting the sensory ganglia intervene between the
spinal centres and the supreme hemispherical ganglia. Anatomical relations
of different grey nuclei yet uncertain, but nerve-fibres certainly connected with
their cells. Sensory ganglia with connected motor nuclei the centres of inde-
pendent reaction — of sensori-motor movements : examples. Sensations not
innate in man, but acquired by gradual formation ; difference between him
and the animals in this regard. The idea of organization necessary to the
just interpretation of sensation ; assimilation and differentiation. Association
of sensations, feensori-motor acts both irregular and co-ordinate ; of co-
ordinate acts, some are primary automatic, others secondary automatic.
Persistence of sensori-motor acts in animals after the removal of their cerebral
hemispheres. Acquired sensori-motor acts constitute a great part of the daily
action of life ; illustrations. Psychological view of sensation at variance with
physiological facts. Subordination of the sensoiy centres to the cerebral
ganglia. Causes of disorder of the sensory ganglia : -(a) original defects ;
(b) excessive stimulation ; (c^ quantity and quality of blood ; (d) reflex irrita-
tion ; (e) influence of cerebral hemispheres (?). Concluding remarks on the
analogy between the functions of the sensory centres and of the spinal
centres . . . ' Page 99— 122

CONTENTS. xi

CHAPTER V.

THE SUPREME CEREBRAL CENTRES AND IDEATION.

Cortical cells of the hemispheres the centres of Ideation. No certain knowledge
of the functions of different convolutions. Cortical cells the centres of inde-
pendent reaction ; of ideomotor movements, which may take place without
will and without consciousness : illustrations. Notion of innate idea unten-
able. Idea a gradual organization. Different signification of an idea according
to different states of culture. The so-called fundamental or universal in-
tuitions. Different modes of action of idea : (a) on movements, voluntary
and involuntary, conscious and unconscious ; (b) on the sensory ganglia, —
physiologically, as a regular part of mental function ; pathologically, in the
production of hallucinations ; (c) on the functions of nutrition and secretion :
illustrations ; (d) on other ideas : reflection or deliberation. Relation of
consciousness to Ideational activity. Comparison of ideas with movements in
regard to their association, their relation to consciousness, and the limited
power which the mind has over them. The character of the particular asso-
ciation of Ideas determined by (a) the individual nature, (b) special life-
experience. Need of an individual psychology. General laws of association
of ideas. Concluding remarks on the illustration of Von Baer's law of progress,
from the general to the special in development, afforded by the development
of ideas Page 123—147

CHAPTER VI.

ON EMOTION.

Relation of emotion to idea. Influence of the state of nerve-element on emotion.
Idea favourable to self-expansion is agreeable ; an idea opposed to self-expan-
sion disagreeable. Appetite or desire for agreeable stimulus, and repulsion or
avoidance of a painful one, as motives of action. Equilibrium between indi-
vidual and his surroundings not accompanied with desire. Intellectual life
doeo not furnish the impulses to action, but the desires do. Character of
emotion determined by the nature of external stimulus, and by the condition
of nerve-element, original, or as modified by culture. Ccenaesthesis. Nervous
centres of ideas and emotions the same : emotions as many and various as
ideas. Psychical tone ; how determined ? The conception of the ego and the
moral sense. Intimate connexion of emotion with the organic life ; illustra-
tion of their reciprocal influence. Action of disordered emotion. Primitive
passions, according to Spinoza. Difficulties of the psychological method of
studying emotion. Hereditary action in the improvement of human feeling.
Law of progress from the general to the special, exhibited in the development
of the emotions Page 147 — 167

CHAPTER VII.

ON VOLITION.

The will not a single, undecomposable faculty of uniform power, but varies as its
cause varies : differs in quantity and quality, according to the preceding reflec-
tion. According to the common view of it, an abstraction is made into a
metaphysical entity. Self-consciousness reveals the particular state of mind
of the moment, but not the long series of causes on which it depends ; hence
the opinion of free-will. Examples from madman, drunkard, &c. The
design in the particular volition is a result of a gradually effected mental
organization : a physical necessity, not transcending or anticipating, but con-
forming with, experience. Erroneous notions as to the autocratic power of
will. Its actual power considered (1) over movements, and (2) over the
mental operations. 1. Over movements : (a) no power over the involuntary
movements essential to life ; (6) no power to effect voluntary movements
until they have been acquired, by practice ; (c) cannot control the means, can
only will the event. 2. Over mental operations : (a) the formation of ideas,
and of their associations independent of it ; (b) its impotency in the early stages
of mental development — in the young child and in the savage ; (c) cannot call
up a particular train of thought, or dismiss a train of thought, except through

xii CONTENTS.

associations of ideas that are beyond its control, and sometimes not at all. As
many centres of volitional reaction in the brain as there are centres of ideas.
Volition built up from residua of previous volitions of a like kind. To the
freest action of the will there are necessary an unimpeded association of ideas
and a strong personality. Character not determined by the will, but deter-
mining it in the particular act. Relation of emotion to volition. Differences
in the quality and energy of the will. Will the highest force in nature ; its
highest function creative — initiating a new development of nature.

Page 168—190

CHAPTER VIII.

ON ACTUATION.

Movements leave behind them residua in the motor centres, whence a repository
of latent or abstract movements. Motor residua or intuitions intervene be-
tween motive and act, and are related to conception on the reactive side as
sensation is on the receptive side. Actuation proposed for the psychological
designation of this department. Motor intuitions mostly innate in animals,
acquired in man. Illustrations from vision, speech, the phenomena of hypno-
tism, paralysis, insanity, &c. Aphasia in its bearings on motor intuitions.
Muscular hallucinations. Co-ordinate convulsions. The muscular sense ; its
relation to the motor intuitions, and the necessary part which it plays in
mental function. The will acts upon muscles indirectly through the motor
nervous centres. Orderly subordination of nervous centres in the expression
of the will in action. Natural differences between different persons, in the
power of expression, by speech or otherwise Page 191 — 208

CHAPTER IX.

OX MEMORY AND IMAGINATION.

Memory exists in eveiy organic element of the body — an organic registration of
impressions. No memory of what we have not had experience, and no expe-
rience ever entirely forgotten. Physiological ideas of assimilation and
differentiation necessary to the interpretation of its phenomena. Power of
imagination built up by the assimilation not only of the like in ideas, but
also of the relations of ideas. Its productive or creative power is, in its
highest display, involuntary and unconscious : it is the supreme manifestation
of organic evolution. Relation of memory to imagination. The action of
imagination. Differences in the character of memory in different persons.
Manifold disorders to which memory is liable. The memory of early youth
and of old age. No exact memory of pain : why ? . . . Page 209— 222

PART II.

THE PATHOLOGY OF MINJ).

CHAPTER I.

ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY.

Concurrence of causes in the production of Insanity. Moral and physical causes
cannot be exactly discriminated. Predisposing causes : the influence of civili-
zation ; over-population and the struggle for existence ; over-crowding and
insanitary conditions ; eager pursuit of wealth, and deterioration of the
moral nature ; sex ; education ; religion ; condition of life ; age and period of
life ; hereditary predisposition. Proximate causes of disorder of the ideational
centres : — (1) Original differences in constitution — (a) imperfectly developed
brains of the microcephalic type, (b) cretinism, (c) arrest of development by
disease, (d) the insane temperament, or neurosis spasmodica ; (2) Quantity and
quality of the blood — anaemia and congestion ; alcohol, opium, and other medi-
cinal substances, organic poison introduced from without or bred in the body,
and defective development of the blood itself; (3) Reflex irritation or patholo-
gical sympathy — illustrations ; (4) Excessive functional activity — overwork,

i

CONTENTS. xiii

emotional agitation, depressing passions, physical exhaustion, &c. ; (5) Injury
and disease of the brain — abscess, tumour, tubercle, syphilis. Concluding
remarks on the special causation of the different forms of insanity. Mental
derangement a matter of degree. Appendix of cases, illustrating the causation
of insanity Page 223—297

CHAPTER II.

ON THE INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE.

Insanity of young children must be of a simple kind, the mental organization
being imperfect. Convulsions prove fatal at the earliest age : more or less
sensorial insanity associated with them in some cases. Comparison of infantile
insanity with the insanity of animals, and with epileptic fury. The organiza-
tion of sensory residua, and hallucinations of the senses : hallucinations not
uncommon in infancy ; examples. Choreic insanity and the phenomena of
somnambulism. Organization of idea. Incoherent conversation and fallacious
memory of children. Delusions. Resemblance between mania of children
and the delirium of adults. Hallucinations produced by morbid ideas. The
difference between fancy and imagination corresponds with the difference
between delirium and mania. Forms of insanity met with in children
grouped : — (1) Monomania, when there is a powerful impulse to some act of
violence ; (2) Choreic mania — examples ; (3) Cataleptoid insanity — illustra-
tions ; (4) Epileptic insanity, preceding, taking the place of, or following, the
usual convulsions — examples; (5) Mania; (6) Melancholia; (7) Affective
insanity — (a) Instinctive or impulsive ; perversions of the instinct of self-
conservation and the instinct for propagation, (b) Moral insanity — examples.
The insane child is a degenerate variety or morbid kind — never reverts to the
type of any animal : theroid degenerations of mankind are pathological speci-
mens. Concluding remarks upon the seeming precocity of vice in some insane
children Page 298—334

CHAPTER III.

THE VARIETIES OF INSANITY.

1. The insane temperament — its characteristics. Eccentricity and insanity. The
relation of certain kinds of talent to insanity displayed ; also the wide differ-
ence between the highest genius and any kind of madness. The bodily and
mental characters of a strong hereditary predisposition. The different varieties
of mental disease fall into two great divisions — Affective and Ideational.
2. Affective Insanity: (a) Impulsive — the nature of it described and illus-
trated by examples ; enumeration of its causes and exposition of its frequent
connexion with epilepsy ; (b) Moral Insanity — precedes the outbreak of other
forms of insanity sometimes, and persists for a time after disappearance of
intellectual disorder ; displayed chiefly in the degeneration of the social senti-
ments : examples. Vicious actc not proof of moral insanity ; its connexion
with other forms of mental derangement and with epilepsy. 3. Ideational
Insanity : (a) Partial, including monomania and chronic melancholia ;
(b) General, including mania and melancholia, chronic and acute. Modified
classification of mental diseases. The nature, varieties, symptoms, and course
of partial ideational insanity discussed and illustrated by examples. The
nature, varieties, symptoms, and course of general ideational insanity.
4. Dementia, acute and chronic. Causes of acute dementia, and examples.
Chronic dementia ; three groups of cases according to the degree of mental
degeneration. 5. General Paralysis — its causes, symptoms, and course.
Note on the classification of insanity. Note on the temperature in insanity.

Page 335-427
CHAPTER IV.

THE PATHOLOGY OF INSANITY.

Absence of morbid appearances after death no proof of the absence of morbid
changes : illustrations of abolition of nervous function without recognisable
changes of structure. 1. Summary of latest physiological researches into
nervous function j time-rate of conduction ; electro -motor properties of nerve,

xir CONTENTS.

and the changes produced by the electrotonie state ; Katelectrotorms and Ane-
lectrotonus ; chemical changes produced by functional activity. 2. Indivi-
>luality of nerve clement considered : functional relation between the individual
element and its supply of blood ; state of the cerebral circulation during
sleep ; results of the extreme exhaustion of nerve element, and of the effects
of poisons upon it ; its modification by the habit of exercise through the
residua of previous activity. 3. Reflex pathological action or pathological
sympathy — illustrations. Morbid anatomy of insanity : (1) Morbid products,
such as Tumour, Abscess, Cysticercus, <Lc; iuternuttence of mental symptoms,
and extreme incoherence of them when they occur in such cases. (2) Morbid
appearances in the Brain and Membranes —m acute insanity ; in chronic in-
sanity ; in general paralysis ; in syphilitic dementia. Weight and specific
gravity of the brain in insanity. Microscopical researches, and interpretation
of the results of them. Summary of the kinds of degeneration met with in
the brain after insanity : (a) Inflammatory degeneration; (b) Connective tissue
degeneration; (c) Fatty degeneration ; (d) Amyloid and colloid degeneration ;
(e) Pigmentary degeneration; (/) Calcareous degeneration. (3) Morbid con-
ditions of other organs of the body — of the lungs, the heart, the abdominal
organs, and the sexual organs. Concluding observations . . Page 428 — 471

CHAPTER V.

THE DIAGNOSIS OF INSANITY.

The difficulty of the diagnosis in some cases. Acute mania : diagnosis from
meningitis ; the difference between acute mania caused by intemperance, and
delirium tremens. Chronic mania and feigned insanity. Hysteria and mania.
The mode of detecting partial ideational insanity, monomaniacal or melan-
cholic. Hypochondria and melancholia. Eccentricity aud insanity — the
important differences between them. The .diagnosis of moral insanity and
of irresistible homicidal impulse. The detection of general paralysis in its
earliest stages. On the mode of conducting the examination of an insane
patient Page 472 — 184

^ ( iiAPTER VI.

THE PROGNOSIS OF INSANITY.

Insanity reduces the mean duration of life. The indications of a fatal termination.
The probability of recovery depends on the form, the duration, and the cause
of the disease. Melancholia the most curable, acute mania coming next. The
indications of recovery. The prognosis very bad in chronic mania, mono-
mania, and moral insanity, but good in acute dementia. The prognosis in
puerperal, climacteric, metastatic, epileptic, hysterical, syphilitic and senile
insanity. The causes of the disease influencing the prognosis. The age most
favourable to recovery. The proportion of recoveries, relapses, and deaths.
Evil effects of injudicious interference Page 485 — 491

CHAPTER VII.

THE TREATMENT OF INSANITY.

The difficulties in the way of treatment ; the working of the Lunacy Acts ; the
public horror of insanity, and the social prejudices regarding it. The practice
of indiscriminate sequestration unjustifiable. The true principle to have in
view : argument in favour of it. The treatment of the insane in private
dwellings. Condition of the Chancery patients. The evils of monstrous
asylums. Necessity of early treatment. Moral treatment of insanity ; change
of residence, occupation, amusements, &c. Medical treatment: warm and
cold baths ; blood-letting ; counter-irritants ; diet ; stimulants : the use of
opium ; digitalis ; hyoscyamus, hydrocyanic acid and bromide of potassium ;
tonics. Concluding remarks upon the treatment of chronic insanity.

Page 492— -#16

Index

\

>( V

PART I.
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MIND.

Chapter I. On the Method of the Study of Mind.

„ II. Mind and the Nervous System.

„ III. The Spinal Cord, or Tertiary Nervous Centres; or Nervous
Centres of Reflex Action.

„ IV. Secondary Nervous Centres, or Sensory Ganglia ; Sensorium
Commune.

„ V. Hemispherical Ganglia; Cortical Cells of the Cerebral
Hemispheres ; Ideational Nervous Centres ; Primary
Nervous Centres; Intellectorium Commune.

„ VI. Emotion.

„ VII. Volition.

„ VIII. Motor Nervous Centres or Motorium Commune, and Actu-
ation or Effection.

IX. Memory and Imagination.

THE

PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF MIND.

CHAPTEE I.

ON THE METHOD OF THE STUDY OF MIND.

" Ich sag' es dir : ein Kerl, der speculirt,
1st wie ein Thier, auf diirrer Heide
Von einem bosen Geist im Kreis heram gefiihrt,
Und rings umher liegt schone griine Weide."

Faust.

rpHE right estimate of his relations to external nature has
-*- ever been to man a matter of extreme difficulty and uncer-
tainty. In the savage state of his infancy he feels himself so little
in the presence of nature's vastness, so helpless in conflict with
its resistless forces, that he falls down in abject prostration before
its various powers. The earth of a sudden heaves beneath his
trembling feet, and his shattered dwellings bury him in their
ruins ; the swelling waters overpass their accustomed boundaries
and indifferently sweep away his property or his life ; the furious
hurricane ruthlessly destroys the labour of years ; and famine or
pestilence, regardless of his streaming eyes and piteous prayers,
stalks in desolating march through a horror-stricken people. In
the deep consciousness of his individual powerlessness he falls
down in an agony of terror and worships the causes of his
sufferings : he deifies the powers of nature, builds altars to pro-
pitiate the angry Neptune, and, by offering sacrifices of that
which is most dear to him, even his own flesh and blood, hopes
to mitigate the fury of Phoebus Apollo and to stay the dreadful
clang of his silver bow. Everything appears supernatural because
he knows nothing of the natural ; palsied with fear, he cannot

2 OS THE METHOD OF [chap.

observe and investigate ; himself he feels to he insignificant and
helpless, while to nature he looks up with reverential awe as
mighty and all-powerful. Reflect on the fearful feelings which
any apparent exception to the regular course of nature even now
produces, on the superstitious dread which of a certainty follows
such unfamiliar event, and it will not be difficult to realize the
extreme mental prostration of primitive mankind.

Through familiarity, however, consternation after a while sub-
sides, and the spirit of inquiry follows upon that of reverence ,
the prostrate being rises from his knees to examine into the
causes of events. Experience, sooner or later, reveals the uni-
formity with which they come to pass ; he discovers more or less
of the laws of their occurrence, and perceives that he can by
applying his knowledge avoid much of the damage which he
has hitherto suffered — that he can, by attending to their laws,
even turn to his profit those once dreaded physical forces. Now
it is that man begins to feel that he has a much higher position
in nature than in his infancy he had imagined ; for a time he
looks upon himself as belonging to the same order as the things
around hini ; and he emancipates himself in great part from the
dominion of the priests in whom he had hitherto believed as the
sacred propitiators of the gods whom his fears had fashioned.
"When his creeds are seen to spring from an imperfection of the
intellect, the prayers founded on them are abandoned as marking
an imperfection of the will.

Thales of Miletus is said to have been the first who, in this
advance amongst the Greeks, laid aside the priestly character
and stood forth as a pure philosopher; and those who imme-
diately followed him, and constituted the Ionian school of philo-
sophy, having an instinctive feeling of the unity between man
and nature, did seek objectively for a first principle of things —
the apxv— common to him and the rest of nature. This slow and
tedious method was soon, however, abandoned for the easier and
quicker method of deduction from consciousness : abstractions
were made from the concrete by the active mind ; and the
abstractions, being then projected out of the mind and converted
into objective realities, were looked upon and applied as actual
entities in nature. Anaximander, diving into his own mind and
finding something inconceivable there, gave to it the name of

I.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 3

the Infinite, and, transferring it outwards, was thenceforth quite
content to pronounce it to be the true origin of all things; whilst
Pythagoras, going perhaps still further into the unmeaning, pro-
claimed numbers, which are mere arbitrary symbols, to be actual
existences and the essences of things^/ Thus it was that man,
forgetful of his early humility, rose by degrees to the creation
of the laws of an external world after the pattern of his own
thoughts : such motives as he felt to influence his own actions
were held also to be the principles governing the relations of
external objects : and natural phenomena were explained by
sympathies, loves, discords, hates. As the child attributes life
to the dead objects around it, speaking to them and thinking
to receive answers from them, so mankind, in the childhood of
thought, assigns its subjective feelings to objective nature, en-
tirely subordinating the physical to the metaphysical : it is but
another form of that anthropomorphism by which the Dryad
was placed in the tree, the Naiad in the fountain, Atropos
with her scissors near the running life-thread, and a Sun-god
enthroned in the place of a law of gravitation. As wras natural,
man, who thus imposed his laws upon nature, soon lost all his
former humility, and from one erroneous extreme passed to the
opposite : as he once fell abjectly down in an agony of fear, so
now he rose proudly up in an ecstasy of conceit.

The assertion that man is the measure of the universe was the
definite expression of this metaphysical stage of human develop-
ment. But it was a state that must plainly be fruitless of real
knowledge ; there could be no general agreement among men
when each one looked into his own mind, and, arbitrarily making
w7hat he thought he found there the laws and principles of ex-
ternal nature, constructed the laws of the world out of the depths
of his own consciousness. Disputes must continually arise about
words when words have not definite meanings ; and the unavoid-
able issue must be Sophistry and Pyrrhonism. This has been so ;
the history of the human mind shows that systems of scepticism
have regularly alternated with systems of philosophy. Fruitful
of empty ideas and wild fancies, philosophy has not been unlike
those barren women who would fain have the rumbling of wind
to be the motion of offspring. Convinced of the vanity of its
ambitious attempts, Socrates endeavoured to bring philosophy

b2

4 OX THE METHOD OF [CHAP,

down from the clouds, introduced it into the cities, and applied
it to the conduct of human life ; while Plato and Aristotle,
opposite as were their professed methods, were both alive to the
vagueness of the common disputations, and both laboured hard
to fix definitely the meanings of vvords. But words cannot attain
to definiteness save as living outgrowths of realities, as the exact
expressions of the phenomena of life in the increasing speciality
of human adaptation to external nature. As it is with life
objectively, and as it is with cognition or subjective life, so is it
with the language in which the phenomena ere embodied : in
the organic growth of a language there is a continuous differen-
tiation, first of nouns into substantives and adjectives, then of
the latter into adjectives proper and nouns abstract ; synonymes
again disappear, each getting iU, special appropriation, and super-
fluous words are taken up Iry new developments and combi-
nations of thought. How, then, was it possible that a one-sided
method, which entirely ignored the examination of nature, should
do more than repeat the same things over and over again in
words which, though they might be different, Mere yet not less
indefinite ? The results have answered to the absurdity of the
method ; for, after being in fashion for more than two thousand
years, nothing has been established by it ; " not only what was
asserted once is asserted still but what was a question once is a
question still, and instead of being resolved by discussion is
only fixed and fed."^)

Perhaps if men had always lived in the sunny climes of the
south, where the luxuriance of nature allowed of human indo-
lence, they might have continued vainly to speculate ; but when
they were brought face to face with Nature in the rugged north,
and were driven to force by persevering labour the means of
subsistence from her sterile bosom, then there arose the necessity
to observe her processes and investigate her secret ways. There
was an unavoidable intending of the mind to the realities of
nature ; and this practice, which the exigencies of living first
enforced, became in the fulness of time with those who had
leisure and opportunity the disposition consciously to interrogate
and interpret Nature. In Roger Bacon, we see the human mind
striving unconsciously, as it were, after the true method of

(*) See Notes at the end of the Chapters.

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 5

development ; while in the Chancellor Bacon, who systematized
the principles and laid down the rules of the inductive philo-
sophy, we observe it doing with design and method that which
it had hitherto been blindly aiming at. But as it is with the
infant, so was it with humanity ; action preceded consciousness,
and Bacon himself was the efflux of a spirit which prevailed and
not the creator of it. By thus humbling himself to obey, man
has conquered nature; and those plenteous "fruits and invented
works" which Bacon confidently anticipated as " sponsors and
sureties" for the truth of his method, have been reaped in the
richest abundance.

It seems strange enough now to us that men should not have
sooner hit upon the excellent and profitable method of induction.
How came it to pass that when they surveyed organic nature, as
Aristotle notably did, they failed to perceive the progress in
development from the general and simple to the special and
complex, which is evident throughout it ? Had they but formu-
larized this law of increasing speciality and complexity in organic
adaptation to external nature, then they had scarcely failed to
apply it to conscious human development ; and that would have
been to establish deductively the necessity of the inductive
method. Unfortunately, Aristotle stood alone ; and it remains
his particular merit to have foreseen in some sort the value of
the inductive method. Had he also consistently followed it in
practice, which he did not, there was an impassable hindrance
to its general adoption, in the moral errors engendered by the
metaphysical or subjective method, of which Plato wras so
powerful a representative and so influential an exponent. Man,
as the measure of the universe, esteemed himself far too highly
to descend to be the servant and interpreter of nature ; and this
erroneous conceit not only affected his conception of his rela-
tion to the rest of nature, but permeated his social nature, and
vitiated his whole habit of thought : the superstitious reverence
of the Greek who would put to death a victorious general because
he had left his dead unburied on the field of battle, must have
prevented Aristotle from anatomical examination of the structure
of the human body. The same errors are continually reappearing
in human history: what happened in the Middle Ages may illus-
trate for us the habit of Greek thought; for at that time mistaken

6 OX THE METHOD OF [chap.

religious prejudice allied itself most closely with the metaphy-
sical method which exalted man so much over the rest of nature,
opposing most virulently the birth of positive science, which
seemed to threaten to degrade Mm ; and for a time it was almost
doubtful which would win. Can we wonder, then, that the
erroneous method was triumphant in Greece in the fourth cen-
tury before Christ, when it is only recently in England, in the
nineteenth century after Christ, that the barbarian's reverence
for a dead body has permitted anatomical dissection, and when
the finger-bone of a saint, or a rag of his clothing, is still trea-
sured up, in some parts of the world, as a most precious relic
endued with miraculous virtues ! The evil of the metaphysical
method was not intellectual deficiency only, but a corresponding
baneful moral error.

The adoption of the inductive method, which makes man the
servant and interpreter of Nature, is in reality the systematic
pursuance of the law of progress in organic development ; it is
the conscious intending of the mind to external realities, the
submitting of the understanding to things — in other words, the
increasing speciality of internal adjustment to external impres-
sions ; and the result is a victory by obedience, an individual
increase through adaptation to outward relations, in accordance
with the so-called principle of natural selection. The mental
capacity of one who is deprived of any one of his senses, which
are the inlets to impressions from without, or the gateways of
knowledge, is less than that of one who is in the full posses-
sion of all his senses ; and the great advances in science have
uniformly corresponded with the invention of some instrument
by which the power of the senses has been increased, or their
range of action extended. Astronomy is that which the eye has
been enabled to see by the aid of the telescope ; the revelations of
the inmost processes of nature have been due to the increased
power of vision which the microscope has conferred ; the ex-
tremely delicate balance has supplied to science a numerical
exactness; the spectrum lias furnished a means of analysing
the constitution of the heavenly bodies ; and the galvanometer
already gives the most hopeful presage of important discoveries
in nervous function. Through the senses has knowledge entered;
and the intellect has in turn devised means for extending the

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 7

action and increasing the discriminating exactness of the senses :
there have been action and reaction and progressive specialization
and complication thereof. The two aspects of this relation we
designate, in their highest manifestations, as cognition and
action, or science and art.

Thus much concerning the historical evolution of the induc-
tive method. But now comes the important question, whether
it is available for the study of the whole of nature. Can we
apply the true inductive and objective method to the investiga-
tion of psychical as well as of physical nature ? In the latter
case, it has long received universal sanction ; but in the study of
a man's mind it is still a question what method should rightly
be employed. Plainly, it is not possible by simple observation
of others to form true inductions as to their mental phenomena ;
the defect of an observation which reaches only to the visible
results of invisible operations, exposes us without protection to
the hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious, of the individual ; and
the positive tendency, which no one can avoid, to interpret the
action of another mind according to the measure of one's own, to
see not what is in the object, but what is in the subject, fre-
quently vitiates an assumed penetration into motives. If we call
to our aid the principles of the received system of psychology,
matters are not mended ; for its ill-defined terms and vague
traditions, injuriously affecting our perceptions, and overruling
the understanding, do not fail to confuse and falsify inferences.
It must unfortunately be added that, in the present state of
physiological science, it is quite impossible to ascertain, by
observation and experiment, the nature of those organic pro-
cesses which are the bodily conditions of mental phenomena.
There would appear, then, to be no help for it but to have entire
recourse to the psychological method — that method of interro-
gating self-consciousness which has found so much favour at all
times. Before making any such admission, let this reflection be
weighed : that the instinctive nisus of mankind commonly pre-
cedes the recognition of systematic method ; that men, without
knowing why, do follow a course which there exist very good
reasons for. Nay more : the practical instincts of mankind often
work beneficially in an actual contradiction to their professed
doctrines. When in the Middle Ages faith was put in the

^

8 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

philosophy of the schools, the interrogation of nature by experi-
ment was going on in many places ; and the superstitious people
that believe in the direct interference of spirits or of gods, still
adopt such means of self-protection as a simple experience of
nature teaches. Man does not consciously determine his method
and then enter upon it ; he enters blindly upon it, and at a
certain stage awakes to consciousness. In the onward flowing
stream of nature's organic evolution, life first becomes self-
conscious in man : in the slumbering mental development of
mankind, it is the genius who at due time awakens to active con-
sciousness the sleeping century. It would indeed go hard with
mankind if they must act wittingly before they acted at all.

Two facts come out very distinctly from a candid observation
of the state of thought at the present day. One of these is the
little favour in which metaplry sics is held, and the very general
conviction that there is no profit in it : the consequence of which
firmly fixed belief is, that it is cultivated as a science only by
those whose particular business it is to do so, who are engaged
not in action, wherein the true balance of life is maintained, but
in dreaming in professorial chairs ; or if by any others, by the
ambitious youth who goes through an attack of metaphysics as
a child goes through an attack of measles, getting haply an
immunity from a similar affection for the rest of his life ; or
lastly, by the untrained and immature intellects of those meta-
physical dabblers who continue youths for life. A second fact,
which has scarcely yet been sufficiently weighed, is the extreme
favour in which biography is held at the present time, and the
large development which it is receiving.

Let us look first at the import of biography. As the business
of a man in the world is action of some kind, and as his action
undoubtedly results from the relations between him and his
surroundings, it is plain that biography, which estimates both
the individual and his circumstances, and displays their re-
actions, can alone give an adequate account of the man. What
was the mortal's force of character, what was the force of circum-
stances, how he struggled with them, and how he was affected by
them, — what was the life-product under the particular conditions
of its evolution : — these are the questions which a good biography
aspires to answer. It regards men as concrete beings, acknow-

!.] THE STUDY OF MLXD. 9

ledges the differences between them in characters and capabilities,
recognises the helpful or baneful influence of surroundings, and
patiently unfolds the texture of life as the inevitable result of
the elements out of which, and the conditions under which, it
has been worked. It is, in fact, the application of positive
science to human life, and the necessary consequence of the
progress of the inductive philosophy. No marvel, then, that
biography forms so large a part of the literature of the day, and
that novels, its more or less faithful mirrors, are in so great
request. The instincts of mankind are here, as heretofore, in
advance of systematic knowledge or method.

On the other hand, the metaphysician deals with man as an
abstract or ideal being, postulates him as a certain constant
quantity, and thereupon confidently enunciates empty propo-
sitions. The consequence is, that metaphysics has never made
any advance, but has only appeared in new garb ; nor can it in
truth advance, unless some great addition is made to the inborn
power of the human mind. It surely argues no little conceit in
any one to believe that what Plato and Descartes have not done,
he, following the same method, will do.* Plato interrogated his
own mind, and set forth its answers with a clearness, subtlety,
and elegance of style that is unsurpassed and unsurpassable;
until then the very unlikely event of a better mind than his
making its appearance, his system may well remain as the
adequate representative of what the metaphysical method can
accomplish. Superseded by a mure fruitful method, it is prac-
tically obsolete; and its rare advocate, when such an one is
found, may be said, like the Aturian parrot of which Humboldt
tells, to speak in the language of an extinct tribe to a people
which understand him not.f

But the method of interrogating self-consciousness may be
employed, and is largely employed, without carrying it to a
metaphysical extreme. Empirical psychology, founded on direct \S

* "It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory, to expect that things
which have never yet been done can be done, except by means which have never
yet been tried." — Nov. Org. Aphorism vi.

T " There still lives, and it is a singular fact, an old parrot in Maypures which
cannot be understood, because, as the natives assert, it speaks the language of the
Atures — an extinct tribe of Indians, whose last refuge was the locks of the
foaming cataract of the Orinoco." — Humboldt, Vieics of Nature, i. p. 172.

10 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

consciousness as distinguished from the transcend ratal conscious-
ness on which metaphysics is based, claims to give a faithful
record of our different states of mind and their mutual relations,
and has been extravagantly lauded, by the Scotch school, as an
inductive science. Its value as a science must plainly rest upon
the sufficiency and reliability of consciousness as a witness of
that which takes place in the mind. Is the foundation then
sufficiently secure ? It may well be doubted ; and for the
following reasons : —

(«.) There are but few individuals who are capable of attending
to the succession of phenomena in their own minds ; such intro-
spection demanding a particular cultivation, and being practised
with any degree of, or pretence to, success by those only who
have learned the terms, and been imbued with the theories, of
the system of psychology supposed to be thereby established.
And with what success ?

(b.) There is no agreement between those who have acquired
the power of introspection : and men of apparently equal culti-
vation and capacity will, with the utmost sincerity and confi-
dence, lay down directly contradictory propositions. It is not
possible to convince either opponent of error, as it might be in a
matter of objective science, because he appeals to a witness
whose evidence can be taken by no one but himself, and whose
veracity, therefore, cannot be tested. He brings forward the
factitious deliverances of his individual consciousness, but no fact
which is capable of being demonstrated to another mind.

(c.) To direct consciousness inwardly to the observation of a
particular state of mind is to isolate that activity for the time, to
cut it off from its relations, and, therefore, to render it unnatural
In order to observe its own action, it is necessary that the mind
pause from activity ; and yet it is the train of activity that is to
be observed. As long as you cannot effect the pause necessary
for self-contemplation, there can be no observation of the current
of activity : if the pause is effected, then there can be nothing
to observe. This cannot be accounted a vain and theoretical
objection, for the results of introspection too surely confirm its
validity : what was a question once is a question still, and
instead of being resolved by introspective analysis is only fixed
and fed. {*)

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 1 1

(d.) The madman's delusion is of itself sufficient to excite
profound distrust, not only in the objective truth, but in the
subjective worth, of the testimony of an individual's self-con-
sciousness. Descartes laid down the test of a true belief to be
that which the mind could clearly and distinctly conceive : if
there is one thing more clearly and distinctly conceived than
another, it is commonly the madman's delusion. No marvel,
then, that psychologists, since the time of Descartes, have held
that the veracity of consciousness is to be relied upon only under
certain rules, from the violation of which, Sir W. Hamilton
believed, the contradictions of philosophy have arisen. Un what
evidence, then, do the rules rest ? Either on the evidence of
consciousness, whence it happens that each philosopher and each
lunatic has his own rules, and no advance is made ; or upon the
observation and judgment of mankind, to confess which is very
much like throwing self-consciousness overboard— not otherwise
than as was advantageously done by positive science when the
figures on the thermometer, and not the subjective feelings of
heat or cold, were recognised to be the true test of the indi-
vidual's temperature.

It is not merely a charge against self-consciousness that it is
not reliable in that of which it does give information ; but it is
a provable charge against it that it does not give any account
of a large and important part of our mental activity : its light
reaches only to states of consciousness, not to states of mind.
Its evidence, then, is not only untrustworthy save under con-
ditions which it nowise helps us to fix, but it is of little value,
because it has reference only to a small part of that for which its
testimony is invoked. May we not then justly say that self-
consciousness is utterly incompetent to supply the facts for the
building up of a truly inductive psychology ? Let the following
reasons further warrant the assertion : —

1. It is the fundamental maxim of the inductive philosophy
that observation should begin with simple instances, ascent
being made gradually from them through appropriate generaliza-
tions, and that no particulars should be neglected. How does
the interrogation of self-consciousness fulfil this most just de-
mand ? It is a method which is applicable only to mind at a
high degree of development, so that it perforce begins with those

12 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

most complex instances which give the least certain information;
while it passes completely by mind in its lower stages of develop-
ment, so that it ignores those simpler instances which give the
best or securest information. In this it resembles the philosopher
who, while he gazed upon the scars, tell into the water ; " for if,"
as Bacon says, " he had looked down, he might have seen the stars
in the water, but, looking aloft, he could not see the water in the
stars." (3) "Where has the animal any place in the accepted system
of psychology ? or the child, the direction of whose early mental
development is commonly decisive of its future destiny? To
speak of induction where so many important instances are neg-
lected, and others are selected according to caprice or the ease
of convenience, is to rob the word of all definite meaning, and
most mischievously to misuse it. A psychology which is truly
inductive must follow the order of nature, and begin where mind
begins in the animal and infant, gradually rising thence to those
higher and more complex mental phenomena which the intro-
spective philosopher discerns or thinks he discerns. Certainly
it may be said, and it has been said, that inferences as to the
mental phenomena of the child can be correctly formed from the
phenomena of the adult mind. But it is exactly because such
erroneous inferences have hem made, that the mental phenomena
of the child have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, and
that psychology has not received the benefit of the correction
which a faithful observation of them would have furnished. It
was the physiologist who by a careful observation of the lower
animals, " having entered firmly on the true road, and submitting
his understanding to things," arrived at generalizations which
were found to explain many of the mental phenomena of the
child, and which have furthermore thrown so much light upon
the mental life of the adult. The careful study of the genesis of
mind is as necessary to a true knowledge of mental phenomena
as the study of its plan of development confessedly is to an
adequate conception of the bodily life.

Again, it might be thought a monstrous mistake of nature to
have brought forth so many idiots and lunatics, seeing that
the introspective psychologists, though making a profession of
induction with their lips, take no notice whatever of the large
collection of instances afforded by such unwelcome anomalies.

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 13

Certainly it may be said, and no doubt it has been said, that the
mental phenomena of the idiot or lunatic are morbid, and do not,
therefore, concern psychology. It is true that they do not con-
cern a psychology which violently separates itself from nature.
But it is exactly because psychology has thus unwarrantably
severed itself from nature — of which the so-called morbid phe-
nomena are no less natural a part than are the phenomena of
health — that it has not sure foundations ; that it is not inductive;
that it has not received the benefit of the corrective instances
which a faithful observation of the unsound mind would have
afforded. In reality the phenomena of insanity, presenting a
variation of conditions which cannot be produced artificially —
the instantia contradictoria — furnish what in such matter ought
to have been seized with the utmost eagerness ; namely, actual
experiments well suited to correct false generalization and to
establish the principles of a truly inductive science. The laws
of mental action are not miraculously changed nor reversed in
madness, though the conditions of their operation are different ;
and nature does not recognise the artificial and ill-starred
divisions which men, for the sake of convenience, and not
unfrequently in the interests of ignorance, make.

2. Consciousness gives no account of the essential material
conditions which underlie every mental manifestation, and de-
termine the character of it ; let the function of an individual's
optic ganglia be abolished by disease or otherwise, and he would
not be conscious that he wras blind until experience had con-
vinced him of it. On grounds which will not easily be shaken
it is now indeed admitted, that with every display of mental
activity there is a correlative change or waste of nervous
element ; and on the condition of the material substratum must
depend the degree and character of the manifested energy or the
mental phenomenon. Now the received system of psychology
gives no attention to these manifold variations of feeling in the
same individual, which are due to temporary modifications of the
bodily state, and by which the ideas of the relations of objects
to self and to one another are so greatly influenced. The quality
of the ideas which arise in the mind under certain circumstances,
the whole character indeed of our insight at the time, is notably
determined in great part by the feeling which may then have

/

14 ON THE METHOD OF [chap

sway ; and that feeling is not always objectively caused, but may-
be entirely due to a particular bodily condition, as the daily
experience of every one may convince him, and as the earlier
phenomena of insanity often illustrate in a striking manner.

Again, Bacon long ago set dow ; individual j^l/chologij as want-
ins : and insisted on a scientific and accurate dissection of minds
and characters, and the secret dispositions of particular men, so
" that from the knowledge thereof better rules may be framed for
the treatment of the mind." (4) As far as the present psychology
is concerned, the individual might have no existence in nature ;
he is an inconvenience to a system which, in neglecting the
individual constitution or temperament, ignores another large
collection of valuable instances. As far as truth is concerned,
however, the individual is of -ome moment, seeing that he often
positively contradicts the principles arbitrarily laid down by a
theoretical system.

AVhen the theologist, who occupies himself with the supersen-
suous, has said all that he has to say from his point of view ;
when the jurist, who represents those principles which the
wisdom of society has established, has in turn exhaustively
argued from his point of view, — then the ultimate appeal in a
concrete case must be to the physician, who deals with the bodily
life ; through his ground only can the theologist and jurist pass
to their departments ; and they must accept their knowledge of
it from him : on the foundation of facts which the faithful inves-
tigation of the bodily nature lays, must rest, if they are to rest
safely, their systems. Certainly it is not probable that this most
desirable and inevitable result will come to pass in this day or
generation ; for it is not unknown howr slowly the light of know-
ledge penetrates the thick fogs of ignorance, nor how furiously
irritated prejudice opposes the gentle advent of new truth. Hap-
pily, it is certain that in the mortality of man lies the salvation
of truth.

3. There is an appropriation of external impressions by the
mind or brain, which regularly takes place without any, or only
with a very obscure, affection of consciousness. As the various
organs of the body select from the blood the material suitable to
their nourishment, and assimilate it, so the organ of the mind
unconsciously appropriates, through the inlets of the senses, the

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 15

influences of its surroundings. The impressions which it thus
receives and retains do not produce definite ideas and feelings,
but they nevertheless permanently affect the mind's nature ; so
that as an individual consciously provides his food, and then
leaves the due assimilation of it to the unconscious action of the
organism, in like manner may he consciously arrange the cir-
cumstances in which he will live, but cannot then prevent the
unconscious assimilation of their influence, and the correspond-
ing modification of his character. Not only slight habits of
movement are thus acquired, but habits of thought and feeling
are imperceptibly organized ; so that an acquired nature may
ultimately govern one who is not at all conscious that he has
changed. Let any one take careful note of his dreams, and he
will find that many of the seemingly unfamiliar things with
which his mind is then occupied, and which apnear to be new
and strange productions, are traceable to the unconscious appro-
priations of the day. There are other stories on record like that
well-known one which Coleridge quotes of the servant-girl who,
in the ravings of fever, repeated long passages in the Hebrew
language, which she did not understand, and could not repeat
when well, but which, when living with a clergyman, she had
heard him read aloud.* The remarkable memories of certain
idiots, who, utterly destitute of intelligence, will repeat the
longest stories with the greatest accuracy, testify also to this un-
conscious cerebral action ; and the way in which the excitement
of a great sorrow, or some other cause, as the last flicker of de-
parting life, will sometimes call forth in idiots manifestations of
mind of which they always seemed incapable, renders it certain
that much is unconsciously taken up by them which cannot be
uttered, but which leaves its relics in the mind.

It is a truth which cannot be too distinctly borne in mind,
that consciousness is not co-extensive with mind. From the
first moment of its independent existence the brain begins to
assimilate impressions from without, and to react thereto in
corresponding organic adaptations ; this it does at first without

* "A Lutheran clergyman of Philadelphia informed Dr. Rush that Germans
and Swedes, of whom he had a considerable number in his congregation, when
near death, always prayed in their native language, though some of them, he was
confident, had not spoken the language for fifty or sixty years." — Abeucrombie,
On the Intellectual Powers, p. 148.

16 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

consciousness, and this it continues to do unconsciously more
or less throughout life. Thus it is that mental power is being
organized before the supervention of consciousness, and that the
mind is subsequently regularly modified as a natural process
"without the intervention of consci*. usness. The preconscious
action of the mind, as certain metaphysical psychologists in
Germany have called it, and the unconscious action of the mind,
which is now established beyond all rational doubt, are assuredly
facts of which the most ardent introspective psychologist must
admit that self-consciousness can give us no account.

4. Everything which has existed with any completeness in con-
sciousness is preserved, after its disappearance therefrom, in the
mind or brain, and may reappear in consciousness at some future
time. That which persists or is retained has been differently
described as a residuum, or reJ 1c, or trace, or vestige, or again as
potential, or latent, or dormant idea ; and it is on the existence
of such residua that memory depends. Not only definite ideas,
however, but all affections of the nervous system, feelings of
pleasure and pain, desires, and even its outward reactions, thus
leave behind them their residua, and lay the foundations of modes
of thought, feeling, and action. Particular talents are sometimes
formed quite, or almost quite, involuntarily ; and complex actions,
which were first consciously performed by dint of great applica-
tion, become by repetition automatic ; ideas, which were at first
consciously associated, ultimately call one another up without
any consciousness, as we see in the quick perception or intuition
of the man of large worldly experience ; and feelings, once active,
leave behind them their unconscious residua, thus affecting the
general tone of the character, so that, apart from the ori«inal
or inborn nature of the individual, contentment, melancholy,
cowardice, bravery, and even moral feeling, are generated as the
results of particular life experiences. Consciousness is not able
to give any account of the manner in which these various residua
are perpetuated, and how they exist latent in the mind ; but a
fever, a poison in the blood, or a dream, may at any moment recall
ideas, feelings, and activities which seem for ever vanished. The
lunatic sometimes reverts, in his ravings, to scenes and events of
which, when in his sound senses, he has no memory ; the fever-
stricken patient may pour out passages in a language which he

i.J THE STUDr OF MIND. 1 7

understands not, but which he has accidentally heard ; a dream
of being at school again brings back with painful vividness the
school feelings ;" and before him who is drowning every event
of his life seems to flash in one moment of strange and vivid
consciousness. Some who suffer from recurrent insanity re-
member only, in their lucid intervals, the facts of former lucid
intervals, and in their paroxysms the ideas, feelings, and events
of former paroxysms. Dreams not remembered in the waking
state may yet affect future dreams, appearing in them as vague
and confused recollections.

It has been before said that mind and consciousness are not
synonymous ; it may now be added, that the existence of mind
does not necessarily involve the activity of mind. Descartes
certainly maintained that the mind always thinks ; and others,
resting on that assumption, have held that we must always
dream in sleep, because the mind, being spiritual, cannot cease
to act ; for non-activity would be non-existence. Such opinions
only illustrate how completely metaphysical conceptions may
overrule the best understanding : so far from the mind being
always active, it is the fact that at each moment the greater part
of the mind is not only unconscious, but inactive. Mental power
exists in statical equilibrium as well as in manifested energy ;
and the utmost tension of a particular mental activity may not
avail to call forth from their secret repository the dormant ener-
gies of latent residua, even when most urgently needed : no man
can call to mind at any moment the thousandth part of his
knowledge. How utterly helpless is consciousness to give any
account of the statical condition of mind ! But as statical mind
is in reality the statical condition of the organic element which
ministers to its manifestations, it is plain that, if we ever are
to know anything of inactive mind, it is to the progress of
physiology that we must look for information.

5. Consciousness reveals nothing of the process by which one
idea calls another into activity, and has no -control whatever over
the manner of the reproduction ; it is only when the idea is made
active by virtue of some association, when the effect solicits or
extorts attention, that we are conscious of it ; and there is no
power in the mind to call up ideas indifferently. If we would
recollect something which at the moment escapes us, confessedly

18 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

the best way of succeeding is to permit the mind to work
unconsciously ; and while the consciousness is otherwise occu-
pied, the forgotten name or circumstance will oftentimes flash
into the memory. In composition, the writer's consciousness is
engaged chiefly with his pen and wit! the sentences which he is
forming, while the results of the mind's unconscious working,
matured by an insensible gestation, rise from unknown depths
into consciousness, and are by its help embodied in appropriate
words.

Not only is the actual process of the association of our ideas
independent of consciousness, but that assimilation or blending
of similar ideas, or of the like in different ideas, by which general
ideas are formed, is in no way under the control or cognizance of
consciousness. When the like in two perceptions is appropriated,
while that in wThich they differ is neglected, it would seem to be
by an assimilative action of the nerve-cell or cells of the brain
which, particularly modified by the first impression, have an
attraction or affinity for a like subsequent impression : the cell
so modified and so ministering takes to itself that which is suit-
able and which it can assimilate, or make of the same kind with
itself, while it rejects, for appropriation by other cells, that which
is unlike and which will not blend. Now this organic process
takes place, like the organic action of other elements of the body,
quite out of the reach of consciousness ; we are not aware how
our general and abstract ideas are formed; the due material is
consciously supplied, and there is an unconscious elaboration of
the result. Mental development thus represents a sort of nutri-
tion and organization ; or, as Milton aptly says of the opinions
of good men that they are truth in the making, so we may truly
say of the formation of our general and complex ideas, that it is
mind in the making. When the individual brain is a well-con-
stituted one, and has been duly cultivated, the results of its latent
activity, starting into consciousness suddenly, sometimes appear
like intuitions ; they are strange and startling, as the products
of a dream ofttimes are, to the mind which has actually produced
them. Hence it was no extravagant fancy in Plato that he looked
upon them as reminiscences of a previous higher existence. Plato's
mind was a mind of the highest order, and the results of its
unconscious activity, as they flashed into consciousness, might

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 19

well seem intuitions of a better life quite beyond the reach of
present will.

But the process of unconscious mental elaboration is suffi-
ciently illustrated in daily experience. In dreams some can
compose vigorously and fluently, or speak most eloquently, who
can do nothing of the sort when awake ; schoolboys know how
much a night's rest improves their knowledge of a lesson which
they have been learning before going to bed ; great writers or
great artists, as is well known, have been truly astonished at
their own creations, and cannot conceive how they contrived to
produce them ; and to the unconscious action of the mind is
owing, most probably, that occasional sudden consciousness, which
almost every one at some time has, of having been before in
exactly the same circumstances as those which are then present,
though the thing was impossible ; but the action of the mind
in the assimilation of events here anticipates consciousness,
which, when aroused, finds a familiarity in them. Inventions
seem, even to the discoverers, to be matters of accident and good
fortune; the most voracious plagiarist is commonly the most
unconscious ; the best thoughts of an author are always the
unwilled thoughts which surprise himself ; and the poet under
the inspiration of creative activity is, so far as consciousness is
concerned, being dictated to. If we reflect, we shall see that it
must be so ; the products of creative activity, in so far as they
transcend the hitherto experienced, are unknown to the creator
himself before they come forth, and cannot therefore be the
result of a definite act of his will ; for to an act of will a con-
ception of the result is necessary. " The character," says Jean
Paul, speaking of the poet's work, " must appear living before
you, and you must hear it, not merely see it ; it must, as takes
place in dreams, dictate to you, not you to it ; and so much so
that in the quiet hour before you might perhaps be able to fore-
tell the vjhat but not the Iiovj. A poet who must reflect whether
in a given case he shall make a character say yes or no — to the
devil with him : he is only a stupid corpse."*

If an inherited excellence of brain has conferred upon the indi-
vidual great inborn capacity, it is well ; but if he has not such
heritage, then no amount of conscious effort will completely make

* Aesthetik.

c2

20 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

up for the defect. As in the germ of the higher animal there is
the potentiality of many kinds of tissue, while in the germ of the
lower animal there is only the potentiality of a few kinds of
tissue ; so in the good brain of a happily endowed man, there is
the potentiality of great assimilation a,.iof great and varied de-
velopment, while in the man of low mental endowment there is
only the potentiality of a scanty assimilation and of small develop-
ment. But it is ridiculous to suppose that the man of genius
is ever a fountain of self-generating energy ; whosoever expends
much in productive activity must take much in by appropriation ;
whence comes what of truth there is in the observation that
genius is a genius for industry. To believe that any one, how
great soever his natural genius, can pour forth with spontaneous
ease the results of great produc cive activity, without correspond-
ing labour in appropriation, is no less absurd than it would be to
believe that the acorn can grow into the mighty monarch of the
forest, without air and light, and without the kindly influence of
the soil.

It has been previously said that mental action does not neces-
sarily imply consciousness, and again, that mental existence does
not necessarily involve mental activity : it may now be affirmed
that the most important part of mental action, the essential pro-
cess on which thinking depends, is unconscious mental activity.
"We repeat, then, the question : how can self-consciousness suffice
to furnish the facts of a true mental science ?

6. The brain not only receives impressions unconsciously,
registers impressions without the co-operation of consciousness,
elaborates material unconsciously, calls latent residua again into
activity without consciousness, but it responds also as an organ
of organic life to the internal stimuli which it receives uncon-
sciously from other organs of the body. As the central organ to
which the various organic stimuli of a complex whole pass, and
where they are duly co-ordinated, it must needs have most im-
portant and intimate sympathies with the other parts of the
harmonious system ; and a regular quiet activity, of which we
only become occasionally conscious in its abnormal results, does
prevail, as the consequence and expression of these organic sym-
pathies. On the whole, this activity is even of more consequence
in determining the character of our feeling, or the tone of our

i.] T11E STUDY OF MINI). 21

disposition, than that which follows impressions received from
the external world ; when disturbed in a painful way, it becomes
the occasion of that feeling of gloom or discomfort which does not
itself give rise to anything more than an indefinite anticipation
of coming affliction, but which clouds ideas that arise, rendering
them obscure, unfaithfully representative, and painful. The
rapidity and success of conception, and the reaction of one con-
ception upon another, are much affected by the state of this active
but unconscious cerebral life: the poet is compelled to wait for
the moment of inspiration; and the thinker, after great but fruit-
less pains, must often tarry until a more favourable disposition of
mind. In insanity, the influence of this activity is most marked ;
for it then happens that the morbid state of some internal organ
becomes the basis of a painful but formless feeling of profound
depression, which ultimately condenses into some definite delu-
sion. In dreams its influence is no less manifest ; for he who
has gone to sleep with a disturbance of some internal organ may
find the character of his dreams determined by the feeling of
the oppression of self of which the organic trouble is the cause :
he is thwarted, he is afflicted, he is at school again, or under
sentence of death ; in some way or other his personality is
oppressed. Most plainly of all, however, does the influence of
the sexual organs upon the mind witness to this operation ; and
it was no wild flight of " that noted liar fancy" in Schlegel, but a
truly grounded creation of the imagination, that he represented
a pregnant woman as being visited every night by a beautiful
child, which gently raised her eyelids and looked silently at her,
but which disappeared for ever after delivery.* Whatever then
may be thought of the theory of JBichat,who located the passions
in the organs of organic life, it must be admitted that he therein
evinced a just recognition of the importance of that unconscious
cerebral activity which is the expression of the organic sym-
pathies of the brain.

In dealing with unconscious mental activity, and with mind
in a statical condition, it has been a necessity to speak of brain

* " In Schlegels — viel zu wenig erkanntem — Florentin sieht eine Schwangere
immer cin schones Wunderkmd, das mit ihr Nachts die Augen aufschlagt, ihr
stumm entgegen lauft u. s. w. und welches unter der Entbindung auf iramer
vurschwiudet." — Jeax Pavl, Acsthdik.

22 ON THE METHOD OF \cbax.

and cerebral action, where I would willingly, to avoid offence
that might be taken thereat, have spoken, had it been possible,
of mind and mental action ; but it was impossible, if one was to
be truthful and intelligible, to do otherwise. When the impor-
tant influence on mental life of the bra: ^as an organ of organic
life, comes to be considered, there' are no words available for
expressing the phenomena in the language of the received
psychology, which, though it admits the brain to be the organ of
the mind, takes no notice whatever of it as an organ. Let us
briefly add, then, what the relations of the brain as a bodily
organ are.

1. The brain has, as previously set forth, a life of relation ;
which may be properly distinguished into — (a) a relation with
external nature through the inkts of the senses ; and (6) a rela-
tion with the other organs of the body, through the nervous
system distributed throughout the body. These have already
been sufficiently dwelt upon here ; they will receive fuller atten-
tion afterwards.

2. But the brain has also a life of nutrition, or, if we might so
call it, a vegetative life. In this, its true organic life, there is a
nutritive assimilation of suitable material from the blood by the
nerve-cell ; a restoration of the statical equilibrium being thereby
effected after each display of energy. The extent of the nutri-
tive repair, and the mould which it takes, must plainly be deter-
mined by the extent and form of the waste which has been the
condition of the display of function : the material change or
waste in the nerve-cell, which the activity of an idea implies, is
replaced from the blood according to the mould or pattern of the
particular idea ; statical idea thus following through the agency
of nutritive attraction upon the waste through functional repul-
sion of active idea. The elements of the nerve-cell grow to the
form in which it energizes. This organic process of repair is
not usually attended with consciousness, and yet it may obtrude
itself into consciousness : as the function of any organ, which
proceeds, when all is well, without exciting any sensation, does,
under conditions of disorder, give rise to unusual sensation or to
actual pain ; so the organic life of the brain, which usually passes
peaceably without exciting consciousness, may under certain
conditions thrust itself forward into consciousness and produce

i.] TEE STUDY OF MIND. 23

anomalous effects. When this happens, the abnormal effect is
not manifest in sensation, for the hemispheres of the brain, as
physiologists well know, are not sensitive in that sense ; but it
is displayed in the involuntary appearance of emotional ideas
in consciousness, and in consequent confusion of thought ; the
statical idea becomes energy, not through the usual train of asso-
ciation, but by reason of the abnormal stimulus from the inner
life. Thus it is that the presence of alcohol, or some other
such foreign agent, in the blood will excite into activity ideas
which lie out of the usual path of association, which the utmost
tension of consciousness would fail to arouse, and which the
will cannot repress nor control. Whosoever will be at the pains
of attending to his own daily experience will find that ideas
frequently arise into consciousness without any apparent relation
to those previously active ; without, in fact, any possibility of ex-
plaining, quoad consciousness, why and whence they come. (5)

To what has been before said of unconscious mental action
this more may now be added — that the deep basis of all mental
action lies in the organic life of the brain, the characteristic of
which in health is, that it proceeds without consciousness. He
whose brain makes him conscious that he has a brain is not well,
but ill ; and thought that is conscious of itself is not natural and
healthy thought. How little competent, then, is consciousness
to supply the facts of an inductive science of mind ! Pneuma-
tology was at one time subdivided into theology, demonology, and
psychology ; all three resting on the evidence of the inner wit-
ness. Demonology has taken its place in the history of human
error and superstition ; theology is confessedly now best sup-
ported by those who strive to ascend inductively from nature's
law up to nature's God; and psychology, generally forsaken,
stays its fall by appropriating the discoveries of physiology,
preserving only in its nomenclature the shadow of its ancient
authority and state. On what foundation can a science of mind
surely rest save on the faithful observation of all available
instances, whether psychical or physiological ?

Why, however, it will naturally be asked, repudiate and dis- J
parage introspective psychology, now that it evinces some dispo-
sition to abandon its exclusive mode of procedure and to profit
by the discoveries of physiology ? Because the union, as desired

04 OX THE METHOD OF [coat,

by it, is an unnatural and unhallowed union, which can only
issue in abortions or give birth to monsters ; not otherwise than
as Man, designing impiously to embrace Juno, had intercourse
with the' clouds and begat centaurs. It is not a mere skimming
of physiological text-books, and a superficial acquaintance with
the nature and functions of the nervous system, which will put
meaning into the vague and abstract language of psychology ;
that would simply be to subject physiology to the tortures of
Mezentius — to stifle the living in the embraces of the dead ; but
it is a sound general knowledge of the whole domain of organi-
zation, at the head of which stands the nervous system, and the
final achievement of which is mind, that is indispensably pre-
requisite to the formation of fundamentally true conceptions of
mental phenomena on a physiological basis. These conceptions,
thus vitally impregnated, and the language in which they are
expressed, cannot be reconciled with the language of psychology,
which, borrowed at first from observation of the senses, has now
become so abstract and been so depraved by its divorce from
nature, as to be empty of real meaning. Words ! words ! words !
but what an aching vacuum of matter ! The question between
modern physiology and the old psj'chology, is not a question of
eclectic appropriation by the latter of the discoveries of the
former, but a fundamental question of method of study.

Such are the charges against self-consciousness whereon is
founded the conclusion as to its incompetency : they show that
he who thinks to illuminate the whole range of mental action by
the light of his own consciousness is not unlike one who should
go about to illuminate the universe with a rushlight. A reflec-
tion on the true nature of consciousness will surely tend to con-
firm that opinion. Whoever faithfully and firmly endeavours to
obtain a definite idea of what is meant by consciousness, will
find it nowise so easy a matter as the frequent and ready use of
the word might imply. Metaphysicians, faithful to the vague-
ness of their ideas, and definite only in individual assumption,
are by no means agreed in the meaning which they attach to it ;
and it sometimes happens that the same metaphysician uses the
word in two or three different senses in different parts of his
book i Sir W. Hamilton uses it at one time as synonymous with
mind, at another time as synonymous with knowledge, and at

i.] THE STUDY OF MINI). 25

another time to express a condition of mental activity. That
there should be such little certainty about that upon which their
philosophy fundamentally rests must be allowed to be no small
misfortune to the metaphysicians.

What consciousness is will appear better if its relations be
closely examined without prejudice. It will then appear that it
is not separable from knowledge ; that it exists only as a part of
the concrete mental act ; that it has no more power of withdraw-
ing from the particular phenomenon and of taking full and fair
observation of it, than a boy has of jumping over his own shadow.
Consciousness is not a faculty or substance, but a quality or
attribute of the concrete mental act ; and it may exist in differ-
ent degrees of intensity or it may be absent altogether. In so
far as there is consciousness, there is certainly mental activity ;
but it is not true that in so far as there is mental activity there
is consciousness ; it is only with a certain intensity of representa-
tion or conception that consciousness appears. AVhat else, then,
is the so-called interrogation of consciousness but a self-revela-
tion of the particular mental act, whose character it must needs
share ? Consciousness can never be a valid and unprejudiced
witness ; for although it testifies to the existence of a particular
mental modification, yet when that modification has anything
of a morbid character, consciousness is affected by the taint and
is morbid also. Accordingly, the lunatic appeals to the evidence
of his own consciousness for the truth of his hallucination or
delusion, and insists that he has as sure evidence of its reality as
he has of the argument of any one who may try to convince him
of his error: and is he not right from a subjective standpoint?
To one who has vertigo the world turns round. A man may easily
be conscious of freewill when, isolating the particular mental
act, he cuts himself off from the consideration of the causes
which have preceded it, and on which it depends. " There is no
force," says Leibnitz, "in the reason alleged by Descartes to
prove the independence of our free actions by a pretended lively
internal sentiment. It is as if the needle should take pleasure
in turning to the north ; for it would suppose that it turned
independently of any other cause, not perceiving the insensible
motions of the magnetic matter."* Is it not supremely ridicu-

* Essais de Theodicee, Pt. I.

26 ON THE METHOD OF [ch^p.

lous that, while we cannot trust consciousness in so simple a
matter as whether we are hot or cold, we should be content to
rely entirely on its evidence in the complex phenomena of our
highest mental activity ? The truth is, that what has very often
happened before has happened here : t*M quality or attribute has
been abstracted from the concrete, and the abstraction converted
into an entity ; the attribute, consciousness, has miraculously got
rid of its substance, and then with a wonderful assurance as-
sumed the office of observing and passing judgment upon its
nature from a higher region of being. Descartes was in this
case the clever architect; and his success has fully justified
his art : while the metaphysical stage of human 'development
lasts, his work will doubtless endure.

That the subjective method- -the method of interrogating self-
consciousness — is not adequate to the construction of a true
mental science, has now seemingly been sufficiently established.
This is not to say that it is worthless ; for when not strained
beyond its capabilities, its results may, in the hands of competent
men, be very useful. D'Alembert compares Locke to Newton, and
makes it a special praise to him that he was content to descend
within, and that, after having contemplated himself for a long
while, he presented in his " Essay" the mirror in which he had
seen himself; "in a word, he reduced psychology to that which
it should be, the experimental physics of the mind." But it was
not because of this method, but in spite of it, that Locke was
greatly successful ; it was because he possessed a powerful and
well-balanced mind, the direct utterances of which he sincerely
expressed, that the results which he obtained, in whatever
nomenclature they may be clothed, are and always will be valu-
able ; they are the self-revelations of an excellently constituted
and well-trained mind. The insufficiency of the method used is
proved by the fact that others adopting it, but wanting his sound
sense, directly contradicted him at the time, and do so stilL
Furthermore, Locke did not confine himself to the interrogation
of his own consciousness ; for he introduced the practice— for
winch Cousin was so angry with him — of referring to savages
and children. And we may take leave to suggest that the most
valuable part of Locke's psychology, that which has been a
lasting addition to knowledge, really was the result of the

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 27

employment of the inductive or rather objective method.* Nay-
more : if any one will be at the pains to examine into the history
of the development of psychology up to its present stage, he may
be surprised to find how much the important acquisitions of new
truth and the corrections of old errors have been due, not to the
interrogation of self-consciousness, but to external observation,
though it was not recognised as a systematic method. The past
history of psychology — its instinctive progress, so to speak — no
less than the consideration of its present state, proves the
necessity of admitting the objective method.

That which a just reflection incontestably teaches, the present
state of physiology practically illustrates. Though very im-
perfect as a science, physiology is still sufficiently advanced to
prove that no psychology can endure except it be based upon its
investigations. Let it not, moreover, be forgotten, as it is so apt
to be, that the divisions in our knowledge are artificial; that
they should be accepted, and used rather, as Bacon says, "for
lines to mark or distinguish, than sections to divide and separate ;
in order that solution of continuity in sciences may always be
avoided." t Not the smallest atom that floats in the sunbeam,
nor the minutest molecule that vibrates within the microcosm of
an organic cell, but is bound as a part of the mysterious whole in
an inextricable harmony with the laws by which planets move in
their appointed orbits, or with the laws which govern the mar-
vellous creations of godlike genius. Above all things it is now v/
necessary that the absolute and unholy barrier set up between
psychical and physical nature be broken down, and that a just
conception of mind be formed, founded on a faithful recognition
of all those phenomena of nature which lead by imperceptible
gradations up to this its highest evolution. Happily the beneficial
change is being gradually effected, and ignorant prejudice or
offended self-love in vain opposes a progress in knowledge which
reflects the course of progress in nature : the stars in their
courses fight for such truth, and its angry adversary might as
well hope to blow out with his pernicious breath the all-inspiring
light of the sun as to extinguish its ever-waxing splendour.

No one pretends that physiology can, for many years to come,

* Psychology cannot, in fact, be truly inductive unless it is studied objec-
tively. + De Augmentis Scientiarum, B. iv.

28 Off THE METHOD OF [chap.

furnish the complete data of a positive mental science : all that
it can at present do is to overthrow the data of a false psychology.
It is easy, no douht, for any one to point to the completeness of
our ignorance, and to maintain that physiology never will securely
fix the foundations of a mental science just as it was easy to say,
before the invention of the telescope, that the ways of the planets
could never be traced and calculated. The confident dogmatist
in this matter might well learn caution from an instructive
example of the rash error of a greater philosopher than he can
claim or hope to be : — " It is the absurdity of these opinions,"
said Bacon, " that has driven men to the diurnal motion of the
earth ; which, I am convinced, is most false." * What should fairly
and honestly be weighed is, that mind is the last, the highest, the
consummate evolution of nat are's development, and that, there-
fore, it must be the last, the most complex, and most difficult
object of human study. There are really no grounds for ex-
pecting a positive science of mind at present ; for to its estab-
lishment the completion of the other sciences is necessary ; and,
as is well known, it is "only lately that the metaphysical spirit
has been got rid of in astronomy, physics, and chemistry, and
that these sciences, after more than two thousand years of idle
and shifting fancies, have attained to certain principles. Still
more recently has physiology emerged from the fog, and this
for obvious reasons : in the first place it is absolutely dependent
upon the physical and chemical sciences, and must, therefore,
wait for the progress of them fand, in the second place, its close
relations to psychology have tended to keep it the victim of the
metaphysical spirit. That, therefore, which should be in this
matter is that which is ; and instead of being a cause of despair,
is a ground of hope.

But let it not be forgotten that the physiological method deals
only with one (I.) division of the matter to which the objective
met hod is to be applied ; there are other divisions not less
valuable : —

II. The study of the plan of development of mind, as exhibited

in the animal, the barbarian, and the infant, furnishes results of

the greatest value, and is as essential to a true mental science as

the study of its development confessedly is to a full knowledge

* Dc Aogmentu Seientiarom, B. iii.

i J THE STUDY OF MIND. 29

of the bodily organism. By that means we get at the deep and
true relations of phenomena, and are enabled to correct the
erroneous inferences of a superficial observation ; by examination
of the barbarian, for example, we eliminate the hypocrisy which
is the result of the social condition, and which is apt to mislead
us in the civilized individual.

III. The study of the degeneration of mind, as exhibited in the
different forms of idiocy and insanity, is indispensable as it is
invaluable. So we avail ourselves of the experiments provided
by nature, and bring our generalizations to a most searching test.
Hitherto the phenomena of insanity have been entirely ignored
by' psychologists and most grievously misinterpreted by the vul-
gar, because interpreted by the false conclusions of a subjective
psychology. Had not the revelations of consciousness in dreams
and in delirium been constantly neglected by the professed in-
ductive psychologists, truer generalizations must perforce have
been formed ere this, and fewer irresponsible lunatics would have
been executed as responsible criminals. Why those who put so
much faith in the subjective method do reject such a large and
important collection of instances as dreams and madmen furnish,
they have never thought proper to explain.

IV. The study of biograpliy and of autobiography, which has
already been described as the application of positive science to
human life, will plainly afford essential aid in the formation of a
positive science of mind. Thus we trace the development of
the mind in the individual as affected by hereditary influences,
education, and the circumstances of life. Concerning auto-
biographies, however, it will not be amiss to bear in mind an
observation made by Feuchtersleben, that "they are only of
value to the competent judge, because we must see in them not
so much what they relate as what, by their manner of relation,
is undesignedly betrayed."

V. The study of the progress or regress of the human mind,
as exhibited in history, most difficult as the task is, cannot be
neglected by one who wishes to be thoroughly equipped for the
arduous work of constructing a positive mental science. The
unhappy tendencies which lead to individual error and degene-
ration are those which on a national scale conduct peoples to
destruction ; and the nisus of an epoch is summed up in the

30 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

biography of its great man * Freed from the many disturbing
conditions which interfere so much with his observation of the
individual, the philosopher may perhaps discover in history the
laws of human progress in their generality and simplicity, as
Newton discovered, in the motions ^ the heavenly bodies, the
law which he would in vain have looked for had he watched the
fall of every apple in Europe. Moreover, in the language,
literature, art, and the political, social and religious institutions
of men, there are important materials fur the construction of a
science of mind.

May we not then truly say that he only is the true psycho-
logist who, occupied with the observation of the whole of human
nature, avails himself not alone of every means which science
affords for the investigation of the bodily conditions which
assuredly underlie eveiy dispj ly of function, conscious or uncon-
scious, but also of every help, subjective or objective, which
is furnished by the mental manifestations of animal and of
man, whether undeveloped, degenerate, or cultivated ? Here,
as everywhere else in nature, the student must deliberately
apply himself to a close communion with the external, must
intend his mind to the realities which surround him, and thus,
by patient internal adjustment to outward relations, gradually
evolve into conscious development those inner truths which are
the unavoidable expressions of the harmony between himself
and nature. By diligent colligation of facts, patient observation
of their relations, and careful consilience of inductions, he will
attain to sound generalizations in this as in other departments
of nature ; in no other way can he do so. Of old it was the
fashion to try to explain nature from a very incomplete know-
ledge of man; but it is the certain tendency of advancing
science to explain man on the basis of a perfecting knowledge
of nature.

Having fairly admitted a method, it behoves us to take heed
that we are not too exclusive in its application. To this there is
a strong inclination : even in the investigation of physical nature
men now frequently write of induction as Bacon himself never

* " When nature has work to be done," says Emerson, "she creates a genius
to do it. Follow the great man, and you shall see what the world has at heart in
these ages, There is no omen like that."

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 31

wrote of it. It might seem, from the usual fashion of speech,
that the function of the mind was merely that of a polished and
passive mirror, in which natural phenomena should be allowed
simply to reflect themselves ; whereas every state of conscious-
ness is a developmental result of the relation between mind and
the impression, of the subject and object. What Bacon strove
so earnestly to abolish was that method of systematically looking
into the mind and, by torture of self-consciousness, drawing
thence empty ideas, as the spider forms a web out of its own
substance, — that ill-starred divorce between mind and nature
which had been cultivated by the Schoolmen as a method.
"What he wished, on the other hand, to establish was a happy
marriage between mind and matter, between subject and object,
to prevent the " mind being withdrawn from things farther than
was necessary to bring into a harmonious conjunction the ideas
and the impressions made upon the senses." * For, as he says,

* " Nos vero intellectual longius a rebus non abstrahimus quam ut rerum
imagines et radii (utin sensufit) coire possint." (Proleg. Instaurat. Magn.) This
passage, as usually rendered, is not intelligible ; tbe translation in the text, if not
literally exact, evidently, as the context proves, expresses Bacon's true meaning.
He had objected to all before him that some had wrongly regarded the sense as
the measure of things, while others, equally wrongly, "after having only a little
while turned their eyes upon things, and instances, and experience, then straight-
way, as if invention were nothing more than a certain process of excogitation,
have fallen, as it were, to invoke their own spirits to utter oracles to them. But
we," he goes on, "modestly and perseveringly keeping ourselves conversant among
things, never withdraw our understanding," &c. Mr. Speddiug, in his admirable
edition of Bacon's works, translates the passage thus: — "I, on the contrary,
withdraw my intellect from them no further than may suffice to let the images
and rays of natural objects meet in a point, as they do in the sense of vision."
According to this interpretation, — if there really is any meaning in it — the images
and rays of objects express the same thing. Mr. Wood's translation, in Mr.
Montagu's edition, is : — " We abstract our understanding no further from them
than is necessaiy to prevent the confusion of the images of things with their
radiation, a confusion similar to that we experience by our senses." This is worse
still ; ut possint coire means, certainly, "that they may come together," not "that
they may not mingle or may be prevented from mingling." After all, the 95th
Aphorism furnishes the clearest and surest commentary on the passage — " Those
who have treated the sciences were either empirics or rationalists. The empirics,
like ants, only lay up stores and use them ; the rationalists, like spiders, spin
webs out of themselves ; but the bee takes a middle course, gathering her
matter from the flowers of the field and garden, and digesting and preparing it
by her native powers. In like manner, that is the true office and work of philo-
sophy which, not trusting too much to the faculties of the mind, does not lay
up the matter, afforded by natural history and mechanical experience, entire or
unfashioned in the memoiy, but treasures it after being first elaborated and

32 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

the testimony and information of the senses have reference
always to man, not to the universe ; and it is a great error to
assert that the sense is the measure of things. But by his
method of effecting, as completely as possible, a reconciliation
between the subjective and objective he hoped to have " estab-
lished for ever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical
and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce and
separation of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of
the human family." The mind that is in harmony with the laws
of nature, in an intimate sympathy with the course of events,
is strong with the strength of nature, and is developed by
its force.

A contemplation of the earliest stages of human development,
as exhibited by the savages, certainly constrains the admission
that the conscious or designed co-operation of the mind in the
adaptation of man to external nature was not great. The fact
is, however, in exact conformity with what has already been
asserted with regard to the nature and domain of consciousness ;
assuredly it is not consciousness, the natural result of a due
development, which gives the impulse to development : this
coining from a source that is past finding out — from the primeval
central Power which hurled the planets on their courses, and
holds the lasting orbs of heaven in their just poise and move-
ment. In virtue of the fundamental impulse of its being,
mankind struggles, at first blindly, towards a knowledge of and
adaptation to external nature, until that which has been insen-
sibly acquired through generations becomes an inborn addition
to the power of the mind, and that which was unconsciously
done becomes conscious method.

It were well, then, that this idea took deep and firm root

digested in the understanding. And, therefore, we have a good ground of hope,
from the close and strict union of the experimental and rational faculty, which
have not hitherto been united." In the very place where the obscure passage
occurs, he says, after speaking of the inauspicious divorce usually made between
mind and nature— "The explanation of which things, and of the true relation
between the nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing
and decoration of the bridal chamber of the Mind and Universe, the Divine
Goodness assisting ; out of which marriage let us hope (and this be the prayer
of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of
inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and
miseries of humanity."

i.] THE STUDY OF MIXD. 33

in our thoughts : that the development of mind, both in the
individual and through generations, is a gradual process of orga-
nization— a process in which Nature is undergoing her latest
and most consummate development. In reality we do not fail
virtually to recognise this in the case of language, whose organic
growth, as we scientifically trace it, is the result of the unseen
organization of thought that lies beneath, and alone gives it
meaning. His own consciousness, faithfully interpreted, might
suffice to reveal to each one the gradual maturing, or becoming,
through which a process of thought continually goes in his
mind. So has it been with mankind : at first there was an
instinctive or pure organic development, the human race strug-
gling on, as the child does, without being conscious of its ego ;
then, as it reached a certain stage of development, it became, as
the youth does, exceedingly self-conscious, and an extravagant
and unhealthy metaphysical subjectivity was the expression of
an undue self-feeling ; and finally, as the happily developing
individual passes from an undue subjectivity to a calm objective
manner of viewing things, so Bacon may be said to mark the
epoch of a corresponding happy change in the development of
mankind. Let us entirely get rid, however, of the notion that
the objective study of nature means merely the sensory per-
ception of it ; we see, not with the eye, but through it ; and to
any one who is above the level of the animal the sun is not a
bright disc of fire about the size of a cheese, but an immense orb
moving through space with its attendant planetary system at
the rate of some 400,000 miles a day* Now, such is the
wondrous harmony, connexion, and continuity pervading that
mysterious whole which we call Nature, that it is impossible to
get a just and clear idea of one pure circle of her works without
that idea becoming most useful in flashing a light into obscure
and unknown regions, and in thus aiding the conscious estab-
lishment of a further harmony of adaptation between man and
n at ure. f The brilliant insight or intuition of the man of genius,

» " We are deluded and led by the fallacies of the senses, for instance, to believe
that it is the eye that sees, and the ear that hears ; although the eye and the ear
are only the organs or instruments through which the soul perceives the modes
of the ultimate world." — Swedenborg, Animal Kingdom, ii. 336.

t " Denn wo Natur im reinen Kreise waltet ergreifen alle "Welten sich." —
Goethe, Faust.

D

34 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

who so often anticipates the slow result of systematic investi-
gation, witnesses with singular force to that truth. Far wiser
than many of his commentators have been, Bacon accordingly
failed not to appreciate clearly the exceeding value of idea in
the interpretation of nature. -—

But if the due co-operation of the mind is necessary, if the
harmony of subjective and objective was Bacon's real method, in
the prosecution of physical science, how much more useful must
the just union of the empirical and rational faculties be in the
study of mental science ; the task then being to apply the ideas
of the mind to the interpretation of the mind's processes of
activity. It must assuredly be allowed that the light of one's
own train of thought is often most serviceable in interpreting the
mind of another ; so much so. indeed, that one may know what
is passing therein with not less certainty, sometimes even with
greater certainty, than when it is actually uttered. In order to
be successful in this sort of intuition, however, not only good
natural insight, but a large experience of life and men, is most
necessary, else the most grievous mistakes may be made ; here,
as elsewhere, power is acquired by intending the mind to external
realities, by submitting the understanding to things. Plainly,
too, this objective application of our ideas to the interpretation
of another mind is a very different matter from the deliberate
direction of consciousness to its own states, — that introspective
analysis of the processes of thought whereby, as before said, the
natural train of ideas being interrupted and the tension of a
particular activity maintained, an artificial state of mind is pro-
duced, and a tortured self-consciousness, like an individual put
to the torture, makes confessions that are utterly unreliable. The
genuine utterances of his inner life, or the sincere and direct
revelations of the man of great natural ability and good training,
are the highest truths — what Plato has written is of eternal
interest ; but the contradictory anatomical revelations of internal
analysis by the professed psychologists are the vainest word
jugglings with which a tenacious perseverance has vexed a long-
suffering world. They should justly be opposed, as by Bacon ;
or shunned, as by Shakespeare ; or abhorred, as by Goethe : —
" Ich habe nie an Denken gedacht." As in the child there is
no consciousness of the ego, so in the highest development of

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 35

humanity, as represented by these our greatest, there seems to
have been reached a similar unconsciousness of the ego ; and the
individual, in intimate and congenial sympathy with nature,
carries forward its organic evolution with a child-like uncon-
sciousness and a child-like success.

Before concluding this chapter it may be well distinctly to
affirm a truth which is an unwelcome one, because it flatters not
the self-love of mankind ; and it is this, that there is all the
difference in the world between the gifted man of genius, who
can often anticipate the slow results of systematic investigation,
and who strikes out new paths, and the common herd of mortals,
who must plod on with patient humility in the old tracks, " with
manifold motions making little speed:" it is the difference
between the butterfly which flies and feeds on honey and the
caterpillar which crawls and gorges on leaves. Men, ever eager
to " pare the mountain to the plain," will not willingly confess
this ; nevertheless it is most true. Eules and systems are
necessary for the ordinarily endowed mortals, whose business it
is to gather together and arrange the materials ; the genius, who
is the architect, has, like nature, an unconscious system of his
own. It is the fate of its nature, and no demerit, that the cater-
pillar must crawl : it is the fate of its nature, and no merit, that
the butterfly must fly. The question, so much disputed, of the
relative extent of applicability of the so-called inductive and
deductive methods, often resolves itself into a question as to
what manner of man it is who is to use them — whether one who
has senses only, who has eyes and sees not, or one who has senses
and a soul ; whether one who can only collect so-called facts of
observation, or one who can bind together the thousand scattered
facts by the organizing idea, and thus guarantee them to be facts.
What an offence to the chartered imbecility of industrious medio-
crity that Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Humboldt, Bacon too, and,
in truth, every man who had anything of inspiration in him,
were not mere sense-machines for registering observations, but
rather instruments on which the melody of nature, like sphere
music, was made for the benefit and delectation of such as have
ears to hear ! That some so virulently declaim against theory is
as though the eunuch should declaim against lechery : it is the
chastity of impotence.

d 2

36 ON TUB METHOD OF [chap.

So rarely, however, does nature produce one of these men
gifted with that high and subtile quality called genius— being
scarce, indeed, equal to the production of one in a century— and
so self-sufficing are they when they do appear, that we, gratefully
accepting them as visits of angels, or much as Plato accepted
his super-celestial ideas, need not vainly concern ourselves about
their manner of working. It is not by such anxious troubling
that one will come ; it is not by introspective prying into and
torture of its own self-consciousness that mankind evolves the
genius ; the mature result of its unconscious development flows
at due time into consciousness with a grateful surprise, and from
time to time the slumbering centuries are thus awakened. It is
by the patient and diligent work at systematic adaptation to the
external by the rank and file o' mankind ; it is by the conscien-
tious labour of each one, after the inductive method, in that little
sphere of nature, whether psychical or physical, which in the
necessary division of labour has fallen to his lot — that a con-
dition of evolution is reached at which the genius bursts forth.
Tiresome, then, as the minute man of observation may sometimes
seem as he exults over his scattered facts as if they were final,
and magnifies his molecules into mountains as if they were
eternal, it is well that he should thus enthusiastically esteem his
work ; and no one but will give a patient attention as he reflects
how indispensable the humblest unit is in the social organism,
and how excellent a spur vanity is to industry. Not unamusing,
though somewhat saddening, is it, however, to witness the painful
surprise of the man of observation, his jealous indignation and
clamorous outcry, when the result at which he and his fellow-
labourers have been so patiently, though blindly, working—
when the genius-product of the century which he has helped to
create, starts into life — when the metamorphosis is completed :
amusing, because the patient worker is supremely astonished at
a result which, though preparing, he nowise foresaw ; saddening,
because individually he is annihilated, and all the toil in which
he spent his strength is swallowed up in the product which,
gathering up the different lines of investigation and thought, and
giving to them a unity of development, now by epigenesis ensues.
We perceive, then, how it is that a great genius cannot come save
at long intervals, as the tree cannot blossom but at its due season.

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 37

But why should any one, great or little, fret and fume because
he is likely soon to be forgotten ? The genius himself, as indi-
vidual, is after all of but little account ; it is only as the birth of
the travailing centuries that he exists, only so far as he is a true
birth of them and adequately representative that he is of value :
the more individual he is the more transitory will be his fame.
When he is immortal, he has become a mere name marking an
epoch, and no longer an individual. Whosoever, in a foolish
conceit of originality, strains after novelty and neglects the
scattered and perhaps obscure labours of others who have pre-
ceded him, or who are contemporaneous with him ; whosoever,
over-careful of his individual fame, cannot carry forward his
own evolution with a serene indifference to neglect or censure,
but makes puerile demands on the approbation of the world —
may rest content that he is not a complete birth of the age, but
more or less an abortive monstrosity : the more extreme he is as
a monstrosity the more original must he needs be.*

Viewing mental development, whether in the individual or in
the race, as a process of organization, as the consummate display
of nature's organic evolution, and recognising, as we must do,
the most favourable conditions of such evolution to be the most
intimate harmony between man and nature, we may rightly
conclude, so far as concerns the rule of a conscious method of
inquiry, with the ancient and well-grounded maxim — " Learn to
know thyself in nature, that so thou mayest know nature in
thyself."(6)

NOTES.

1 (p. 4). — " Insomuch that many times not only what was asserted
once is asserted still, but what was a question once is a question still,
and instead of being resolved by discussion, is only fixed and fed." —
Bacon, Proleg. Inst. Magn.

2 (p. 10). — The received psychology M. Comte calls an "illusory
psychology, which is the last phase of theology," and says that it

* " What is all history but the work of ideas," says Emerson, "a record of the
indisputable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into man ? Has any
grand and lasting thing been done ? Who did it ? Plainly not one man, but all
men : it was the prevalence of, and inundation of an idea."

38 ON THE METHOD OF [chap.

" pretends to accomplish the discovery of the laws of the human mind
by contemplating it in itself ; that is, by separating it from causes and
effects." (Miss Martineau's Translation, p. 11.) Again, he says : " In
order to observe, your intellect must pause from activity; yet it is this
very activity that you want to observe. K ^pu cannot effect the pause,
you cannot observe ; if you do effect it, there is nothing to observe.
The results of such a method are in proportion to its absurdity."
(Ibid. p. 11.)

3 fa 12). — " But the truth is, that they are not the highest in-
stances which give the best or securest information, as is expressed,
not inelegantly, in the common story of the philosopher, who, while
he gazed upon the stars, fell into the water ; for if he had looked
down, he might have seen the stars in the water, but, looking aloft, he
could not see the water in the stars." — De Augment. Scient. B. ii.

4 (p. 14). — Individual Psyclwl^ay Bacon set down as wanting ; he
enfojcos its study, "so that we may have a scientific and accurate dis-
section of mind and characters, and the secret dispositions of particular
men may be revealed, and that from the knowledge thereof better
rules may be framed for the treatment of the mind." — De Augment.
Scient. B. vii.

6 (p. 23). — " It is to be regretted that he (Dugald Stewart) had not
studied (he even treats it as inconceivable) the Leibnitzian doctrine of
what has not been well denominated obscure perceptions or ideas — that
is, acts and affections of mind, which, manifesting their existence in
their effects, are themselves out of consciousness or apperception. The
fact of such latent modifications is now established beyond all rational
doubt ; and on the supposition of their reality, we are able to solve
various psychological phenomena otherwise inexplicable. Among
these are many of those attributed to habit." (Sir W. Hamilton, in
his edition of Reid, p. 551.)

"Ich sehe nicht," says Leibnitz, "dass die Cartesianer jemals
. beweisen haben oder beweisen konnen, dass jede Vorstellung von
Bewusstsein begleitet ist." And again : — " Darin namlich haben die
Cartesianer sehr gefehlt, dass sie die Vorstellungen, deren man sich
nicht bewusst ist, fur nichts rechneten. Das war auch der Grund,
warn in sie glaubten, dass nur die Geiste Monaden waren, und dass
es keine Seelen der Thiere oder andere Entelechien gebe." — Leibnitz
ah Denier. Ausivahl seiner Meinern Aufsatze. By G. Schellin<*.
Pp. 108 and 115.

Fichte, in his Bestimmung des Mensclien — " In jedem Momente ihrer
Dauer ist die Natur ein zusaninienhangendes Ganze; in jedem Momente

i.] THE STUDY OF MIND. 39

muss jeder einzelne Theil derselbe so sein wie er ist, weil alle iibrigen
sind wie sie sind ; und du konntest kein Sandkbrnchen von seiner
Stelle verriicken, ohne dadurch vielleicht alle Tlieile des uuermesslichen
Ganzen hindurch etvvas zu verandern. Aber jeder Moment dieser
Dauer ist bestimmt durch alle abgelaufenen Momente, und wird
bestimmen alle kiinftigen Momente, und du kannst in clem gegen-
wartigen keines Sandkbrne Lage anders denken als sie ist, ohne dass
du genbthigt wiirdest die ganze Vergangenheit ins Unbestimmte
hinauf, und die ganze Zukunft ins Unbestimmte herab dir anders zu
denken." — Sammtliche Werke, ii. 178.

It is only right to add, that the fullest exposition of unconscious
mental action is to be found in Beneke's works. A summary of his
views is contained in his Lehrbuch tier Psyclwlogie als Naturwissenschaft.

6 (p. 37). — Since this chapter was written, and, indeed, separately
published, Mr. J. S. Mill has made a powerful defence of the so-called
Psychological Method. In his criticism of Comte in the Westminster
Review for April 1865, and in his " Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's
Philosophy," he has said all that can be said in favour of the Psycho-
logical Method, and has done what could be done to disparage the
Physiological Method. This he had already done many years ago in
the second volume of his " System of Logic," and he is now only
consistent in returning to the charge. ^Nevertheless, the admirers of
Mr. Mill may well experience regret to see him serving with so
much zeal on what is a so desperately forlorn hope. Physiology seems
never to have been a favourite study with Mr. Mill — in none of his
writings does he exhibit any indications of being really acquainted
with it ; for it is hardly possible to conceive that any one having a
knowledge of the present state of this science, would disparage it as
he has done, and exalt so highly the psychological method of investi-
gating mental phenomena. The wonder is, however, that he who has
done so much to expound the system of Comte, and to strengthen
and complete it, should on this question take leave of it entirely, and
follow and laud a method of research which is so directly opposed to
the method of positive science. Of course, I speak now strictly of the
method, not of Comte's application of it in his unfounded phreno-
logical speculations, which are scarcely less wild and absurd than his
religious delirium appears to be. However, though one may suspect
Mr. Mill to be unfortunate in his ignorance, or entirely mistaken in
his estimate, of the physiological method, one cannot fail to profit by
the study of his arguments on behalf of the psychological method,
and by his exposition of its merits. By parading the whole force

40 OX THE METHOD OF THE STUDY OF MIXD.

of the reasons in favour of it, he has exhibited, not so much its
strength as its weakness, and has undesignedly given important
assistance to the physiological method. For the reasons why he has
not been convincing, and why this chapter has been left unmodified,
I may refer to the arguments set forth i; ^a review of his " Examina-
tion of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy " in the Journal of Mental
Science for January 1866. "Mr. Mill," it is there said, "has a high
opinion of the psychological method of inquiry into mental phenomena,
and thinks Comte to have committed a great error in discarding it.
"Whether that be true or not is not the question now ; we may admit
it to be true, and still ask whether it is a sufficient reason for ignoring
those important results of the physiological method of research which
bear vitally on psychology ; whether, in fact, because a certain method
has some worth, it can therefore afford to dispense entirely with the
aid furnished by other methods."

And again :— " The present complaint against Mr. Mill is that he
takes no notice of the effects of recent scientific conceptions on the
questions referred to philosophy ; that he goes on exactly as he might
have gone on if he had lived in the days of Aristotle ; that at a time
when a new method, highly fertile in fact and of more fruitful promise,
was available, he persists in trying to do, by the old method, what
Plato, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and a host of others have not done.
Now, we have not the slightest faith that ten thousand Mills will,
following the same method, do what these great men have not done ;
but there can be no question that, had Mr. Mill chosen to avail
himself of the new material and the new method, which his great
predecessors had not in their day, he would have done what no other
living man could have done."

CHAPTER II.
THE MIND AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

" That which perceives is a part of nature as truly as the objects of perception
which act on it, and, as a part of nature, is itself an object of investigation purely
-physical. It is known to us only in the successive changes which constitute the
variety of our feelings : but the regular sequence of these changes admits of being
traced, like the regularity which we are capable of discovering in the successive
changes of our bodily frame. There is a Physiology of the Mind, then, as there
is a Physiology of the Body — a science which examines the phenomena of our
spiritual part simply as phenomena, and from the order of their succession, or
other circumstances of analogy, arranges them in classes, under certain general
names ; as, in the physiology of our corporeal part, we consider the phenomena
of a different kind which the body exhibits, and reduce all the diversities of
these under the names of a few general functions." — Sketch of a System of
Philosophy of the Human Mind, by T. Brown, M. 1).

THE crude proposition of Cabanis,* that the brain secretes
thought as the liver secretes bile, has been a subject of much
ridicule to those who have not received it with outcries of dis-
approbation and disgust. Assuredly it is not an exact expression
of the facts ; one may rightly admit the brain to be the principal
organ of the mind, without accepting the fallacious comparison
of mental action with biliary secretion. Here as elsewhere, con-
fusion is bred by the common use of the word " secretion" to
express, not only the functional process but the secreted product,
both the insensible vital changes and the tangible results of
them. It is of great importance to try to fix, with as much
precision as possible, what we mean by mind.

In the first place, mind, viewed in its scientific sense as a

-natural force, cannot be observed and handled and dealt with

as a palpable object ; like electricity, or gravity, or any other

* " Nous concluons avec la meme certitude que le cerveau digere en quelque
sort les impressions; qu'il fait organiquement la secretion dela pensee." — Rapport
da Physique et du Moral de V Homme, par P. J. G. Cabanis.

42 THE MIND [chap.

of the natural forces, it is appreciable only in the changes of
matter which are the conditions of its manifestation. Few, if
any, will now be found to deny that with each display of mental
power there are correlative changes in the material substratum ;
that every phenomenon of mind is the result, as manifest energy,
of some change, molecular, chemical, or vital, in the nervous
elements of the brain. Chemical analysis of the so-called extrac-
tives of nerve testifies to definite change or "waste" through
functional activity ; for there are found, as products of a retro-
grade metamorphosis, lactic acid, kreatin, uric acid, probably also
hypoxanthin, and, representing the fatty acids, formic and acetic
acids. These products are very like those which are found in
muscle after its functional activity : in the performance of an
idea, as in the performance of t movement, there is a retrograde
metamorphosis of organic element ; the display of energy is at
the cost of the highly-organized matter, which undergoes degene-
ration or passes from a higher to a lower grade of being; and
the retrograde products are, so far as is at present known, very
similar in muscle and nerve. "While the contents of nerves,
again, are neutral during rest in the living state, they become
acid after death, and after great activity during life : the same is
the case also with regard to muscle. Furthermore, after pro-
longed mental exercise, the products of the metamorphosis of
nerve element, into the composition of which phosphorus enters
largely, are Tecognised in an increase of phosphates in the urine;
while it is only by supposing an idea to be accompanied by a
correlative change in the nerve-cells that we can explain the ex-
haustion following excessive mental work and the breaking down
of the brain in extreme cases. These things being so, what is it
which in a physiological sense we designate mind? Xot the
material products of cerebral activity, but the marvellous energy
which cannot be grasped and handled. Here, then, is made
manifest a fallacy of the axiom propounded by Cabanis : it is
plain that the tangible results of the brain's activity, the waste
matters which pass into the blood for assimilation by tissues of
a lower kind, and for ultimate excretion from the body, might
not less rightly be called the secretion of the brain, and be com-
pared to the bile, than the intangible energy revealed in the
mental phenomena.

ii.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 43

Secondly, it is most needful, in order to avoid confusion, to
apprehend the exact signification of what is understood by mind,
according to the common and vague use of the word. It is
really a general term acquired by observation of and abstraction
from the manifold variety of mental phenomena : by such obser-
vation of the particular phenomena and appropriate abstraction
from them we get, as an ultimate generalization, the general
conception, or the, so to speak, essential idea, of mind. An
illustration will help to exhibit what we mean. The steam-
engine is a complicated mechanism, of the construction and
mode of action of which many people know very little, but it
has a very definite function of which those who know nothing
of its construction can still form a sufficiently distinct con-
ception ; the co-ordinate, integral action of the steam-engine, as
we conceive it, is different from the nicely-adjusted mechanism
or from the action of any part of it. But the function of the
engine is dependent on the mechanism and on the co-ordinate
action of its parts, cannot be dissociated from these, and has no
real existence apart from them, though it may exist separately
as a conception in our minds. By observation of the mechanism
and appropriate abstraction we get the essential idea of the
steam-engine, — a fundamental idea of it, which, as our ultimate
generalization, expresses its veiy nature as such, containing,
as Coleridge would have said, " the inmost principles of its
possibility as a steam-engine." So likewise with regard to the
manifold phenomena of mind ; by observation of them and
abstraction from the particular we get the general conception or
the essential idea of mind, an idea which has no more existence
out of the mind than any other abstract idea or general term.
In virtue, however, of that powerful tendency in the human
mind to make the reality conformable to the idea, a tendency
which has been at the bottom of so much confusion in philo-
sophy, this general conception has been converted into an objec-
tive entity, and allowed to tyrannize over the understanding.
A metaphysical abstraction has been made into a spiritual
entity, and a complete barrier thereby interposed in the way
of positive investigation. Whatever be the real nature of
mind — and of that there is no need to speak here — it is most
certainly dependent for its every manifestation on the brain

44 THE MIND [chap.

and nervous system ; and now that scientific research is daily
disclosing more clearly the relations between it and its organ, it
is plainly most desirable to guard against the common meta-
physical conception of mind, by recognising the true subjective
character of the conception and the Mode of its origin and
growth.

A third important consideration is, that mental power is
truly an organized result, not, strictly speaking, built up, but
matured by insensible degrees in the course of life. The brain
is not, like the liver, the heart and other internal organs, capa-
ble from the time of birth of all the functions which it ever
discharges ; for while, in common with them, it has a certain
organic function to which it is born equal, its high special
character in man as the orgai of conscious life, the supreme
instrument of his relations with the rest of nature, is developed
only by a long and patient education. Though the brain, then,
is formed during embryonic life, its highest development only
takes place after birth ; and, as will hereafter appear, the same
gradual progress from the general to the special, which is
exhibited in the development of the organ, is witnessed in the
development of our intelligence. How inexact and misleading
in this regard, therefore, is any comparison between it and
the liver!

Nevertheless, it must be distinctly laid down, that mental
action is as surely dependent on the nervous structure as the
function of the liver confessedly is on the hepatic structure :
that is the fundamental principle upon which the fabric of a
mental science must rest. The countless thousands of nerve-
cells which form so great a part of the delicate structure of the
brain, are undoubtedly the centres of its functional activity:
we know right well from experiment, that the ganglionic nerve-
cells scattered through the tissues of organs, as for example
through the walls of the intestines or the structure of the heart,
are centres of nerve force ministering to their organic action ; and
we may confidently infer that the ganglionic cells of the brain,
which are not similarly amenable to observation and experi-
ment, have a like function. Certainly they are not inexhaustible
centres of self-generating force ; they give out no more than
what they have in one way or another taken in ;. they receive

i.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 45

material from the blood, which 'they assimilate, or make of the
same kind with themselves ; a correlative metamorphosis of
force necessarily accompanying this upward transformation of
matter, and the nerve-cell thus becoming, so long as its equili-
brium is preserved, a centre of statical power of the highest
vital quality. The maintenance of the equilibrium of nerve
element is the condition of latent thought — it is mind statical ;
the manifestation of thought involves the change or destruction
of nerve element. The nerve-cell of the brain, it might in
fact be said, represents statical thought, while thought repre-
sents dynamical nerve-cell, or, more properly, the energy of
nerve-celL

So far from discussing whether mind is the function of the
brain, the business which science now has immediately be-
fore it is the more special investigation of the conditions of
activity of the ganglionic nerve-cell or groups of nerve-cells.
If we look to those humbler animals in which nervous tissue
makes its first appearance, it is plain that the simple mode of
its existence in them allows of no other manner of proceeding ;
if we trace upwards the gradual increasing complication of the
nervous system through the animal kingdom, it is evident that
such manner of proceeding is the only one to furnish the
materials of a comprehensive and sound induction ; and if we
duly weigh the results of physiological experiment and patho-
logical research, it is no less certain that we must discard
scientific investigation altogether, in cerebral physiology, if we
reject the ganglionic nerve-cell of the brain as a centre of
mental force.

In the lowest forms of animal life nerve does not exist : the
Protozoa and many of the Zoophytes are destitute of any trace
of nervous system. The most simple beings consist of a uniform,
homogeneous substance, by means of which all their functions
are executed. They are nourished without digestive organs ;
breathe without respiratory organs ; feel and move without
organs of sense, without muscles, without nervous system.
The stimulus which the little creature receives from without
produces some change in the molecular relations of its almost
homogeneous substance, and these insensible movements would
seem to amount collectively to the sensible movement which it

46 THE MIXD [chap.

makes; the molecular process in such case being not unlike
that which takes place and issues in the coagulation of
the blood, when the fibrine is brought in contact, as some
think, with a foreign substance.* The perception of the
stimulus by the creature is the molecular change which ensues,
the imperceptible motion passing, by reason of the homo-
geneity of its substance, with the greatest ease from element
to element of the same hind, as it were by an infection, or
as happens in the sensitive plant ; and the sum of the mole-
cular motions, as necessarily determined in direction by the
form of the animal, or by some not yet recognised cause, results
in the visible movement. The recent researches of Graham into
the colloidal condition of matter have proved the necessity of
considerable modification in our usual conception of solid matter :
instead of the notion of impenetrable, inert matter, we must
substitute the idea of matter which, in its colloidal state, is
penetrable, exhibits energy, and is widely susceptible to external
agents, "its existence being a continued metastasis."t This sort
of energy is not a result of chemical action, for colloids are
singularly inert in all ordinary chemical relations, but a result
of its unknown intimate molecular constitution ; and the un-
doubted existence of colloidal energy in organic substances
which are usually considered inert and called dead, may well
warrant the belief of its larger and more essential operation in
organic matter, in the state of instability of composition in which
it is when under the condition of life. Such energy would
then suffice to account for the simple uniform movements of the
homogeneous substance of which the lowest animal consists ;
and the absence of any differentiation of structure is a sufficient
reason of the absence of any localization of function and of the
general uniform reaction to different impressions. But it will
be observed that even the movements of these simplest crea-
tures, in which there is not the least indication of the ele-
ments of a nervous system, are not entirely vague, confused,
and indefinite ; they present certain indications of adaptation
to functional ends.

"With the differentiation of tissue and increasing complexity

* Croonian Lecture Wfore the Royal Society, 1863. By Professor J. Lister,
F.B.S. t Philosophical Transactions, 1862.

It.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 47

of organization, which are met with as we ascend in the animal
kingdom, the nervous tissue appears, but at first under a very
simple form. Its simplest type may be represented as two fibres
that are connected by a nerve-cell or a ganglionic group of nerve-
cells ; the fibres are apparently simple conductors, and might be
roughly compared to the conducting wires of a telegraph, while
the cell, being the centre in which nerve force is generated,
may be compared to the telegraphic apparatus ; in it the effect
which the stimulus of the afferent or centripetal nerve excites, is
transmitted along the efferent or centrifugal nerve, and therein
is displayed the simplest form of that reflex action which plays
so large a part in animal life.* This type of structure is re-
peated through the complex nervous system of all the higher
animals. Cut across the afferent nerve, or otherwise interrupt
its continuity, the impression cannot reach the centre ; cut across
the efferent nerve, the central excitation is powerless to influence
the muscles or parts to which it is distributed. Not all the passion
and eloquence of a Demosthenes could force its way outwards into
words, if the motor nerves of the tongue were cut across. Owing
to the differences of hinds of tissue, and to the specialization of
organs in the more complex animal, there cannot plainly be that
intimate molecular sympathy between all parts which there is in
the homogeneous substance of the simplest monad ; the easy
motion, as by an infection, from particle to particle, is not possible
in the heterogeneous body, where the elements are of a different
kind : accordingly special provision is required for insuring
communication between different parts, and for co-ordinating
and harmonizing the activity of different organs. The animal

* T/ie fibres act as simple conductors, and have like physiological properties.
Philippeau and. Vulpiau (Comptes Kendus, vi.) and Kosenthal (Centralblatt,
No. 29, 1864) have succeeded in uniting the central end of the cut lingual
nerve, the sensory nerve of the tongue, with the peripheral end of the cut hypo-
glossal, the motor nerve of the tongue. Stimulation of the central part of the
lingual produced contractions of the tongue, such as normally follow stimulation
of the hypoglossal. Thus it is proved that the end of a sensory nerve may be
united with the end of a motor nerve, and when the union is complete, excitation
of the sensory may be transmitted to the motor fibres. Inversely, stimulation
of the peripheral end of the hypoglossal produced evidence of pain. It would
seem that the neurility is the same in all nerves ; the difference of function being
due, not to difference of physiological properties, but to difference of connexion
of the fibres. See also Lecons sur la Physiologie Ginerale, et comparee du Systeme
Nerveux, par A. Vulpian. 1866.

48 TBS KIND [chap.

must be rendered capable of associating a number of distinct
actions for definite ends. This function, necessitated by the
physiological division of labour, the nervous system subserves ;
and we might compare it to that which the gifted general Lzer
fulfils in human development: he g*asps the results of the
various special investigations which a necessary division of
labour enforces, brings them together, and elaborates a result
in which the different lines of thought are co-ordinated, and a
unity of action is marked out for future progress. The nervous
system effects the synthesis which the specialization of organic
instruments in the analysis of nature renders necessary ; it is
the highest expression of that principle of individuation which
is the characteristic feature of life in all its forms, but most
manifest in its highest. To lliis function it is well adapted,
first, by the extent of its distribution, and, secondly, by its
exceeding sensibility, whereby an impression made at one part
is almost instantly felt at any distance.

With the increasing complexity of organization, which marks
the increasing speciality of organic adaptation to external nature,
or, in other words, which marks an ascent in the scale of animal
life, there is a progressive complication of the nervous system :
special developments ministering to special purposes take place.
The fibres appear to preserve their characters as simple conduc-
tors, while a development of special structures at their peripheral,
and of special ganglionic cells at their central endings, reveals
the increasing speciality and complexity of function. Upon the
special structures at the peripheral ends, which are, as it were,
the instruments of analysis, depends the kind of the impression
made ; and by the nature of the nerve-cells with which the cen-
tral end of the nerve is connected, the kind of impression that
is perceived and the character of the reaction thereto are deter-
mined. Accordingly, we find that, with the appearances of the
organs of the special senses, as we mount in the scale of animal
life, there is a corresponding increase in the ganglionic centres,
which, being clustered together, form the primitive rudiments of
a brain, and represent, in the main, those sensory ganglia which
in man lie between the decussation of the pyramids and the
floors of the lateral ventricles. It is not known with certainty
when the different organs of the special senses severally make

n.l AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 49

their first appearance, for they are at first very rudimentary ; in
the starfish, which belongs to the humble Echinodermata, there
is at the extremity of each ray a small red spot which is said to
present the characteristics of a rudimentary eye ; but whether
this be so or not, it is certain that special structures, adapted to
the reception of particular impressions, as of light, of sound,
of touch, render the higher animal capable of more numerous,
special, and complex relations with external nature. There is
a diffusion through the entire substance of the simplest creatures
of physiological properties which are specialized and localized in
the higher animals*

Not till we arrive as high as the fishes, and not then in the
singular Amphioxus, do we discover anything more in the brain
than sensory ganglia connected with the origins of nerves ; so
far there is no trace of cerebral hemispheres, or of brain proper.
It is plain then that the cerebral hemispheres are not essential
to sensation and the motor reaction to sensation ; for they are
altogether wanting where both these functions are displayed in
a lively and vigorous way. To the simpler relation between the
individual organism and external nature, which is denoted by
reflex action, there now succeeds that more complex relation
of sensory perception and sensorimotor reaction, as Dr. Carpenter
has called it ; in place of reaction to a general stimulus, discri-
minations of impressions, and corresponding special reactions
by virtue of structures specially adapted, are witnessed. This
condition of the development of the nervous system, which is

* When a special sense fails in man, the general sensibility may partially
replace it. "I have known several instances," says Abercrombie, "of persons
affected with that extreme degree of deafness, which occurs in the deaf and dumb,
who had a peculiar susceptibility to particular kinds of sounds, depending, appa-
rently, on an impression communicated to their organs of touch or simple sensa-
tion. They could tell, for instance, the approach of a carriage in the street
without seeing it, before it was taken notice of by persons who had the use of all
their senses." — On the Intellectual Powers. Kruse, who was completely deaf,
nevertheless had a bodily feeling of music ; and different instruments affected
him differently. Musical tones seemed to his perception to have much analogy
with colours. The sound of a trumpet was yellow to him ; that of a drum, red ;
that of the organ, green ; &c. — Early History of Mankind, by J. B. Tylor. In
his Reminiscences of the Opera, Mr. Lumley tells of a friend who used to compare
the voices of the different celebrated singers to different colours, distinguishing
them so. It is an old saying of a blind man, that he thought scarlet was like the
sound of a trumpet.

E

50 THE MIXD [chap.

natural and permanent in so many of the lower animals, cor-
responds to that artificial state of things which may be produced
experimentally in a higher animal by depriving it of its hemi-
spheres. The kind of function manifest is strictly comparable to
the early brief stage of the infant's meutal life before the cerebral
hemispheres have come into action, or to those phenomena of
mental life sometimes displayed by the adult, as for example
by the somnambulists, when the influence of the cerebral hemi-
spheres is suspended.

Here let us make a reflection : how important it is clearly to
distinguish and denote special features, which, being included
under, or described by, a general term, are so commonly con-
founded. What different perceptions or reactions, for example,
are confounded by the loose v. ay of using the word sensibility !
The infusorial animalcule, which has no nervous tissue, is said to be
sensible of a stimidus ; the higher animal, with its special senses,
to be sensible of light, or of sound, as the case may be ; and, if
made to suffer, to be sensible of pain ; while it is common enough
to speak of man being sensible of pleasure, horror, or disgust,
according to the nature of the active ideas. If we use the generic
term sensibility to express the fundamental reaction, as we may
perhaps properly do, it is highly important that we proceed
further to distinguish by appropriate terms the special differences ;
the sensibility of pain is not the sensibility of sense, nor is the
sensibility of the infusorial animalcule equivalent to either of
these. So far we have taken pains to distinguish that form of
sensibility and reaction proper to the lowest animals, and which
might be called irritability; that form of reaction, or reflex
action, which is the lowest expression of nervous function ; and
that form of reaction to which the sensory ganglia minister, and
which is rightly called sensorial.

It is in fishes that the rudiments of cerebral hemispheres first
appear. In them they are represented by a thin layer or projec-
tion of nervous matter in front of the corpora quadrigemina,
covering the corpora striata and the optic thalami ; in the
Amphibia, they have already increased somewhat in size ;* in
Birds, the corpora quadrigemina are pushed out to some extent

* The Perenni-hranchiatc reptiles retain the fish character of brain all their
lives ; the Batrachians have it only during their tadpole state.

ii.] AND THE NERFOUS SYSTEM. 51

by their further increase ; in the Mammalia, they begin to cover
the corpora quadrigemina, and, as we ascend in the scale of life,
gradually increase backwards until, in some of the higher
monkeys, and in man, they entirely cover the cerebellum.

In this ascent through the series of vertebrate animals, it is
found that the relations of the sensory ganglia remain alike
throughout, the chief differences being differences in the relative
size of them. Their functions, as primary constituents of the
brain, may then fairly be counted the same in all the vertebrata,
and indeed in all the animals in which they exist. As the
hemispheres appear as secondary constituents — secondary, be it
noted, in the order of development, but primary in dignity — we
may rightly conclude their function to be secondary to that which
the primary constituents or sensory ganglia fulfil. The impres-
sions received by the sensory centres, when they do not react
directly outwards, as they may do where hemispheres exist, and as
they must do where hemispheres do not exist, are in fact passed
onwards in the brain to the cells which are spread over the
hemispheres, and there further fashioned into what are called
ideas or conceptions. Here then we come to another kind of sen-
sib ility, with its appropriate reaction, to which a special nervous
centre ministers ; and it is known as perception, or, more strictly,
ideational perception. As the hemispheres have this function,
and are not necessary to sensory perception, it is quite in accord-
ance with what might be predicted, that, as experiments prove,
they are insensible to pain, and do not give rise to any display
of that kind of feeling when they are injured* They have,
agreeably to their special nature, a sensibility of their own to
the ideas that are fashioned in them ; so that these may be plea-
surable or painful, or have other particular emotional qualities, f

Observation of the mental phenomena of those animals in
which cerebral hemispheres exist, fully confirms the foregoing
view of their function and import. In Fishes there is the first
distinct appearance of simple ideas, and of the lowest rudiments
of emotion ; carp will collect to be fed at the sound of a bell,

* An animal — a hen, for example — which makes violent movements while the
skin is being cut and the roof of its skull removed, remains quite quiet while its
hemispheres are being sliced away bit by bit.

t Emotion is strictly, perhaps, the sensibility of the supreme centres to ideas.

E 2

52 THE M1XD [chap.

thus giving evidence of the association of two simple ideas ;
and a shark, suspicious of mischief, will avoid the baited hook.
In Birds, conformably to the increased development of the
hemispheres, the manifestations of intelligence are much greater ;
the tricks which some of them may bb taught are truly marvel-
lous, and those who teach them know how much different birds
differ in intelligence and temper. Nor are simple emotional
exhibitions wanting amongst them ; very evident at times is the
feeling of rivalry or jealousy in canaries, and there are undoubted
instances on record in which an orphan bird has owed its life to
the kindly care of birds of a different species.* In Mammalia a
gradual advance in intelligence may be traced from very lowly
manifestations up to those highest forms of brute reason which
assuredly differ only in degree from the lowest forms of human
intelligence.! Consider how plainly, in the dog, a conception
often intervenes between the sensation and the usual respondent
movement, so that the animal refrains from doing what it has a
strong impulse to do ; the impression has been passed on to the
hemispheres, and their controlling action brought into play. It
is needless to speak of the various emotions, nay, the veritable
moral feeling, displayed by the dog and other domesticated
animals. A single reflection will show, what anatomy might
lead us to predicate, how limited is the range of animal intelli-
gence : if the fox, cunning as it is, had but the sense to learn to
climb a tree, like the cat, men would soon give up hunting it.
But the fox, like so many men, cannot get out of the usual groove
of thought, cannot originate anything ; and, like not a few
scheming plotters, it wastes a great deal of low cunning in
efforts Which a little larger view of things would render quite
unnecessary.

As we ascend through the Mammalian series, we find that not
only do the hemispheres increase in size by gradually extending
backwards, but that the grey surface of them is further increased
by being thrown into folds or convolutions. While the lower
Mammals are entirely destitute of such convolutions, these are
present, as a rule, in simple forms in the Pauninantia and

, * Anatomic comparee do Systeme Nerveux, par Leuret et Gratiolet.

t For examples of wonderful intelligence in different animals, I may refer to a
paper by me on tlie Genesis of Mind in the Journal of Mental Science, 1862.

n.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 53

Pachydermata ; they are more fully developed in the Carnivora,
and most fully developed in the apes and in man. It is tvue
that we cannot at present unfold an exact relation between the
development of the convolutions and the degree of intelligence
in different animals ; for the brains of the ass, the sheep, and
the ox are more convoluted than those of the beaver, the cat,
and the dog. But the relative size of the animals must be taken
into account in such comparison. The volume of a body such
as the brain, which increases in size, increases in greater propor-
tion than the superficies, and the latter again in greater proportion
than the diameter. Now in each natural group or order of
Mammalia, the head, but especially the capacity of the skull,
has a certain relation to the body, a relation which remains
pretty constant in different species ; the head of the tiger or
of the lion, for example, has about the same relation to the
body as that of the cat's head to its body, although the sizes
of the animals are so different. It follows then that, the
volume of the brain of the tiger in relation to the size of the
body being the same as in the cat, the superficies of the brain
is proportionately greater in the smaller animal ; and that,
consequently, in order to get a proportionate extent of grey
surface in the larger animal, this must be convoluted in it, when
it may remain nearly smooth in the smaller one. If in two
animals of equal size, and of like form of structure, the con-
volutions are differently fashioned, then it may be said with
certainty that one will be more intelligent than the other in
proportion as its convolutions are more numerous and com-
plicated, and the sulci deeper.

That proposition is true of man. The intellectual differences
which exist between the Bosjesman, or the Negro, and the
European are attended with differences in the extent and com-
plication of the nervous substance of the brain. Gratiolet has
carefully figured and described the brain of the Hottentot Venus,
who was no idiot; and what is at once striking in the figure is
the simplicity and regular arrangement of the convolutions of the
frontal lobe ; they present an almost perfect symmetry in the
two hemispheres, "such as is never exhibited in the normal
brains of the Caucasian race," and which involuntarily recalls
the regularity and symmetry of the cerebral convolutions in the

54 TEE MIND [chap.

lower animals. The brain of this Bosjeswoman was, in truth,
inferior to that of a white woman arrived at the normal stage of
development : " it could be compared only with the brain of a
white who is idiotic from arrest of cerebral development."
Moreover, the differences between it ar-1 the brain of the white
are unquestionably of the same kind as, though less in degree
than, those which exist between the ape's brain and that of man,
as Professor Huxley has distinctly pointed out.* Mr. Marshall
has recently examined a Bushwoman's brain, and has found like
evidence of structural inferiority; the primary convolutions,
though all present, were smaller than in the European, and much
less complicated ; the external connecting convolutions were still
more remarkably defective ; the secondary sulci and convolu-
tions were everywhere decidedly less developed ; there was a
deficiency of the system of transverse commissural fibres ; and in
size, and in every one of the signs of comparative inferiority, " it
leaned, as it were, to the higher quadrunianous forms." f The
brain of the Negro is superior to that of the Bushman, but still it
does not reach the level of the wliite man's brain ; the weight of
the male Negro's brain is less than that of the average European
female ; and the greater symmetry of its convolutions, and the
narrowness of the hemispheres in front, are points in which it
resembles the brain of the ourang-outang, as even Tiedemann,
the Negro's advocate, has admitted.

Among Europeans it is found that, other circumstances being
alike, the size of the brain bears a general relation to the mental
power of the individual, although apparent exceptions to the
rule sometimes occur. The average weight of the brain in the
educated class is certainly greater than in the uneducated ; and
some carefully-compiled tables in a valuable paper by Dr.
Thurnam prove that, while the average brain weight of ordinary
Europeans is 49 oz., in distinguished men it is 54-6 oz.J On
the other hand, the brain is commonly very small in idiots ;

* Man's Place in Nature.

+ Philosophical Transactions, 1865.

t On the Weight of the Human Brain, by John Thurnam, M.D. ; Journal of
Mental Science, April 1866. Professor Wagner has carefully figured and described
the brains of five very distinguished men. The extremely complex arrangement
of the convolutions was most remarkable. — The Convolutions of the Huma,i
Cerebrum, by W. Turner, M.B. 1866.

ii.] AND TIIE NERVOUS SYSTEM.' 55

the parts being not only smaller, but less complex, and the con-
volutions in particular being simpler and less developed. Mr.
Marshall found the convolutions of the cerebra of the two idiots
which he examined to be fewer in number than in the apes, the
brains being in this respect more simple than the brain of the
gibbon, and approaching that of the baboon. In fact, there are
microcephalic idiots which present a complete series of stages of
descent from man to the apes. As a general proposition, it is
certainly true that we find the evidence of a correspondence
between the development of the cerebral hemispheres and the
degree of intelligence, when we examine the different races or
kinds of men, as we do when we survey the scale of animal life.
As in the series of the manifold productions of her creative
art Nature has made no violent leap, but has passed by gentle
gradations from one species of animal to another, and from the
highest animal to the lowest man, it is not surprising that the
embryonic development of man should present indications of the
general plan.* It admits of no question that man does, in the
course of his development, pass through stages closely resembling
those through which other vertebrate animals pass ; and that
these transitory conditions in him are not unlike the forms that
are permanent in the lower animals. There is a very close mor-
phological resemblance between the human ovum and the lowest
animals with which we are acquainted, the microscopic Grega-
rinida ; f in both, an outer membrane contains a soft semi-fluid

* "That there should be more species of intelligent beings above us," says
Locke, "than there are of visible or material below us, is probable to me from
hence that in all the corporeal world we see no chasms or gaps. " But how
can it be safe to apply to the unseen a generalization from the seen ?

+ "TheGregarinida," says Huxley, "are all microscopic, and any one of them,
leaving minor modifications aside, may be said to consist of a sac, comprised of a
more or less structureless, not very well defined membrane, containing a soft
semi-fluid substance, in the midst or at one end of which lies a delicate vesicle ;
in the centre of the latter is a more solid particle. No doubt many persons will
be struck with the close resemblance of the structure of this body to that which
is possessed by the ovum. You might take the more solid particle to be the
representative of the germinal spot, and the vesicle to be that of the germinal
vesicle ; while the semi-fluid sarcodic contents might be regarded as the yelk, and
the outer membrane as the vitelline membrane. I do not wish to strain the
analogy too far, bxit it is at any rate interesting to observe the close morphological
resemblance between one of the lowest of animals, and that form in which all
the higher animals commence their existence." — Led. on C'omp. Anat. 1864.

5G THE MIND [chap.

substance, at one end of which is a delicate vesicle, having in it
a solid particle or spot. At the. earliest stages of its develop-
ment no human power can distinguish the human ovum from
that of a quadruped ; and, as it proceeds to its destined end,
it passes through similar stages to t^ose through which other
vertebrate embryos pass. That which is true of the whole body
is true also of the development of the brain. The brain of the
human foetus at the sixth week consists of a series of vesicles,
the foremost of which, a double one, representing the cerebrum,
is the smallest, and the hindmost, representing the cerebellum,
the largest. In front of the latter is the vesicle of the corpora
quadrigemina ; and in front again of this, the vesicle of the third
ventricle, which contains also the thalami optici, and which, as
development proceeds, becomes covered, as do the corpora quad-
rigemina, by the backward gro-\\ th of the hemispheres in front of
it. At this stage the human brain resembles the fully-formed
brain of the fish, more closely the brain of the fatal fish, in the
small proportion which the cerebral hemispheres bear to the
other parts, in the absence of convolutions, in the deficiency of
commissures, and in the general simplicity of structure. About
the twelfth week of embryonic life there is a great resemblance
to the brain of the bird : the cerebral hemispheres are much
increased in size, and arch back towards the thalami optici and
the corpora quadrigemina, though there are still no convolutions,
and the commissures are very deficient. Up to this time the
cerebral hemispheres represent no more than the rudiments of
the anterior lobes; they do not yet completely cover the thalami
optici, nor indeed pass the grade of development which is per-
manent in the Marsupial Mammalia. During the fourth and
early part of the fifth month, the middle lobes develop back-
wards and cover the corpora quadrigemina ; and, subsequently,
the posterior lobes sprout out, so to speak, and gradually extend
backwards so as to cover and overlap the cerebellum. It was
upon the erroneous assumption that the posterior lobes were
peculiar to man, that Professor Owen grounded his division of
the Archcncephala ; but it has now been proved unquestionably
that the posterior lobes exist in the apes, and that in some of
them they extend as far back as they do in man. It is easy to
perceive, then, that an arrest of development of the human brain

ii.] AND THE NERVOUS Sl'STEM. 57

may leave it very much in the condition of an animal brain ;
and it is found in some cases, as a matter of fact, that congenital
idiots have brains very like those of the monkeys.

As man is thus a sort of compendium of animal nature,
paralleling nature, as Sir Thomas Browne has it, in the cosmo-
graphy of himself, all the different modes of nervous function
are exhibited in the workings of his organism. The so-called
irritability of tissue, whereby it reacts to a stimulus without the
help of nerve, may be of the same kind as that molecular energy
of matter manifest in the movements of the humblest animal :
whether the nerve ends outside the sarcolemma of muscle, or
within it, there can be no doubt that it is not distributed to
every part of the sarcous element; and, at any rate, when all
nervous influence is withdrawn, an energy still exists sufficient
to produce rigor mortis of the muscle.* The simplest mode of
nervous action in man, comparable to that of the lowest animals
that possess nerve, is exhibited by the scattered ganglionic cells
belonging to the sympathetic system, which are concerned in
certain organic processes. The heart's action, for example, is
due to the ganglionic cells dispersed through its substance ;
Meissner has recently shown that nerve -cells disseminated
through the tissues of the intestines govern their motions ; and
Lister thinks it probable that cells scattered in the tissues pre-
side over the contractions of the arteries, and even the remark-
able diffusion of the pigment granules which takes place in the
stellate cells of the frog's skin. The separate elements of the
tissue are co-ordinated by the individual nerve- cells ; and these
co-ordinating centres, again, are found to be under the control of
the cerebro- spinal centres. In the spinal cord the ganglionic
nerve-cells are collected together, and so united that groups of

* It has furthermore been recently maintained by Bilharz and Kiihne, that
the nerves pass by continuity into the muscular substance, as in the electric
organs of the fishes they pass continuously into the protoplasm of the electric
plates. /The controversy respecting the manner in which nerves end in muscles
seems, then, likely to terminate in the conclusion that they do not end at all, but
pass by continuity of substance into the sarcous elements. The observations of
Kiihne and Rouget prove that the nerve fibre, reduced to its axis cylinder,
penetrates the sarcolemma, and is lost. The nervous filaments of insects cannot
sometimes be distinguished from the other elements by means of the microscope.
Pfliiger has discovered that the nerves to the glands penetrate the walls of the
cells, and, as he believes, end in the nuclei.

58 THE MIND [chap.

them become independent centres of combined movements in
answer to stimuli ; this arrangement representing the entire
nervous system of those animals in which no organs of special
sense have yet appeared. Still higher in the scale of the nervous
system, the sensory ganglia, formed of multitudes of specially
endowed cells, are clustered together, and form a very important
part of the brain of man, while in many animals, as already
seen, they constitute the whole of the brain. In the cerebral
hemispheres there is a still greater specialization of structure
with corresponding exaltation of function ; and, conformably to
its highest degree in man, there are in him the highest and the
most complex manifestations of mental function. In the human
organism, then, is summed up the animal kingdom, which
actually presents us with a scrt of analysis of it; for in the
functions of man we observe, as in a microcosm, an integration
and harmonious co-ordination of different vital actions which
are separately displayed by different members of the animal
kingdom.

In dealing with the function of the nervous system in man,
it is, then, most necessary to distinguish the different nervous
centres : —

1. There are the primary centres, or ideational centres, consti-
tuted by the grey matter of the convolutions of the hemispheres.

2. There are the secondary nervous centres, or sensory centres,
constituted by the collections of grey matter that lie between
the decussation of the pyramids and the floors of the lateral
ventricles.

3. There are the tertiary nervous centres, or centres of reflex
action, constituted mainly by the grey matter of the spinal cord.

4. There are the organic nervous centres, as we might call
them, belonging to the sympathetic system. They consist of
a set of ganglionic bodies distributed mainly over the viscera,
and connected with one another and with the spinal centres
by internuntiant cords.

Each distinct centre is subordinated to the centre immediately
above it, but is at the same time capable of determining and
maintaining certain movements of its own without the inter-
vention of its supreme centre. The organization is such that a
due independent local action is compatible with the proper

n.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 59

control of a superior central authority. The ganglionic cell of
the sympathetic co-ordinates the energy of the separate ele-
ments of the tissue in which it is placed, and thus represents
the simplest form of a principle of individuation;* through the
cells of the spinal centre the functions of the different organic
centres are so co-ordinated as to have their subordinate but
essential place in the movements of animal life, — and herein
is witnessed a further and higher individuation ; the spinal
centres are similarly controlled by the sensory centres, and
these, in their turn, are subordinate to the controlling action of
the cerebral hemispheres, and especially to the action of the
will, which, properly fashioned, represents the highest display
of the principle of individuation. The greater the subordina- 1
tion of parts in any animal, the higher arid the more perfect it
is.j Were it not well if man in his social life could contrive to
imitate this excellent organization ? -

Most important and varied functions having been assigned to
nerve-cells, it may be asked, On what evidence do the statements
rest ? On the evidence of anatomical investigation, experiments
upon animals, and physiological and pathological researches.

(a) Anatomical Evidence. — It is certainly not possible to trace
every nerve fibre to its connexion with a cell, and till lately no
such connexion had been distinctly seen ; but it has now been
observed in many instances, and most investigators believe that
neither in the brain nor in the spinal cord does there exist an
isolated apolar nerve-cell ; such, if supposed to be seen, being
in reality one which has had its processes torn away, or not
being a nerve-cell at all, but a connective tissue corpuscle.
This is an inference which has scarcely less certainty than an
observed fact ; it is not necessary, as Goethe has said, to travel
round the world in order to feel sure that the heavens are
everywhere above it.

* Coleridge, in his " Hints towards the Formation of a comprehensive Theory
of Life," takes from Schelling the definition — " Life is the principle of Indi-
viduation."

t After speaking of an organisn as a collection of individual elements, Goethe
goes on to say : — " Je unvolkommener das Geschbpf ist desto mehr sind dieso
Theile einander gleich oder ahnlich, und desto mehr gleichen sie dem Ganzen.
Je volkommener das Geschbpf wird, desto uuahnlicher werden die Theile einander.
Je ahnlicher die Theile einander sind, desto weniger sind sie einander subordinirt.
Die Subordination der Theile deutet auf ein volkommeneres Geschbpf."

\

60 THE MIX J) [chap.

Granting the constant connexion of the fibre with the cell, are
the ganglionic cells so numerous and so arranged as to render it
conceivable that they can adequately minister to the manifold
and complex manifestations of our mental life ? Most certainly
they are : Mr. Lockhart Clarke's careful and valuable researches
into the structure of the cortical layers of the hemispheres
reveal a variety, delicacy, and complexity of constitution such
as answer to the varied and complex manifestations of mind.
The following concise summary of those important researches,
for which 1 am indebted to Mr. Lockhart Clarke's kindness, will
indicate exactly how the complexity of physical structure agrees
with the complexity of mental function : —

" In the human brain most of the convolutions, when properly
examined, may be seen to consist of at least seven distinct and
concentric layers of nervous substance, which are alternately
paler and darker from the circumference to the centre. The
laminated structure is most strongly marked at the extremity of
the posterior lobe. In this situation all the nerve-cells are small,
but differ considerably in shape, and are much more abundant in
some layers than in others. In the superficial layer, which is
pale, they are round, oval, fusiform, and angular, but not nume-
rous. The second and darker layer is densely crowded with
cells of a similar kind, in company with others that are pyrifarm
and pyramidal, and lie with their tapering ends either toward
the surface or parallel with it, in connexion with fibres which
run in corresponding directions. The broader ends of the pyra-
midal cells give off two, three, four, or more processes, which run
partly towards the central white axis of the convolution and in
part horizontally along the plane of the layer, to be continuous,
like those at the opposite ends of the cells, with nerve fibres
rimning in different directions.

" The third layer is of a much paler colour. It is crossed,
however, at right angles by narrow and elongated groups of
small cells and nuclei of the same general appearance as those
of the preceding layer. These groups are separated from each
other by bundles of fibres radiating towards the surface from
the central white axis of the convolution, and together with
them form a beautiful fan-like structure.

" The fourth layer also contains elongated groups of small

ii.] AXD THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 61

cells and nuclei, radiating at right angles to its plane ; but the
groups are broader, more regular, and, together with the bundles
of fibres between them, present a more distinctly fan-like
arrangement.

" The fifth layer is again paler and somewhat white. It con-
tains, however, cells and nuclei which have a general resem-
blance to those of the preceding layers, but they exhibit only a
faintly radiating arrangement.

"The sixth and most internal layer is reddish-grey. It not
only abounds with cells like those already described, but con-
tains others that are rather larger. It is only here and there
that the cells are collected into elongated groups which give the
appearance of radiations. On its under side it gradually blends
with the central white axis of the convolution, into which its
cells are scattered for some distance.

" The seventh layer is this central white stem or axis of the
convolution. On every side it gives off bundles of fibres, which
diverge in all directions, and in a fan-like manner, towards the
surface through the several grey layers. As they pass between
the elongated and radiating groups of cells in the inner grey
layers, some of them become continuous with the processes of
the cells in the same section or plane, but others bend round and
run horizontally, both in a transverse and longitudinal direction
(in reference to the course of the entire convolution), and with
various degrees of obliquity. While the bundles themselves are
by this means reduced in size, their component fibres become
finer in proportion as they traverse the layers towards the sur-
face, in consequence, apparently, of branches which they give off
to be connected with cells in their course. Those which reach
the outer grey layer are reduced to the finest dimensions, and
form a close network with which the nuclei and cells are in
connexion.

" Besides these fibres, which diverge from the central white
axis of the convolution, another set, springing from the same
source, converge, or rather curve inwards from opposite sides, to
form arches along some of the grey layers. Th«se arciform fibres
run in different planes — transversely, obliquely, and longitu-
dinally— and appear to be partly continuous with those of the
divergent set which bend round, as already stated, to follow a

62 THE MIND [chap.

similar course. All these fibres establish an infinite number of
communications in every direction between different parts of
each convolution, between different convolutions, and between
these and the central white substance.

" The other convolutions of the ce^ rubral hemispheres differ
from those at the extremities of the posterior lobes, not only by the
comparative faintness of their several layers, but also by the
appearance of some of their cells. We have already seen that,
at the extremity of the posterior lobe, the cells of all the layers
are small and of nearly uniform size, the inner layer only con-
taining some that are a little larger. But, on proceeding forward
from this point, the convolutions are found to contain a number
of cells of a much larger kind. A section, for instance, taken
from a convolution at the vertex, contains a number of large,
triangular, oval, and pyramidal cells, scattered at various inter-
vals through the two inner bands of arciform fibres and the grey
layer between them, in company with a multitude of smaller
cells which differ but little from those at the extremity of the
posterior lobe. The pyramidal cells are very peculiar. Their
bases are quadrangular, directed towards the central white sub-
stance, and each gives off four or more processes which run
partly towards the centre to be continuous with fibres radiating
from the central white axis, and partly parallel with the surface
of the convolution to be continuous with arciform fibres. The
processes frequently subdivide into minute branches, which form
part of the network between them. The opposite end of the
cell tapers gradually into a straight process, which runs directly
towards the surface of the convolution, and may be traced to a
surprising distance, giving off minute branches in its course, and
becoming lost, like the others, in the surrounding network.
Many of these cells, as well as others of a triangular, oval, and
pyriform shape, are as large as those in the anterior grey sub-
stance of the spinal cord.

" In other convolutions the vesicular structure is again some-
what modified. Thus, in the surface convolution of the great
longitudinal fissure, on a level with the anterior extremity of the
corpus callosum, and therefore corresponding to what is called
the superior frontal convolution, all the three inner layers of
grey substance are thronged with pyramidal, triangular, and oval

ii.] ANT) THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 63

cells of considerable size and in much greater number than in the
situation last mentioned. Between these, as usual, is a multitude
of nuclei and smaller cells. The inner orbital convolution, situated
on the outer side of the olfactory bulb, contains a vast multitude
of pyriform, pyramidal, and triangular cells, arranged in very
regular order, but none that are so large as many of those
found in the convolutions at the vertex. Again, in the insula,
or island of Beil, which overlies the extra-ventricular portion
of the corpus striatum, a great number of the cells are somewhat
larger, and the general aspect of the tissue is rather different.
A further variety is presented by the temporo-sphenoidal lobe,
which covers the insula and is continuous with it ; for while in
the superficial and deep layers the cells are rather small, the
middle layer is crowded with pyramidal and oval cells of con-
siderable and rather uniform size. But not only in different
convolutions does the structure assume, to a greater or less
extent, a variety of modifications, but even different parts of
the same convolution may vary with regard either to the
arrangement or the relative size of their cells.

" Between the cells of the convolutions in man and those
of the ape tribe I could not perceive any difference whatever ;
but they certainly differ in some respects from those of the
larger Mammalia — from those, for instance, of the ox, sheep,
or cat."*

Schroeder van der Kolk has found a different structure of the
grey substance of the convolutions in the anterior and posterior
lobes of the dog and the rabbit : in the anterior lobes of the
rabbit there are bundles of fibres, with cells, mostly tripolar,
between them ; in the posterior lobes there is a regular series of
pedunculated cells, which are placed close to one another, like
organ pipes ; there are also single larger cells. As the result of
his investigations, continued through an industrious lifetime, he
states positively that, wherever there are differences of function,
there differences of structure and composition and connexion

* In the first edition of this work an error occurred in the brief abstract made
of Mr. Clarke's investigations, as they appear in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society, vol. xii. 1863. I regret the mistake the less, as it has been the occa-
sion of my receiving, from Mr. Clarke's own pen, the above clear and concise
description of his latest researches.

64 THE MIND [chap.

do exist ; " microscopical investigation has established this in
the completest manner."*

Although there are observable differences in the size and con-
figuration of the cells of the cortical layer, as of the cells of
other centres, yet it is clear that we ca^ot at present penetrate
those intimate special differences in constitution or composition
which the variety of their functions implies. These essential
differences are not such, indeed, as the microscope is ever likely
to reveal ; for they probably depend on the intimate chemical
composition, and are not likely, even if we could isolate cells as
required, to be disclosed until chemistry has arrived at a micro-
scopical application, or until some means has been discovered of
penetrating the molecular constitution of nerve element. Those
who may be disposed to think it impossible that such important
constitutional differences should exist in so small a compass,
might reflect with advantage on the various undetectable con-
ditions which may confessedly exist in the minutest organic
matter; as, for example, in the delicate microscopic spermato-
zoon, or in the intangible virus of a fever. And yet it is from
the conjunction of a minute spermatozoon with a minute germinal
vesicle that are produced the muscles, vessels, nerves, and brain
— the intellectual organs of a Socrates or a Csesar. Consider,
again, the infinite littleness of the odorous particles that affect
the smell, and, more wonderful still, the marvellous discri-
minating susceptibility of sense to these undetected agents.
The exquisite minuteness and consummate delicacy of the
operations going on in the most intimate recesses of nature
are even more striking and wonderful than the vastness and
grandeur with which the astronomer is concerned. H What the
immensity is to the astronomer or geologist," says Sir H.
Holland, " such are these infinitely small dimensions of matter
in space to the physiologist." Of what may happen in a world
into which human senses have not yet found means of entering
we are no better entitled to speak than the blind man is to talk of
the appearance of objects. In such matter it would be more wise
to adopt Tertullian's maxim, " Credo quia impossibile est," than

* Die Pathologie und Therapie der Geisteskrankheiten auf Anatomisch-
Physiologischer Grundlage. Von J. L. C. Schroeder van der Kolk. 1 863.

ii.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 65

that which is so much favoured by the conceit of human igno-
rance— that a thing is impossible because it appears to be
inconceivable.

(b) Experiments on Animals have distinctly proved the differ-
ences between the functions of the ganglionic cells that constitute
the principal different nervous centres ; but such results will
more properly find their place afterwards. Let it suffice here to
say that the sight of an animal may be destroyed by injury to
its corpora quadrigemina as surely as by burning out its eyes.
Nothing, however, has yet been done by experiments towards
distinguishing the functions of different convolutions.

(c) Physiological Evidence. — The study of the plan of develop-
ment of the nervous system through the animal kingdom, with
the corresponding progress in complexity of function, undoubtedly
furnishes the best testimony in favour of differences in the
constitution and function of the nerve-cells. That evidence has
already been sufficiently set forth.

The hopeless vanity of all discussions concerning infinite or
absolute truth might well have been made manifest by this
physiological reflection : that our perception of external nature
is the effect which, the object produces, through an adapted
medium, in certain of our central nerve-cells, an effect on which
we can exercise no influence. Excite that condition of the
central cell otherwise than by the stimulus from without, the
perception does not fail to ensue : a blow on the eye produces
flashes of light ; on closing the eyes after looking at the sun a
spectrum of it remains, which, as it slowly fades away, may be
brightened and darkened alternately for a time by pressing the
eye and removing the pressure ; a disturbance of the circulation
in the auditory ganglia gives rise to noises in the ears : in fact,
all the senses may be excited subjectively. The reason is
evident : because the perception depends upon the special nature
of the central cells and the mechanism by which the stimulus
is conveyed to them. The idea in the mind is the result of an
action excited in the nerve centres ; the external impression not
being conveyed to them, but exciting the physiological property
of the nerve, its neurility, w7hich thereupon gives rise in them
to the special effect. Accordingly, the effect of any stimulus
capable of affecting one of the special senses is of the same kind

F

(35 THE MIXD [chap.

as that produced by its proper stimulus : thus the effect of the
electric stimulus on the optic ganglia is to cause a sensation of
light ; on the olfactory nerves, some kind of smell ; on the gus-
tatory nerves, some kind of taste. This is as clear evidence
as any one can desire of specific differences between nerve-cells
which to the eye often appear exactly alike. That man is by
nature thus limited to the reception of certain special im-
pressions through a few avenues, proves how limited must be
his knowledge at the best : it may well be that there are many
things in nature of which he has not, and cannot have, any
kind of knowledge ; and that a new sense conferred upon him
might alter the whole aspect of the universe.

What is true of the cells of the sensory ganglia is probably
no less true of the cells of the higher centres of intelligence.
There is reason to assume differences, not merely between the
samdionic cells of one lobe of the brain and those of another, but
also between one cell or group of cells and another cell or group
of cells. The law of progress from the general to the special
in organic development does not, it may be presumed, cease its
action suddenly at the cerebral hemispheres. The philosopher
is not, it is true, in possession of more senses than the savage ;
but he unquestionably has more numerous and complex con-
volutions, and, therefore, many more ganglionic cells in the
primary centres of intelligence. By intending his mind to the
realities of external nature he acquires information through the
senses, but his intelligence reacts advantageously upon the
senses ; he constructs instruments which extend their power of
observation, — thus acquires, as it were, new artificial senses, so
that hitherto obscure relations of external nature are disclosed to
him, and he attains to more special and complex relations there-
with. If in the nervous centres cortical cells of a higher quality
than the savage has, do not answer to this increased speciality
and complexity of external relations, it is contrary to all the
analogy of organic development, as it is also an unintelligible
freak of nature to have crowded the hemispherical ganglia with
nerve-cells which are merely repetitions of one another.
X (d) Pathological Evidence. — This will be brought forward in

detail at a later period. Let it suffice here to say, that
Schroeder van der Kolk can venture to assert that he never

ii.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 67

failed to discover pathological changes in insanity, and that,
when intellectual disorder especially has existed, he has found
the cortical layer under the frontal bones to be darker coloured,
more firmly connected with the pia mater, or softened ; in melan-
cholia, on the other hand, where the feelings mainly are excited
or depressed, the pathological changes were found principally
in the convolutions of the upper and hind lobes. In old age
when the memory fails, he thinks that the cells of the cortical
layers are visibly atrophied. The very many and various dis-
orders to which the memory is liable, failures of every possible
degree and character, which can only be described by being given
in detail, surely indicate in no uncertain way the different nature
of different cells in the cortical layers of the hemispheres.

Thus much, then, by way of setting forth facts which will not
easily be discredited. What is the unavoidable conclusion?
That no true scientific result can possibly proceed from the
vague and general employment, without further discrimination,
of mental action to embrace phenomena of such manifestly
different nature. If the psychologists had duly minded the old
but wholesome maxim, that whosoever distinguishes well teaches
well, they might have found in the revelations of self-con-
sciousness, when interpreted without bias, those distinctions
which an investigation of the physiology of the nervous system
in man and animals establishes beyond all question. But the
metaphysical conception of mind, the abstraction made into an
entity, has overridden all discerning observation, and, confound-
ing well-marked differences in a vague obscurity, has constructed
a loose system of undefined words in place of an exact and posi-
tive science of facts. Instead of mind being, as assumed, a
wondrous entity, the independent source of power and self-suffi-
cient cause of causes, an honest observation proves incontestably
that it is the most dependent of all the natural forces. It is the
highest development of force, and to its existence all the lower
natural forces are indispensably prerequisite.

It is most needful, if we would avoid hopeless confusion and
often-made error, once for all to form a just and definite concep-
tion of what we mean by mental force, and of its position in
nature. To deal with mind apart from the consideration of the J
matter through the changes of which it is manifested is truly no

f 2

(J (J THE MIND [chap.

less vain and absurd than it would confessedly be to attempt to
handle electricity and gravitation as forces apart from the changes
in matter by which alone we know them. As there are different
kinds of matter, so there are different modes of force, in the uni-
verse ; and as we rise from the common physical matter in which
physical laws hold sway up to chemical matter and chemical
forces, and from chemical matter again up to living matter and
its modes of force, so do we rise in the scale of life from the
lowest kind of living matter, with its corresponding force or
energy, through different kinds of histological elements, with
their corresponding energies or functions, up to the highest kind
of living matter and corresponding mode of force with which we
are acquainted, viz. nerve element and nerve force. But, when
we have arrived at nerve element and nerve force, it behoves us
not to rest content with the general idea, but to bestow pains on
the patient and careful discrimination of the different kinds of
nerve-cells in the nervous system, and to study their different
manifestations of energy. So only shall we obtain the ground-
work of a true conception of the relations of mind and the
nervous system.

The chief feature to be noted in this upward transformation
of matter and correlative metamorphosis of force is, that the
exaltation or transpeciation on each occasion represents an
increased speciality of elements, and a greater complexity of
combinations, in a smaller space : all exaltation of matter and
force is, as it were, a concentration thereof. As one equivalent
of chemical force corresponds to several equivalents of inferior
force, and one equivalent of vital force to several equivalents of
chemical force ; so in the scale of tissues the higher kind repre-
sents a more complex elementary constitution, and a greater
number of simultaneously acting forces, than the kind of tissue
below it in dignity. If we suppose a higher tissue to undergo
decomposition, or retrograde metamorphosis of its matter, with
which must necessarily coincide a resolution of its energy into
lower modes, then we might say that a single monad of the
higher tissue, or one equivalent of its force, would equal in value
several monads of the lower kind of tissue, or several equivalents
of its force. The characteristic of living matter is the com-
plexity of combinations and the variety of elements in so small

U.] AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 69

a compass that we cannot yet trace them; and in nerve structure
this complication and concentration is carried to its highest
pitch. Nervous tissue with its energy is, therefore, dependent
for its existence on all the lower kinds of tissue that have pre-
ceded it in the order of development : all the force of nature
could not develop a nerve-cell directly out of inorganic matter.
The highest energy in nature is really the most dependent ; in
the fact that it is so dependent, that it implicitly contains the
essence or abstraction of all the lower kinds of energy, lies the
reason of the powerful influence which it is able to exercise over
all the lower forces that are subservient to its evolution. As the
man of genius implicitly contains humanity, so nerve element
implicitly contains nature*

What is the progress or nisus that is manifest on survey-
ing nature as a whole ? Is it not the struggle to arrive at
consciousness, to attain to self-communion? In the series of
her manifold productions man was, so to speak, says Goethe,
the first dialogue that Nature held with God. Every poet,
then, who is sensitive to a hitherto unrevealed subtlety of
human feeling, every philosopher who apprehends and reveals
a hitherto unobserved relation in nature, is, each in his
place, aiding the onward progress ; in his art nature is
undergoing evolution ; in him the world is, more or less,
regenerate.

" To whom the winged hierarch replied : —
0 Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to Him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life ;
But more refined, more spirituous, and pure,
As nearer to Him placed, or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assigned,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportioned to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

* For the further development of this view of life, I may refer to an article
on the "Theory of Vitality," in the British and Foreign Med.-Chir. Review,
October 1863.

70 THE MIND AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. [chap. n.

More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes : flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual ; give both life an A sense,
Fancy and understanding ; whence the soul
Keason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or intuitive ; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same."

Paradise Lost, B. v.

W

re£f* y c U*,

CHAPTER III.

THE SPINAL CORD, OR TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES; OR
NERFOUS CENTRES OF REFLEX ACTION.

/^\MITTING for the present any mention of the organic
^ nervous centres of the sympathetic system — first, because
they minister chiefly to the organic life, and very little is
definitely known about them ; and, secondly, because something
will be said of them incidentally when treating of the Passions
— we go on to show forth the functions of the spinal cord. It
is not a conducting organ only, but contains many independent
nerve centres. A large part of human activity notably takes
place without any voluntary control, or even without any con-
sciousness on the part of the individual ; and of these un-
conscious or involuntary actions a great part is as plainly due to
the independent power of reaction which the ganglionic cells of
the spinal cord have. If it be cut across at a spot below where
the respiratory nerves are given off, all sensation and motor
power are lost in the parts of the body below the section. But
if the sole of the foot be then tickled with a feather, the leg is
drawn up, though the man is unaware of it unless informed by
others of what has happened. Such automatic action of the
spinal cord, manifest enough in the actions of man, but still more
so in those of the lower animals, may be illustrated both from
the animal kingdom and from the phenomena of human life.

When the earliest actions of the new-born infant are observed,
it is plain that, like the movements of the foetus within the
mother's womb, or the movements of many of the lower animals,
they are simply reflex to impressions, and take place without
will, or even without consciousness. The anencephalic infant, in
which absence of brain involves an absence of consciousness,
not only exhibits movements of its limbs, but is capable also of

72 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap,

the associated reflex acts of sucking and crying. A decapitated
frog, to the thigh of which acetic acid has been applied, makes
certain movements for the purpose of wiping off the acid ; and
if the head of a frog, which is clinging to the female at the season
of copulation, be cut off, the animal still holds her fast ; nay, if
its paw be afterwards cut off, clings to her with its bloody stump.
The spinal cord is plainly, then, not only a centre of irregular
reflex movements, but it is also a centre of co-ordinate or so-called
designed actions. Pfliiger wetted with acetic acid the thigh of a
decapitated frog over its internal condyle ; it wiped it off with
the dorsal surface of the foot of the same side : he thereupon cut
off the foot, and applied the acid to the same spot ; the animal,
as though it were deceived, as the man who has lost a limb at
first is, by an eccentric sensation, would have wiped it off again
with the foot of that side, but of course could not. After some
fruitless efforts, therefore, it ceased to try in that way, seemed
unquiet, " as though it were searching for some new means," and
at last it either made use of the foot of the leg which was left,
or it so bent the mutilated limb that it succeeded in wiping it
against the side of its body. So much was Pfliiger impressed by
this wonderful adaptation of means to an end in a headless
animal, that he actually inferred that the spinal cord, like the
brain, was possessed of sensorial functions. Others, who would
scarce admit the supposition to be true of man, have thought
that it might be so of some of the lower animals. Instead of
rightly grounding their judgment of the complex phenomena in
man on their experience of the simpler instances exhibited by
the lower animals, they applied to the lower animals their sub-
jective misinterpretation of the complex phenomena in man^1)

It is obviously quite possible to draw another inference from
Pfluger's experiment: that the so-called design of an act does
not necessarily witness to the co-existence of will, forethought,
or consciousness ; that actions " having the semblance of pre-
designing consciousness " may, nevertheless, be unattended with
consciousness * No doubt there is a definite purpose in the

* Very interesting, in relation to this matter, are Prochaska's observations,
published in 1784 : — " Cam itaque precipua funetio sensorii communis eonsistat
in reflexione impressionum sensoriarum in motorias, notandum est quod ista
rrflrxio rcl cmbmA hwi'i vcl veto animd conscid fiat." He gives numerous
examples, often given sim-e by other authors, and adds :— " Omnes ista1 aetiones

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 73

movements which the maimed frog makes, as there is definite
purpose in the movements of the anencephalic infant's lips, or in
the respiratory movements of man or animal ; but in all these
instances the co-ordinate activity is the result of an innate nervous
constitution, an original endowment of the nervous centres.
Accordingly we see that the frog which has lost its legs acts as if
the limbs were still there, which, were there intelligent conscious-
ness, it plainly should not, and only employs other means when
the irritating action of the stimulus continues unaffected by its
efforts. As the movement which takes place in the sensitive
plant — the Mimosa jmdica — when it is irritated, is not limited to
the spot where the irritation acts, but extends, if this be sufficiently
intense, to the whole plant ; or, as in certain morbid states of the
human organism, the continuance of an irritation, which at first
only causes slight reflex action, may produce a more general in-
voluntary reaction, or convulsions ; so in the frog, the enduring
stimulus, which has not been affected by the customary reflex
movement, now gives rise to those further physiological move-
ments which would have been made use of had the creature
still possessed its brain. In the constitution of the spinal cord
are implanted the capabilities of such co-ordinate energies ; and
the degree of the irritation determines the extent of the activity.
There takes place an irradiation of the stimulus. But this happens
without consciousness ; and all the design which there is in the
movement is of the same kind as the design which there is in
the formation of a crystal, or in the plan of growth of a tree.
A crystal cannot overstep the laws of its form, nor can a tree
grow up into heaven ; the particles of the crystal aggregate after
a certain definite plan, and thus strictly manifest design. Are
we, then, to assume that, because of the design, there is con-
sciousness in the forming crystal or the growing tree ? Certainly
not ; and yet it is to such extreme conclusion that the arguments
of those who look upon the so-called design of an act as testifying
to consciousness logically lead. The design of an act is nothing
else but the correlate in the mind of the observer of the law of

ex organismo et physicis legibus sensorio communi propriis flunnt, suntque prop,
terea spontaDeae et automatics." — Commentatio de Fundionibus Systematis
Xcrcosi, p. 88. 1784. It must be remembered that Prochaska included the
spinal cord under the sensorium commune.

74 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

the matter in nature ; and each observer will see in any event
exactly that amount of design which he brings with him the
faculty of seeing.

Much fruitless theory would have been avoided if the real
nature of design had been kept distinctly in mind. The notion
that the soul works unconsciously in the building up of the
organism, which has at different times been so much in fashion,
rests entirely upon the assumption that an intelligent principle
or agent must be immanent in organic matter which is going
through certain definite changes. But if in the formation of an
organ, why not also in the formation of a chemical compound
with its definite properties ? The function is the necessary result
of a certain definite organic structure under certain conditions,
and in that sense must needs minister to the furtherance of its
well-being. But an organic action, with never so beautifully
manifest a design, may, under changed conditions, become as
disastrous as it is usually beneficial ; the peristaltic movements
of the intestines, which serve so essential a purpose in the eco-
nomy, may, and actually do, in the case of some obstruction,
become the cause of intolerable suffering and a painful death.
Where, then, is the design of their disastrous continuance ? The
repair of a ruptured urethra "will, instead of restoring the integ-
rity of the canal and then ceasing, go on, with a final purpose sin-
gularly and obstinately mischievous, to produce an obliteration
of the canal, unless human art come to the rescue. M. Bert has
made many extremely interesting experiments on grafting parts
cut from the body of one animal on that of another. For example,
he cut off the paw of a young rat, and grafted it in the flank of
another rat ; it took root there, and went through its normal
growth. "Where was the design of its going through its regular
development there ? Or what, in the adoption and nutrition of
this useless member, was the final purpose of the so-called intelli-
gent vital principle of the rat on which the graft was made?
Whatever design we recognise is really an idea that is gradually
formed in our minds from repeated experiences of the law of the
matter, a law which acts necessarily, fatally, blindly. Any other
kind of design can exist only in the creative mind ; and into' the
question of what exists there science cannot enter. Those who
would rashly venture to do so might call to mind and weigh the

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 75

sagacious remark of Spinoza, that the idea of a perfect God is
incompatible with the conception of such working after an
aim, " because God would then desire something which He
was without."

It will not be amiss to take note here of the very different
way in which we are in the habit of regarding dead matter and
living matter. In dead matter the form is looked upon as the
attribute of the matter, whereas, on the other hand, in living
bodies the matter is treated as the attribute of the form : in
inorganic nature the matter is the essential thing, in the organic
creation the form is all in all But to neglect the exact con-
sideration of the conditions and combinations of matter, as
determining organic form, is not less mischievous than it is to
concentrate all attention upon the matter in inorganic nature.*
What are inseparably joined together in nature let us not vainly
attempt to put asunder. Mindful of this maxim we shall not
be so much tempted to fall back upon that vague and shifting
doctrine of final causes which has done so great harm in science,
or, as Bacon has it, has strangely defiled philosophy, and which,
though often rejected absolutely, and now banished from the
more advanced sciences, still works injuriously in biology, where
so much is yet recondite and obscure. (2) The human under-
standing can indeed best impose its own rules on nature there
where the truth is most inaccessible and least known. Not only
does it in biology look for a final cause answering to its own
measure, but, having found this, or created it, proceeds straight-
way to superadd its own attribute of consciousness, so that
wherever evidence of design is met with, be it only in the
function of the spinal cord of a decapitated frog, there con~
sciousness is assumed. Is it not a marvel that no teleologist has
yet been found to maintain that the final cause of the moon is
to act as a " tug" to the vessels on our tidal rivers ?

There can be no difficulty in admitting that the spinal cord is
an independent centre of so-called aim- working acts that are not
attended with consciousness. It is the centre, however, not only
of co-ordinate action the capability of which has been implanted
in its original constitution, but also of co-ordinate action the

* Indeed, the chemists are now discovering how much the qualities of sub-
stances are determined by different molecular arrangements of the same atoms.

7f) THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

power of which has been gradually acquired raid matured
through individual experience. Like the brain, the spinal cord
has, so to speak, its memory, and must be educated ; the reaction
which it displays, in consequence -of a particular impression
conveyed to it from without, does not vanish issueless, leaving
the ganglionic cells unmodified after its force has been expended.
With the display of energy there is a coincident change or waste
of nerve element ; and, although a subsequent regeneration or
restoration of the statical equilibrium takes place by the quiet
process of nutrition, yet the nutritive repair, filling up the loss
which has been made, must plainly take the form made by the
energy and coincident material change. Thereby the definite
activity is to some extent realized or embodied in the structure
of the spinal cord, existing theje for the future as a motor
residuum, or as, so to speak, a jjotcntial or abstract movement ;
accordingly there is thenceforth a tendency to the recurrence of
the particular activity — a tendency which becomes stronger with
every repetition of it. Every impression which is made leaves
behind it, therefore, its trace or residuum, which is again quickened
into activity on the occasion of an appropriate stimulus ; the
faculties of the spinal cord are thus gradually formed and matured.
When a series or group of movements are, after many voluntary
efforts, associated, they notably become more and more easy, and
less and less separable, with every repetition, until at last they
are firmly fixed in the constitution of the cord, become a part of
the faculty of it, and may be accomplished without effort or even
without consciousness : they are the secondary or acquired auto-
matic acts, as described by Hartley. (3) In this way walking be-
comes so far a reflex or automatic act that a man in a profound
abstraction may continue to walk without being conscious where
he is going, and find himself, when he is aroused from his reverie,
in a different place from that which he intended to visit. In
that form of epilepsy known as the 'petit mal, an individual
sometimes continues automatically, whilst consciousness is quite
abolished, the act which he was engaged in when the attack
seized him : a shoemaker used frequently to wound his fingers
with the awl as he went on with his work during the attack,
and on one occasion walked into a pond of water during the
suspension of consciousness ; and a woman whom Schrocder

ii.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 77

van der Kolk knew, continued eating or drinking, or the occupa-
tion she was about, being quite unconscious on recovery of what
had happened. Trousseau mentions a young amateur musician
subject to epileptic vertigo, who sometimes had a fit lasting for
ten or fifteen seconds whilst playing the violin. Though he
was perfectly unconscious of everything around him, and neither
heard nor saw those whom he was accompanying, he still went
on playing in time during the attack. The same author also
mentions an architect who had long been subject to epilepsy,
and did not fear to go up the highest scaffoldings, though per-
fectly aware that he had often had fits while walking across
narrow planks at a pretty considerable height. He had never met
with an accident, although, when in a fit, he ran rapidly over scaf-
foldings, shrieking out his own name in a loud and abrupt voice.
A quarter of a minute afterwards he resumed his occupation and
gave his orders to the workmen ; but unless he was told of it, he
had no idea of the singular act which he had been committing*
In fact, if any one attends to Ids ordinary actions during the day,
it will be surprising how small a proportion of them are con-
sciously willed, how large a proportion of them are the results
of the acquired automatic action of the organism. It is suffi-
ciently evident that the faculties of the spinal cord are, for the
most part, not inborn in man, but gradually built up by virtue
of experience and education ; in their formation they illustrate
the progress of human adaptation to external nature.

Certainly the capability of certain associated voluntary move-
ments, or the germ of such capability, does appear to exist as an
innate endowment of the spinal cord even in man, whilst in
the lower animals it is very evident. As the young animal,
directly it is born, can sometimes use its limbs with complete
effect, or as the infant, previous to any experience, is capable of
that association or catenation of movements necessaiy to crying,
breathing,, or coughing, so likewise does there appear to be, as
Mr. Bain argues,f the germ of a locomotive harmony in the

* " The condition of such persons may be compared to somnambulism, or to what
happens in the case of certain persons who answer questions during sleep, but do
not recollect anything when they wake up." — Trousseau, Clinical Lectures,
vol. i. p. 59.

t The Senses and the Intellect, 2d ed. It has long been distinctly recognised
as a general law that when a moderate stimulus excites several motor nerves,

78 THE SPIXAL CORD, OR [chap.

original conformation of the nervons centres of man. Not only
does the analogy of the lower animals favour the belief in the
original existence of such an asjociating link, but the tendency
to an alternate action of the lower limbs, and of the two sides
of the body, observably precedes any acquisition of experience.
There is, furthermore, a proneness to the involuntary association
of the motions of corresponding parts of the two sides of the
body ; and, as Miiller has observed, the less perfect the action of
the nervous system in man, or the less developed volition is, the
more general are the associate movements. It would be a fruit-
less task, however, to attempt to fix the value of this pre-estab-
lished arrangement in man, where it is obviously at best rather
a potentiality than an actuality ; and, for all practical purposes,
we must view the faculties of his spinal cord as acquired by
education. The child certainly has the capability of learning to
walk, but the actual process of learning involves the expenditure
of much time and energy, and represents a progressing develop-
ment of the spinal cord : it is the faculty thereof in the making.
Of course it is not to be supposed that the spinal centres of
themselves ordinarily suffice for all the complicated movements
of walking, although they may do so : all that is claimed is, that
they are the automatic centres of certain associate movements,
which have been acquired, and which constitute a large part of
our daily action.*

these are physiologically connected : first, inasmuch as all the fibres going to a
particular mu?ele are simultaneously excited, so that partial movement of the
muscle does not take place ; secondly, as the regular reflex activity implicates
such muscles as are functionally co-ordinated, the associated action of which
produces certain physiological effects — e.g. coughing, sneezing, swallowing. In
the electric fish, the malapterus, the nerve going to the electric apparatus is at
first a single fibre which divides and subdivides in its course, until it furnishes as
many branches as there are electric plates ; so that the creature cannot isolate a
part of the apparatus, but must put all the plates into action together. Mr.
Bain's elaborate but vague discussion illustrates the difficulty, one might say the
vanity, of attempting to treat such questions satisfactorily from a psychological
point of view. The locomotive harmony is the result of the connexions of certain
cells and groups of cells in the spinal cord. " Si l'homme, le lapin, le moi-
neau, le pigeon, ne marchent pas des leur naissance, e'est uuiquement a cause
du developpement incomplet des divers organes, et surtout, sans doute, des centres
nerveux. Si Penfant naissait en presentant uu degre de developpement egal a-
celui qu'offre le cochon d'Inde, il marcherait des le premier jour." — Vulpian {op.
cit.), p. 529.
* Schroeder van der Kolk, after saying that the production of harmonized

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 79

This power of co-ordinate action, which the spinal centres
acquire by assimilation of the influence of the individual's
surroundings and respondent reaction thereto, is plainly a most
useful, as it is a most necessary, provision of nature. For if an
act became no easier after being done several times, if the care-
ful direction of consciousness were necessary on every occasion
to its accomplishment, it is evident that the whole activity of a
lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds — that no progress
could take place in development. A man might be occupied all
day in dressing and undressing himself; the washing of his
hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him
on each occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and he would
furthermore be completely exhausted by his exertions. For
while secondary automatic acts are accomplished with compara-
tively little weariness — in this regard approaching the organic
movements, or the original reflex movements — the conscious
efforts of the will soon produce exhaustion. A spinal cord with-
out memory would simply be an idiotic spinal cord incapable of
culture — a degenerate nervous centre in which the organization
of special faculties could not take place. It is the lesson of a
gocd education so consciously to exercise it in reference to its
surroundings that it shall act automatically, in accordance with
the relations of the individual in his particular walk of life.

The phenomena of secondary automatic action are well fitted
to exhibit the mode of origin and nature of what we call design.
It is here observably an acquisition that is gradually organized
in respondence to particular experience and education ; repre-
senting as it does the acquired nature of nerve element, its mani-
festation is the simple result of the constitution of the material
substratum, just as the properties of any chemical element are
the unavoidable result of its nature. That means are adapted to

movement is due to the ultimate connexion of certain groups of ganglionic
cells in the spinal cord, goes on to say — " It has always heen incomprehensible
to me, how any one could ever have referred it (co-ordination) to the cere-
bellum. If the cause of this co-ordination lay in the cerebellum, no horizontal
reflex movements could take place in a decapitated frog." — On the Minute
Structure of Spinal Cord and Medulla Oblongata, p. 72. The supposition that
the cerebellum is the sole centre of co-ordination is now, in fact, abandoned as
untenable. There never was any real scientific evidence to support it, while there
was positive evidence against it .(See Versuch einer physiologischen Pathologic
der Nerven, von G. Valentin, 1861, vol. ii. p. 68.)

80 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

the production of an end in the phenomena of life, is but another
way of saying that what we please to call life exists ; for if
means were not adapted to an end, there could plainly be no
end ; and if we choose to assume a certain result to be the end
of certain means, then we are but saying that, according to our
experience, certain combinations of matter have certain definite
properties. In the building up of the secondary automatic facul-
ties of the spinal centres, we are thus able to trace through the
course of its formation in individual life that design which we
meet with fully formed in the innate faculties of so many
animals ; but which even in that case has been, as we shall here-
after see, gradually organized through generations. If it be said
that the gradual building up by education of this embodied
design into the constitution of the nervous centres is itself an
evidence of design, then we can only answer, that such propo-
sition is merely a statement in other words of the fact that
things exist as they do, and add the expression of a conviction
that science cannot enter into the councils of creation. The
growth of a cancer until it kills the body, or of a vice until it
ruins the mind, are neither more nor less evidence of design.
Should these considerations not be satisfactoiy to the teleolo-
gists, it will be sufficient to recall to them the already given
observation of Spinoza, and to congratulate them on their power
of diving into "the mysteries of things as if they were God's
spies." "Were it not well, however, that they should condescend
to humble things, and unfold to us, for example, the final cause
of the mammary gland and nipple in the male animal?

As the faculties of the spinal cord are built up by organiza-
tion, so must they be kept up by due nutrition. If not so '
preserved in vigour, if exhausted by excesses of any kind, the
ill effects are manifest in degenerate action ; instead of definite
co-ordinate action ministering to the well-being of the individual,
there ensue irregular spasmodic or convulsive movements, which,
though inevitable consequences of the degenerate condition of
the nerve centres, serve no good end, but have strangely forgotten
their beneficial design.* Mr. Paget has rendered it extremely

* Tliey have, no doubt, their design quite as much as the healthy movements,
in so far as they accomplish what they cannot help doing, their destiny — in
other words, fulfil the law which necessitates them.

in. J TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 81

probable that the rhythmical organic movements, such as those
of the heart, of respiration, of the cilia, are due to a rhythmical
nutrition ; that is, "a method of nutrition in which the acting parts
are, at certain periods, raised, with time-regulated progress, to a
state of instability of composition, from which they then decline,
and in their decline discharge nerve-force." * It is intelligible,
therefore, why they are never tired when acting naturally ;
between each succeeding act of function a nutritive repair takes
place, and the time of each occurrence of the movement repre-
sents the time-rate of nutrition. But the spinal centres are
equally dependent on nutrition for the maintenance of their
functions ; the structural or chemical change produced by the
ordinary activity of the day must be repaired during a period of
cessation of action. This restoration most likely takes place
during sleep ; and there is some reason to believe that the
periodical action of the spinal centres is, like rhythmical organic
movement, dependent upon, or closely related to, the time-rate
of nutrition. The unconscious quiet manner in which the auto-
matic action of the spinal centres is performed, though in one
way or another the work is continuous during waking, might
seem at first sight to render no cessation of action necessary ;
but a little reflection shows that here, as elsewhere, the expendi-
ture of force must be balanced by a corresponding supply. If no
rest be allowed, the exhaustion is evinced, first, in an inability to
accomplish successfully the most delicate or complex associated
movements — in a loss, that is, of design ; then in trembling
incapacity, which, if the degeneration increases, may pass on to
actual spasmodic movements and finally to paralysis. Therein
we have sure evidence that the constitution of the nerve ele-
ment has suffered from the drain of activity.

A reflection which occurs, in considering the nervous mecha-
nism by which the action and reaction between the individual
and nature take place, is as to the disproportionate exhibition of
force by the organism to the force of the simple impression which
may happen to be made upon it. How, with due regard to the
principle of the conservation of force, do we account for this
seeming generation of energy? In the first place, the central

* Croonian Lecture before the Eoyal Society, 1857.
G

82 THE SPIXAL CORD, OR [chap.

ganglionic cell is not a simple impassive body, which merely
reflects or passes onwards a received current of activity, without
affecting it or being affected by it : on the contrary, it is the
complexly constituted, supremely endowed centre in winch force
is released or evolved on the occasion of a suitable stimulus ; and
that which is perceived, as it were, in the spinal cord is not the
actual impression made upon the afferent nerve, but it is the
effect produced in the particular central nerve cell or cells.
Is it not plain enough how this force or energy is evolved, or, as
it were, unfolded in the cell ? By the disturbance of the statical
equilibrium of an intensely vital structure ; by a change of the
material into lower kinds, or a degeneration of it, and a correla-
tive resolution of its force into lower modes and larger volu-
metrical display. There is not any actual generation of force ;
there is a transformation of the high quality of latent force
which the nervous monad implies into actual force of a lower
quality and larger display. Consider what has been previously
said as to the nature of nerve element and its position in the
universe : it will then be sufficiently evident what manner of
process it is that takes place. Slowly and, as it were, laboriously,
by a steady appropriation and ascent through many gradations
of vitality, does organic element arrive at the complex and
supreme nature of nerve structure ; quickly and easily does
nerve element give back force and matter to nature, in the
rapid resolution which the accomplishment of its function
implies. (4)

Thus much concerning the inherent force of the spinal cord as
a nervous centre. In the second place, bear in mind the nature
of its acquired faculties, and the great expenditure of force made
upon its education. In the registration of impressions made
upon it, in the assimilation of their residua, there is slowly
embodied a quantity of energy as an organic addition of power ;
force is being stored up in the gradual organization of its
faculties. The exhaustion which we feel from our efforts to
acquire any particular skill of movements, as in learning to
dance, the labour given to the frequent voluntary repetition of
the stimulus and adapted reaction thereto, until by practice the
definite relation has been established, and the desired skill
acquired ;— these testify to the expenditure of so much force

in.l TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 83

which has been laid up as statical power in the constitution of
the ganglionic cells of the cord, rendering possible for the future
a group of associated movements in answer to a moderate and, as
might often seem, disproportionate stimulus from without. Like
the brain, the spinal cord lays up good store of power in its
memory. Man's life truly represents a progressive development
of the nervous system, none the less so because it takes place out
of the womb instead of in it. The regular transmutation of
motions which are at first voluntary into secondary automatic
motions, as Hartley called them, is due to a gradually effected
organization in the proper centres ; and we may rest assured of
this, that co-ordinate activity always testifies to stored-up power,
either innate or acquired.

The way in which an acquired faculty of the parent animal is
sometimes distinctly transmitted to the progeny as a heritage,
instinct, or innate endowment, furnishes a striking confirmation
of the foregoing observations. Power which has been laboriously y
acquired and stored up as statical in one generation manifestly
in such case becomes the inborn faculty of the next ; and the
development takes place in accordance with that law of in-
creasing speciality and complexity of adaptation to external
nature which is traceable through the animal kingdom, or, in
other words, that law of progress from the general to the special
in development which the appearance of nerve force amongst
natural forces and the complexity of the nervous system of man
both illustrate. As the vital force gathers up into itself in-
ferior forces, and might be justly said to be a development of
them, or as in the appearance of nerve force simpler and more
general forces are gathered up and concentrated in a more special
and complex mode of energy ; so again, a further specialization
takes place in the development of the nervous system, whether
watched through generations or through individual life. Not
by limiting our observation to the life of the individual, how-
ever, who is but a link in the chain of organic beings con-
necting the past with the future, shall we come at the full
truth ; the present individual is the inevitable consequence of
his antecedents in the past, and through the examination of these
alone do we arrive at the adequate explanation of him. It
behoves us, then, having found any faculty to be innate, not to

6 2

84 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

rest content there, but steadily to follow backwards the line of
causation, and thus to display, if possible, its manner of origin.
This is the more necessaiy with the lower animals, where so
much is innate.

And now, having done with the general functions of the spinal
cord as an aggregation of independent nerve centres ministering
to the animal life, let us add that they were distinctly recognised
by the physiologist long before the anatomist was in a condition
to give the physical explanation. It is only recently that the
nerve fibres which pass to or from the spinal cord have been
proved to be connected with the unipolar, bipolar, and multi-
polar cells of its grey substance ; and this so plainly as to justify
the belief that an isolated apolar nervous cell does not exist in
the spinal cord or brain* Fo\ the conveyance of an impression
to the grey centres, and for the passage of the reacting force
outwards, there is thus revealed a definite physical path, along
which the current of activity travels. From the cells with
which nerves are connected, again, other processes go to join
neighbouring cells, and thus, forming a connecting path between
them, enable them to act together : hundreds of ganglionic
cells are yoked together by such anastomoses, and, functionally
co-ordinated thereby, represent the centres of innervation of
corresponding systems of motor nerves. By similar anastomoses
the ganglionic cells of different nervous centres are connected,
and thus a means is afforded for the communication of the
activity of one centre to another. A consideration of the
nervous system of the Annelida will assist in the conception
of the physiological nature of the spinal cord. In those humble
creatures the central nervous system consists of a ganglionic
apparatus, each ganglion of which is united to that which pre-
cedes it, and that which follows it, by longer or shorter nervous
connexions. Now the spinal cord of the Vertebrata may be
considered as an analogous ganglionic apparatus, the connect-
ing cords of which are not seen by reason of the coalescence
of the ganglia. From a physiological point of view, therefore,
the grey substance may be considered as formed of distinct
segments, each segment consisting of a group or association of

* The connexions of fibres with cells have been observed most plainly in the
lamprey by Owsjannikow, and by Bidder and his pupils of the Dorpat School.

in.J TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 85

cells, and having connected with it the roots of two anterior
motor and two posterior sensory nerves. Many, therefore, are
the channels by which the activity excited in the nerve-cell
by the stimulus of the efferent nerve may be disposed of : it
may at once be reflected on an efferent nerve, and pass into
muscular motion ; or it may pass to other interconnected cells,
and, acting thus upon a system of nerves, produce associated
movements, either such as proceed from the cord nearly on the
same level as the afferent nerve enters, or from a different level ;
or, lastly, it may pass upwards, and excite the higher functionally
co-ordinated centres.

To Pfliiger belongs the merit of having first attempted to
systematize the laws of the reflex movements. They are : —
1. The law of simultaneous conduction for one-sided reflex move-
ments. When a reflex movement takes place only on one side
of the body in consequence of a stimulus, it is always on the
same side of the body as the irritation of the afferent nerve ; the
reason being probably that the motor nerves proceed from gan-
glionic cells which are in direct connexion with the stimulated
afferent nerves. — 2. The law of symmetry of reflex action. When
a stimulus has produced reflex movements on one side, and its
continuance or its further extension in the spinal cord produces
movements of the opposite side, then the corresponding muscles
only of this side are affected. This is owing, no doubt, to the
commissural system, which connects together the corresponding
ganglionic cells of the two halves of the cord. — 3. The unequally
intense reflex action of the two sides in the event of both being
affected. When the reflex action is stronger on one side than
upon the other, the stronger movements take place upon the side
of the irritation. — 4. The law of irradiation of reflex action, by
which an extension of reflex action takes place from the nerves
in which it first appears to neighbouring ones, owing to the
communications between the different systems or groups of gan-
glionic cells. When the excitation of an afferent cereh*al nerve
is transferred to motor nerves, we observe that the roots of both
sorts of nerves are placed nearly upon the same level in the
central organ, or that the motor nerve lies a little behind or
below, never in front of or above, the afferent nerve. If the
reflex action spreads further, the way of irradiation is downwards

86 THE SPINAL CORD, OB [ciiap.

to the medulla oblongata; stimulation of the optic nerve, for
example, produces contraction of the iris. In the spinal cord
the primarily affected motor nei :e lies nearly on the level of the
stimulated sensory nerve. But if the reflex action spreads, then
it passes v.jnvards towards the medulla. "When the irritation
has arrived at the medulla, then it may pass downwards again.
— 5. The reflex action produced by the irritation of a sensory
nerve can only appear in three places, whether one-sided or
occurring on both sides of the body, (a) It appears in the
motor nerves which lie nearly on the same level with the
excited sensory nerve, (b) If reflex action implicates the motor
nerves on a different level, these motor nerves are constantly
such as spring from the medulla oblongata : tetanus and hys-
terical convulsions, in conseqi;ence of local irritations, furnish
examples, (c) The reflex action affects the muscles of the body
generally; the principal focus of irradiation thereof being the
medulla oblongata,

I proceed next to .indicate briefly the causes which affect the
\ functional activity of the spinal cord : —

1. As an original fact, the ganglionic cells may have a greater
or less stability of composition. It sometimes happens that a
child is born with so great a natural instability of nerve element,
that the most violent convulsions ensue on the occasion of very
slight irritation. Or the evil may be less serious, and the indi-
vidual may be equal to the ordinary emergencies of a quiet,
favourably spent life ; but there is an absence of that reserve
power necessary to meet the extraordinary emergencies and
unusual strain of adverse events. When, therefore, an unac-
customed stress is laid upon the feeble nerve element, it is
unequal to the demand made upon it, and breaks down into a
rapid degeneration. This innate feebleness is evinced by an
excessive irritability ; it is truly an irritable weakness ; and its
most common cause is an unfortunate inheritance, the curse of
a bad descent. Any sort of disease of the nervous system in the
parent seems to predispose more or less to this ill condition of
the child, the acquired deterioration of the parent becoming the
inborn organic feebleness of the offspring.

The degeneration of nerve element in the ganglionic cells
reveals itself in. a disturbance of the co-ordinate or aim-working

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 87

activity which, as we have already seen, marks the highest
development of its function. Convulsions are the sure signs
of a weakness or lowered vitality of nerve element, — a defect
which, though we cannot yet ascertain its exact nature, certainly
implies an unstable equilibrium of the organic constitution. Each
central nerve-cell exists in close relations, physical and physio-
logical, with other nerve-cells ; when, regardless of these rela-
tions, it reacts directly outwards on its own account, it is very
much like an individual in a social system who, by reason of
madness, is unable to maintain his due social relations.

Not only may an excess of irritability be a defect in the nature
of the ganglionic cell, but this may be defective also by reason
of a great insensibility of nature and a want of power of assimi-
lation. In congenital idiots the central cells of the cord do
plainly sometimes partake of the degeneracy of the brain, and
are idiotic also ; they are incapable of receiving impressions
with any vividness, and of retaining the traces or residua of
such as they do receive, — incapable of education. Spasms of
the limbs, sometimes limited to the toe, to one arm or leg, at
other times more general ; contractions of a foot, or of the knees
to such degree as to make the heels touch the buttocks ; more
frequent still, paralytic conditions of varying degree and extent,
atrophied limbs, now and then indulging in convulsive move-
ment ; — all these morbid states are met with in idiots, and,
though in part attributable to the brain, are certainly in part
due to degeneration of a spinal cord utterly oblivious of its
design or final purpose in the universe. In some cases
where the morbid degeneration is not so extreme, it is not
impossible to teach such combinations of movements as are
necessary for the common work of life. It may be observed
incidentally that the ease and rapidity with which those idiots
who have by perseverance been taught difficult feats of action,
perform them — the machine-like exactness of their movements
— display well the important functions of the spinal cord as an
independent nerve centre ; for they display its functions in a
case in which the influence of the cerebral hemispheres is almost
excluded.

2. The functional action of the spinal ganglionic cells may
suffer from the too powerful or prolonged action of an external

88 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

stimulus, or from an activity continued without due interval
of rest. The molecular degeneration or waste, which is the
condition of functional activity, must be repaired by rest and
nutrition ; the nerve-cell is no inexhaustible fountain of force,
but must take in from one quarter what it gives out in another ;
and if due time be not allowed for the development of its highly
vital structure by assimilation of matter of a lower quality, it is
certain that, notwithstanding the best innate constitution, de-
terioration must ensue as surely as a fuelless • fire must go out.
In that degeneration of the spinal cord which sometimes occurs
in consequence of masturbation or great venereal excess, one of
the first symptoms is a loss of co-ordinating power over the
motions of the legs — a loss, in other words, of that which is the
last organized faculty of the spinal centres. The startings of the
limbs, and the partial contractions of certain muscles which
may follow, do not evince increased power, as some have heed-
lessly fancied, but are the indications of lowered vitality ; they
are the incoherent manifestations of a degenerate instability of
nerve element. When such a morbid condition of things is
brought about, there is necessarily a failure in the power of the
ganglionic cells to receive and assimilate impressions : hence it
is that in general paralytics, in whom the memory of each inde-
pendent nervous centre is decayed, there is not only an inability
to accomplish successfully the actions to which they have been
accustomed — as, for example, an inability of a tailor, whom from
his conversation one would deem quite capable of his work, to
sew ; but there is also the impossibility of teaching them new
combinations of movements. In other sorts of lunatics this is
often possible : though mentally much degenerate, and actually
lost for ever to the world, they may by persevering training be
made useful in certain simple relations to which they grow and
react as automatic machines, their own cerebral hemispheres not
interfering ; the general paralytics, in whom the disease has
advanced so far as to affect the cord, cannot thus be utilized.

3. The supply of blood and the condition of it are manifestly
of the greatest consequence to the welfare of the spinal cells.
The grey matter of the cord is very richly supplied with capil-
laries, to the end that there may be a quick renewal of blood
ministering to the active interchange that goes on between the

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 89

ganglionic cell and the nutrient fluid ; the enormous consump-
tion of force in nervous function demands such an abundance of
supply. When the supply of blood is suddenly cut off, as in
the well-known experiments of Stannius, Brown-Sequard, and
Schiff, the nervous activity is presently paralysed, and rigor
mortis of the muscles ensues. When the supply of blood is
soon restored to a part in which rigor mortis has taken place,
as in Brown-Sequard's experiment of injecting warm blood
into the stiffened arm of an executed criminal, the muscles
presently regain their contractility, and the nerves their irrita-
bility. As a complete cutting-off of the blood is paralysis of
nerve element, so a deficiency of blood, or of material in it fitted
for the nutrition of nerve, is to the extent of its existence a cause
of degeneration or instability of nerve element. Such deteriora-
tion is exhibited by cachectic and anaemic persons in a great
irritability, and in a disposition to spasms or convulsions — an
acquired condition not unlike that which is sometimes inherited.

The state of the blood may be vitiated by reason of the
presence of some foreign matter which, whether bred in it or
introduced from without, acts injuriously, or as a direct poison
on the individual nerve-cells. Strychnia notably so affects them
that, on the occasion of the slightest stimulus, they react in
convulsive activity; while the woorara poison, on the other
hand, produces a sort of stupor, or coma, and paralyses all
activity. Moreover, if a sufficiently large quantity of strychnia
be introduced under the skin of a frog, the effects may closely
resemble those produced by the woorara poison ; death taking
place without any, or with only very feeble, convulsions. Opium,
which usually produces coma in man, produces convulsions in
frogs. We might, were it needful, accept these different effects
of poisons, which are alike positively injurious to the integrity of
nerve element, as evidence that convulsions do not mean strength,
are not the result of an increase in the proper vital activity of
parts, but the result of degenerate vital action, and the fore-
runners of paralysis. These vegetable poisons indicate also, by
their different effects, the fine differences of composition in the
ganglionic cells of the central nervous system ; they are the
most sensitive reagents in this regard which we yet possess.

There is reason to believe that the presence of too much blood

v^

90 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

in the spinal cord may be as baneful as an insufficient supply.
All the symptoms of disorder of nerve element which accom-
pany anaemia may certainly be produced also by congestion,
or hyperaenria. However, this matter will be more properly
and more fully considered when we come to the pathology
of nerve.

4 The existence of a persistent cause of eccentric irritation,
whether the result of injury or disease in some part of the body,
may give rise to a morbid state of the spinal nerve- cells by a
so-called sympathetic or reflex action. Volkmann has observed
movements to be produced in the limbs of a decapitated frog by
stimulation of the intestinal canal ; the results being much more
evident if the animal has previously been poisoned with strychnia.
The convulsions which sometimes take place during teething in
children, or owing to the presence of worms in the intestines, are
familiar examples of such secondary effect upon a susceptible
growing nervous system. It is necessary to distinguish two
kinds of effects of this reflex action — or, perhaps, different
degrees of the same kind of effect — namely, a reflex functional
modification and a reflex nutritive modification.

The irritation of a decayed tooth may, as is well known, give
rise to a contraction of the muscles of one side of the neck, or
to a violent facial neuralgia, or to blindness or deafness, all
which presently disappear upon the removal of the cause of
mischief. A functional derangement only has existed so far.
But the irritation of a bad tooth produces a greater and more
lasting effect, when, as does now and then happen, an abscess in
the glands of the neck takes place in consequence of it, and
remains an incurable fistula until the removal of the scarce sus-
pected cause. The nutritive derangement has been caused and
kept up by the reflex irritation. It must certainly be allowed
that the functional disorder, when it alone seems to exist, does
testify to some kind of change in the molecular relations of the
ganglionic cells ; but as the abnormal modification vanishes the
moment the real cause of mischief, the bad tooth, is gone, it is
scarcely possible to view the disturbed function as evidence of
any serious chemical or organic derangement in the nerve-cells.
With the continuance of the cause of irritation, the functional
disorder undoubtedly may, and is liable to, pass into disorder of

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 91

nutrition. The relations of these different degrees or kinds of
derangement to the morbid cause are such that we might not
unfairly represent the sole existing functional derangement as
due to a modification of the polar molecules of the nerve ele-
ment, while the abnormal nutrition may be supposed to mark
an actual chemical change in its constitution.

Again, as the spinal centres minister both to our animal life
and to our organic life, they necessarily have, in the former case,
a periodical function ; in the latter case, a continuous function.*
"When, therefore, a morbid condition of the ganglionic cells, as
subserving the animal life, exists, the functional derangement
will probably be not continuous but intermittent. Thus, in
epilepsy, it appears as if the reacting centres must be gradually
charged until they reach a certain tension or instability, when
the statical equilibrium is destroyed, and they discharge them-
selves violently. Something of the same kind takes place in the
poisonous action of strychnia : a dog so poisoned will fall down
in convulsions, but, according to Schroeder van der Kolk,
they cease after a time, and the animal seems to be perfectly
well ; even for so long as an hour it may be touched or stroked
without harm; after which the susceptibility again becomes so
great, that by simply blowing upon the skin convulsions are
reproduced. When, on the other hand, the function of the
spinal centres, as ministering to the organic life, is deranged?
then the morbid effect will not unlikely be continuous. The
experiments of Lister, showing that the movements of the
granules in the pigment cells of the frog's skin are under the
control of the spinal system, and the investigations of Bernard,
agree to prove that the cerebro-spinal axis not only regulates
the contractions of the small arteries, but directly influences
the organic elements engaged in nutrition and secretion. The
moment food is introduced into the mouth there is a flow of
saliva and of gastric juice. Numerous examples have been of
old quoted of distant modifications of nutrition in consequence
of some irritation of a centripetal nerve: a large secretion of
extremely acid gastric juice has been cured by the extirpation of

* They have, however, a continuous action upon the voluntary muscles in
maintaining their tonicity, as also upon the sphincters in keeping up their
contraction.

92 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

painful piles ; ptyalism is sometimes produced by neuralgia, as
lachrymation frequently is "by neuralgia of the fifth nerve ; irrita-
tion of the uterus, or of the skin cf the breasts, or of the mucous
membrane of the vagina, will sometimes give rise to the secretion
of milk ; and menstruation may follow irritation of the ovaries,
or the application of warm poultices to the breasts. "We witness
phenomena due to this reflex nutritive action again in the sym-
pathy which one eye so often exhibits with disease of the other ;
in the congestion of the eye or the actual amaurosis which some-
times accompanies severe neuralgia ; in the paraplegia due to
displacement or disease of the uterus ; and in many other
instances too numerous to be mentioned.* Pfliiger quotes from
Dieffenbach a striking case, which admirably illustrates the
effects of an eccentric irritation upon the spinal cord. A young
girl fell upon a wine-glass, and cut one hand with a piece of
the broken glass ; for years afterwards she suffered from violent
neuralgic pains and emaciation, with contraction and complete
uselessness of the hand. She was afflicted also with severe
attacks of epilepsy. On cutting through the cicatrix of the old
wound, a minute splinter of glass, which had wounded the nerve,
was detected ; the nerve was also thickened and hardened. After
removal of the glass, the neuralgia and epilepsy disappeared, and
the girl recovered the entire use of her hand.

5. Lastly, the severance of the connexion between the brain
and the ganglionic cells of the spinal cord seems in some degree
to affect their function. When a nerve is cut across in the living
body, the peripheral end soon undergoes fatty degeneration, while
the central end remains unchanged after years ; and this degene-
ration is not owing solely to the inactivity of the nerve, for it
still takes place when the nerve is regularly stimulated, and
takes place much less quickly in frogs and cold-blooded animals

* It is customary now to describe as reflex the modifications of sensation, as
well as those of nutrition, secretion, and motion, which occur in a distant part
by reason of the irritation of some afferent nerve ; but it is a question deserving
consideration whether the old word sympathy is not more appropriate to designate
the modifications of sensation, and whether the word "reflex" should not be applied
specially to the reflection of a stimulus from an afferent on to an efferent nerve.
The motion too which sometimes occurs in a part not from direct stimulation,
but sympathetically with motion excited in some other part of the body, might
not improperly be described as synergy.

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 93

than in warm-blooded animals. The researches of Waller — which
have been confirmed by Longet, Schiff, and others — are most
important in regard to this subject. It is certainly a fair conclu-
sion from them that the nerve fibres have their nutrition sub-
jected in some measure to the nerve centres ; these would indeed
appear to play in relation to them the part of nutritive centres.
After apoplexy in or about the corpus striatum, Turck professes
to have found granular cells in the course of the fibres as they
pass downwards, so that such cells were met with in the spinal
cord on the opposite side to the seat of disease. It is known,
too, that the removal of the brain in the lower animals increases
the ease with which reflex movements take place ; and there are
many cases on record in which the reflex action has been increased
in man when disease or injury has interrupted the continuity of
the spinal centres with the brain. May we not, then, conclude
from such facts that a positive influence is exercised by the brain
upon the nutrition] of the ganglionic cells of the cord and the
nerve fibres which proceed from the cerebro- spinal axis, as well
as by the spinal centres on the nerve fibres which proceed directly
from them ? In fact, may we not justly conclude that such an
influence is exerted by every nerve centre on the centre which.is
subordinate to it, and on the nerves which proceed from it ? The
inference would be agreeable to what we know of the direct
influence of the functional action of the brain upon that of the
cord ; the reflex acts in health being for the most part notably
subordinate to the control of the will. As a guiding influence
passes from above downwards when the cerebro-spinal system is
ministering to the functions of animal life ; so it is not impro-
bable that the brain, in the accomplishment of its function as an
organ of organic life, exerts some power which is favourable to
the nutrition of the parts which lie below it, and which are the
instruments through which it acts. This influence being with-
drawn, an exaggeration of the excitability of the cord occurs,
such as a wound causing tetanus may produce, or such as was
produced by Brown-S^quard in guinea-pigs, when, having injured
their spinal cord two or three weeks before, he was able to
excite epileptiform convulsions at will, by pinching the skin of
the face. It is true that some have thought to explain in another
way the increase in the reflex movements which follows the

/

94 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

severance of communication between the brain and cord ; they
have attributed it to the augmented energy of the spinal centres,
and to the concentration of the stimulus, now that a path for the
dispersion of its force is cut off. Such theory is not innocent of
the vulgar error of regarding as increased energy that which is
truly a diminution or deterioration of the higher vital energy of
the part. Has it ever yet happened to any one to discover that
the co-ordinate reflex acts were made more energetic or effective
by cutting off the influence of the brain ? One most necessary
function of the brain is to exert an inhibitory power over the
nerve centres that lie below it, just as man exercises a beneficial
control over his fellow animals of a lower order of dignity ; and
the increased irregular activity of the lower centres surely
betokens a degeneration : it is I'ke the turbulent, aimless action
of a democracy without a head.

Such, then, are the disturbing causes which may affect the
activity of the spinal cord, both as a conducting path and as an
independent centre of the generation of nerve-power. When
we reflect upon the great proportion of the daily actions of life
that are effected by its unconscious agency, we cannot but per-
ceive how most important is the due preservation of its integrity.
No culture of the mind, however careful, no effort of the will,
however strong, will avail to prevent irregular and convulsive
action when a certain degree of instability of nerve element has,
from one cause or another, been produced in the spinal cells. It
would be as absurd to preach control to the spasms of chorea, or
restraint to the convulsions of epilepsy, as to preach moderation
to the east wind, or gentleness to the hurricane. That which in
such case has its foundation in a definite physical cause must
have its cure in the production of a definite physical change.

So certain and intimate is the sympathy between the indivi-
dual nerve-cells in that well-organized commonwealth which the
nervous system represents, that a local disturbance is soon felt
more or less distinctly throughout the whole state. When any
serious degeneration of the ganglionic cells of the cord exists
there is not only an indisposition or inability to carry out as
subordinate agents the commands which come from above ; but
there is a complaint sent upwards — a moan of discontent or pain
reaches the supreme authority. That is the meaning of the

in.] TERTIARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. 95

feelings of weariness, heaviness, achings of the limbs, and utter
lassitude which accompany disorder of the spinal centres ; and
the convulsive spasms, the local contractions or paralysis of
muscles, are the first signs of a coming rebellion. If the warn-
ings do not receive timely attention, a riot may easily become
a rebellion ; for when organic processes, which normally go on
without consciousness, force themselves into consciousness, it is.
the certain mark of a vital degeneration. If the appeal is made
in vain, then further degeneration ensues. Not only is there
irregular revolutionary action of a subordinate, but there is pro
tanto a weakening of the supreme authority ; it is less able to
control what is more difficult of control. When due subordina-
tion of parts exists, and the individual cell conforms to the laws
of the system, then the authority of the head is strengthened.
A foolish despot, forgetting in the pride of his power that the
strength and worth of a government flow from and rest upon
the well-being of the governed, may fancy that he can safely
disregard the cry of the suffering and the oppressed ; but when he
closes his ears to complaints, he closes his eyes to consequences,
and finally wakes up to find his power slipped from him, and
himself entered upon the way of destruction. So is it with the
nervous system : the cells are the individuals, and, as in the
state, so here, there are individuals of higher dignity and of
lower dignity ; but the well-being and power of the higher indi-
viduals are entirely dependent upon the well-being and content-
ment of the humbler workers in the spinal cord, which do so
great a part of the daily work of life. The form of government
is that of a constitutional monarchy, in which every interest is
duly represented through adequate channels, and in which, con-
sequently, there is a proper subordination of parts.

I have lingered thus long upon the spinal cord, because most
of what has been said with regard to its functions may, with
the necessary change of terms, be applied to the other nervous
centres. A distinct conception of the nature and mode of
development of the functions of the spinal centres is the best, is
indeed the only adequate, preparation for an entrance upon the
study of cerebral action ; it is an indispensable prerequisite
to the right understanding of the higher displays of nervous
function, and alone fixes the sure basis whereon to build a true

96 THE SPINAL CORD, OR [chap.

mental science.* In this way we apply the laws generalized
from the more simple cases to disentangle the phenomena of the
more complex cases. Any system not so founded follows not
the order of development in nature, and must be unstable and
insecure : Nature herself protests against it with energetic elo-
quence when she makes, as she unquestionably sometimes does,
morbid action of the cells of the cerebral hemispheres vicarious
of the morbid action of the spinal cells.

NOTES.

1 {p. 72). — Pfliiger compares the movements of a decapitated animal
with those of a sleeping man, deeming the movements in both to be
conscious. He tickled the right nc&tril of a sleeping boy, and the lad
rubbed it with his right hand : when Pfliiger tickled the left nostril the
lad rubbed it with his left hand. If he held the sleeper's right hand
without waking him, and tickled his right nostril, the boy first made
attempts with his right hand to rub it, but when this did not succeed,
and the irritation continued, he then made use of the left hand.

For a fuller discussion of the assumed consciousness of the spinal
cord I must refer to my review of Mr. Bain on the " Senses and the
Intellect," in the Journal of Mental Science for January 1865, pp.
558, 559. I will only now add a quotation from Spinoza, as translated
by M. Saisset. "Personne, en effet, n'a determine encore ce dont le
corps est capable ; en d'autres termes personne n'a encore appris de
l'experience ce que le corps peut faire et ce qu'il ne peut pas faire, par
les seules lois de la nature corporelle et sans recevoir de l'anie aucune
determination." "This is not astonishing," he adds, "as no one has
sufficiently studied the functions of the body," and instances the
marvellous acts of animals and somnambulists — "toutes choses qui
montrent assez que le corps humain, par les seules lois de la nature,
est capable d'une foule d'operations qui sont pour l'ame jointe a ce

corps un objet d'etonnement J'ajoute enfin que le mecanisme

du corps humain est fait avec un art qui surpasse infiniment l'industrie
humaine." The associating link of many movements — as, for example,
of those of the heart, of the eye, of breathing — plainly exists in the

* In the "Archiv. fur Physiolog. Heilkunde," 1843, there is an excellent paper
by Prof. Griesinger, " Ueber psychische Reflexactionen, mit einem Blick auf das
Wesen der psychischen Krankheiten ; " and another in the same Journal for
1854, "Neue Beitrage zur Physiologie und Pathologie des Gehirns."

in.] TERTIARY NERFOUS CENTRES, ETC.' 97

conformation of the nervous centres ; the wisdom or design is
exhibited in the primary arrangement, whereby the reactions of the
organism necessarily following do, as a rule, minister to the further-
ance of its well-being.

2 (p. 75). — "And therefore it was a good answer," says Bacon, " that
was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple
a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped ship-
wreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge
the power of the gods, ' Ay,' asks he again, ' but where are they
painted that were drowned after their vows'?'" Speaking of final
causes, upon which the human understanding falls back, he says that
they " have clearly relation to the nature of man rather than to the
nature of the universe ; and from this source have strangely defiled
philosophy." — Nov. Org. Aphorism xlviii.

3 {p. 76). — "After the actions which are most perfectly voluntary
have been rendered so by one set of associations, they may, by another,
be made to depend upon the most diminutive sensations, ideas, and
motions, such as the mind scarce regards, or is conscious of ; and which,
therefore, it can scarce recollect the moment after the action is over.
Hence it follows that association not only converts automatic action
into voluntary, but voluntary ones into automatic. For these actions,
of which the mind is scarce conscious, and which follow mechanically,
as it were, some precedent diminutive sensation, idea, or motion, and
without any effort of the mind, are rather to be ascribed to the body
than the mind, i.e. are to be referred to the head of automatic action.
I shall call them automatic motions of the secondary kind to distin-
guish them from those which are originally automatic, and from the
voluntary ones; and shall now give a few instances of this double
transmutation of motions, viz. of automatic into voluntary, and of
voluntary into automatic." He instances the manner in which children
learn, and especially the way we learn to speak, to play on the harpsi-
chord, &c. "The doctrine of vibrations explains all the original
automatic motions ; that of association, the voluntary and secondarily
automatic ones." — Hartley's Tlieory of the Human Mind, edited by
Priestley, pp. 32, 39.

4 {jp. 82). — " Impressionum sensoriarum in motorias reflexio, quae in
ensorio communi fit, non peragitur juxta solas leges physicas, ubi

angulus reflexionis sequalis est angulo incidentise, et ubi, quanta fit
actio, tanta etiam sequitur reactio ; sed leges peculiares, a natura in
pulpani medullarem sensorii quasi scriptas, sequitur ista reflexio quas
ex solis effectibus tantum noscere, neutiquani vero assequi nostro

H

98 THE SPINAL CORD, ETC. [chap. hi.

ingenio valenius. Generalis tamen lex, qua commune sensoriuni im-
pressiones seusorias in motorias reflectit, est nostri conservatio : ita ut
impressiones externas corpore nosL-o noscituras sequantur certae im-
pressiones niotoriae, motus producturae eo collimantes, ut monumentum
a corpore nostro arceatur, amoveaturque ; et vice versa impressiones
externas seu sensorias, nobis profuturas, sequantur impressiones interna?
seu motorias, motus productura? eo tendentes, ut gratus ille status ultro
conservetur." — Prochaska, op. cit. p. 88.

CHAPTEE IV.

SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR SENSORY GANGLIA ;
SENSORIUM COMMUNE.

rPHE different collections of grey matter which exist in the
-*- medulla oblongata, and at the base of the brain, the con-
tinuations of the grey matter of the spinal cord, consist chiefly
of the nervous centres of the higher senses, with corresponding
centres of motional reaction. Continuing the grey substance as
high as the floor of the lateral ventricles, they include the optic
thalami, the corpora striata, the corpora quadrigemina, and the
different sensory centres that are placed in the medulla oblon-
gata, the tuber annulare, and the cerebral peduncles. The
olfactory bulbs, which lie at the base of the anterior cerebral
lobes, must also be included in the sensorium commune. Any
one of the senses may be destroyed by injury to its sensory
ganglion as surely as by actual destruction of its organ ; blind-
ness is produced by injury to the corpora quadrigemina, smell
is abolished by destruction of the olfactory bulbs. These gan-
glionic centres are thus intermediate between the higher hemi-
spherical ganglia above and the spinal centres below them ; to
those they are subordinate, to these they are superordinate. In
many of the lower animals, as already pointed out, the brain
consists of nothing more than the sensory ganglia, with centres
of motional reaction.

It is not the place here to enter into a discussion of the
different opinions which have been entertained regarding the
exact centres of the different senses ; much of what is said on
these difficult questions is still conjectural. It was maintained
by Dr. Todd, who has been supported in his views by Dr. Car-
penter, that the seat of common sensation is located in the

h 2

100 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

thalami optici, because it is in these "bodies that the anterior
columns of the spinal cord see.i to terminate; and that the
corpora striata, to which the posterior columns of. the cord pass,
are the corresponding motor centres. Vnlpiao, however, has
brought forward strong arguments in favour of assigning the
seat of common sensation to the tuber annulare. After the
removal of the corpora striata, the tubercula quadrigemina, and
the cerebellum — the tuber annulare and the medulla oblongata
being the only parts of the encephalon left — he found that dogs
and rabbits evinced, by violent agitation and decided cries of suf-
fering, the pain felt when severely pinched or otherwise irritated.
Moreover, injuries of the thalami optici, pathological or experi-
mental, do not weaken sensibility, but do often produce motor
paralysis. He concludes that we are yet in entire ignorance of
the special functions both of the thalami optici and the corpora
striata. Notwithstanding this opinion, those who have examined
the arguments on this subject will probably conclude that
Vulpian's theory concerning the tuber annulare has blinded him
to the import of the evidence in favour of the thalami optici and
the corpora striata as sensory and motor centres respectively.
It may well be that they are not the entire centres, and that
there are other centres of sensibility and motion in the tuber
annulare and cerebral peduncles ; but that they do minister to
those functions it is hardly possible to doubt. Meanwhile all
that concerns us here, in dealing with the cerebral functions
from a psychological point of view, is to have some general
term to embrace and designate all the centres of sensation ;
and for this purpose we shall employ the term tenaorwm com-
mune, using it to denote the common centres of sensation, and
not, as Yulpian and some others have misused it, to designate
the centres of common sensation. In a similar sense we shall
subsequently use the terms motorium commune and intcllectorium
commune.

The ganglionic centres of the sensorium commune are formed
of numerous nerve-celis, which, like those of the spinal cord,
are in connexion with afferent and efferent nerves ; the afferent
nerves in this case coming mostly from the organs of the special
senses. The impressions which the afferent nerves bring are,
therefore, special in kind, as also are the grey nuclei to which

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 101

they are brought; a progressive differentiation of structure
and function is manifest ; and we might describe the sen-
sorium commune physiologically as a spinal cord, the afferent
nerves of which are the nerves of the special senses, or rather
of the various kinds of sensibility. For although we usually
distinguish only between the special senses and general sensi-
bility, yet there are really different kinds of the latter, each
probably having its special nucleus : the tactile sense, the sense
of temperature, the muscular sense, and the peculiar sensibility
of the glans penis, differ not in degree only, but in kind. An
exact knowledge of the anatomical relations of the different grey
nuclei is still wanting, notwithstanding the patient investigations
of Schroeder van der Kolk. All that we are certain of is, that
the fibres of the nerves are connected with the cells, as may be
most easily seen in the case of the auditory nerve and ganglion ;
that manifold connexions exist between different nuclei ; and
that fibres may sometimes be traced from the nucleus of a
sensory nerve to a motor nerve upon which it is known to exert
a reflex action. The trigeminus, or fifth nerve, for example,
passes from above downwards through the medulla, and in its
downward course forms reflex connexions with all the motor
nerves of the medulla as it approaches the level of their nuclei ;
in this way the facial, the glossopharyngeal, the vagus, the
spinal accessory, and the hypoglossal receive communications
from it. The ganglionic cells of different nuclei also differ in
form and size ; and Schroeder van der Kolk holds that, as a
general rule, at every spot where fibres are given off for the
performance of any special function, there fresh groups of gan-
glionic cells giving origin to them appear. We justly conclude,
then, that, as we should a priori expect, specially constituted
ganglionic cells minister to special functions ; that the central
cells are, as it were, the workshops in which, on the occasion
of a suitable stimulus, the peculiar current necessary for the
performance of the specific action is excited. A message is sent
up to them by the appointed channels, and they reply by sending
through the regular motor channels the particular energies which
it is their function to supply. Charged with their proper force
during the assimilating process of nutrition, it exists in them as
statical power, or latent energy ; and the condition of unstable

102 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

vital equilibrium is upset, the force being then discharged, as
the Leyden jar is, when a certain stimulus meets with a suffi-
cient tension.

The natural course of a stimulus, all the force of which is not
reflected upon an efferent nerve in the spinal centres, is upwards
to the sensorium commune, where it becomes the occasion of a
new order of phenomena ; the law of extension of reflex action
excited by a spinal nerve observably being, as Pfliiger has shown,
from below upwards to the medulla. Having arrived at the
ganglionic cells of the sensorium commune, the stimulus may be
at once reflected through the motor nuclei on a motor nerve, for
which there is provision in a direct physical path, and involun-
tary movements may thus take place in answer to a sensation,
just as involuntary movements take place from the spinal centres
without any sensation. The ganglionic cells of the sensory
centres are unquestionably centres of independent reaction, and
in association with their proper motor nuclei give rise to a class
of reflex movements of their own. "When a man lies with the
lower half of his body paralysed in consequence of injury or
disease of his spinal cord, the tickling of the soles of Ms feet will
sometimes produce reflex movements of which he is unconscious.
"When a man lies with no paralysis of his limbs, but with a
perfectly sound spinal cord, the sudden application of a hot iron
to his foot or leg will give rise to a movement quite as involun-
tary as that which takes place in the paralysed limb, but, in this
case, in answer to a painful sensation ; the reaction takes place
in the sensory ganglia, and the movement is sensori-rnotor. Had
the hot iron been applied to the paralysed limbs, no movement
would have followed, because the path of the stimulus was cut
off as completely as the current of the electric stimulus is inter-
rupted when the telegraphic wires are cut across. Take away
that part of the brain of an animal which lies above the sensory
ganglia, and it is still capable of sensori-motor movement, like as
the animal which possesses no cerebral hemispheres is : because
the ganglionic cell is a centre of independent reaction — a station
on the line which may either send on the message or send off an
answer.* Q) Make a complete transverse section of the nervous

* Mr. James Mill clearly recognised this class of movements. "Innumerable
facte are capable of being adduced to prove that sensation is a cause of muscular

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 103

centres in the rat immediately above the medulla oblongata, and
pinch its foot severely : it will utter a short sharp cry of pain,
which is reflex or sensori-motor. Now destroy the medulla
oblongata, and again pinch the foot : there will be reflex move-
ments, but no cry. The rat, by reason perhaps of having been
hunted through so many generations, is a very fearful animal,
very susceptible, scampering away at the least unusual sound.
If its cerebral hemispheres, its corpora striata, and optic thalami
be removed, it remains quiet ; but if a sharp noise be made, such
as a cat makes sometimes, the animal makes a bound away, and
repeats the jump each time that the noise is made.*

Examples of sensori-motor movements are to be found in
the involuntary closure of the eyelids when the conjunctiva is
touched, or when a strong light falls upon the eye ; in the dis-
tortion of the face on account of a sour taste ; in the quick with-
drawal of the hand when it is touched by something hot ; in the
cry which excessive pain calls forth ; in the motions of sucking
which take place when the nipple is put between the infant's
lips ; in coughing and sneezing ; and in yawning on seeing some
one else yawn. Illustrations of acquired movements of this class
are seen in the adaptation of the walk to the music of a military
band, in dancing, in the articulation of words on seeing their
appropriate signs, and in many other of the common actions of
life of which we are not conscious at the time, but of the neces-
sity of which, were there no power of automatically performing
them, we should soon become actively conscious. The instinctive
actions of animals fall under the category of consensual acts :
without the intervention of any conception, the sensation at once
excites the appropriate movement, and the animal is as skilful
on its first trial as it is after a life experience. It is true that
the instinctive life is extremely limited in man, but sensori-
motor action plays a large part in such manifestations of it as

action," p. 258. After instancing, as examples, sneezing, coughing, the con-
traction of the pupils, and the movements of the eyelids, he says : " We seem
authorized, therefore, by the fullest evidence, to assume that sensation is the
mental cause, whatever the physical links, of a great proportion of the mus-
cular contractions of our frame ; and that among those so produced are found
some of the most constant, the most remarkable, and the most important of that
great class of corporeal phenomena." — Analysis of the Human Mind, p. 265.
* Vulpian, op. cit. p. 548.

104 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chai\

are witnessed ; in the taking of food the movements of mastica-
tion and deglutition, like the earlier ones of sucking, are in
answer to sensations, as also are some of the co-ordinated move-
ments necessary to the gratification of the instinct of procrea-
tion. The adjustment of the human eve to distances, which
takes place with such marvellous quickness and accuracy, is
effected, according to the best authorities. l>y a change in the
convexity of the lens or the cornea, and an alteration in the
direction of the axes of the eyes. It is not a voluntary, not
even a conscious act, but a consensual act in respondence to a
visual sensation, and it is well suited to convey a notion of
what an instinctive act in an animal is.*

It was said, when treating of the spinal cord, that its faculties
were, for the most part, not inn.ite but acquired by education ;
and the same thing may be said of the sensory centres. Sensa-
tion is not, as the common use of the word might seem to imply,
a certain inborn faculty of constant quantity, bat in reality a
general term embracing a multitude of particular phenomena
that exhibit every degree of variation both in quantity and
quality. The sensation of each sense is a gradually organized
result or faculty that is matured through experience ; the visual
sensation of the adult is a very different matter from that of the
child whose eyes have recently opened upon the world ; Mr.
Nunneley's patient, whose sight was restored by operation, held
his hands before his face to prevent objects touching his eyes ;
the wine-taster's cultivated sense is nowTise comparable with that
of a man who knows nothing of wine ; the tactile sensation of
the blind man differs toto codo from that of the man who has
always had the full use of his eyes. The complete and definite
sensation is slowly built up in the proper nervous centres from
the residua or traces which previous sensations of a like kind
have left behind them ; and the sensation of the cultivated
sense thus sums up, as it were, a thousand experiences, as one
word often contains the accumulated acquisitions of genera-

* For the best summary and discussion of the theories of vision, see Theorie
des Schcns nnd raiimlichcn Vorstellens vom physikolischen, physiologischen v.nd
payckologiachen StcmdpunkttatubetraehteL Halle. 1861. ByC. S. Cornelius. Also
by the same author, Zur Theorie des 8ehen& U Rfcksicht auf die neuesicn
Arbeiten in diescm Gebiete, 1864.

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 105

tions * Simple as a sensation appears, it is in reality infinitely-
compound. (2) We do not see, hear, or otherwise perceive by
sense the exact impression made on the organ, but the effect
excited by the impression in the nerve centre ; in other words,
we perceive the interpretation of the impression which our
previous experience has made familiar to us. Vision, Bishop
Berkeley aptly says, is a language speaking to the eye, which
we are not conscious to have learned because we have been
learning it ever since we were born. All that is innate in the
different ganglionic centres is a specific power of reaction to
certain impressions made upon organs specially adapted to re-
ceive them ; but as the waste following activity is restored by
nutrition, and a trace or residuum is thus embodied in the con-
stitution of the nervous centre, becoming more complete and
distinct with each succeeding repetition of the impression, it
comes to pass that an acquired nature is ultimately grafted by
education on the original nature of the cell. In the common
metaphysical conception of sensation as a certain constant
faculty, what happens is this : the abstraction from the par-
ticular is converted into an objective entity which thenceforth
leads captive the understanding.

Whether, as some hold, our perception of the form and dis-
tance of external objects be due to our muscular experience, or
whether, as others maintain, our visual sensation by itself may
give the notion of extension and distance, it is certain that our
ordinary estimates of distance are very gradually acquired. But
it is not so in manv animals : the young swallow can seize its
small prey with as accurate a skill as the old one can after a life-
experience ; and there is a fish that spurts a drop of water at the
little insect moving above the surface, and fails not to bring it
down. The intuition of distance is obviously in such cases
complete and distinct from the first. It is, however, conformable
to the law of development from the general to the special in the

* In regard to this question, an experiment by Yolkmann, quoted by Fick, is
interesting and instructive. When the finger, or any limited portion of skin on
one side of the body, is frequently experimented upon with the compasses, in
order to test the degree of sensibility, and its tactile sensibility thereby increased,
as it notably is, above the level of that of neighbouring parts, the symmetrical part
of the skin on the opposite side of the body will be found to be almost as acute,
— an experimental proof of the same kind as that which the stereoscope furnishes.

106 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

organic world, that what is innate in some of the lower animals
should be acquired by man : the absence of such limitation in
his original nature marks his higher freedom. Still it is most
interesting to observe how much even he is indebted to original
endowment in this very matter of estimating distance. For
what is the immediate cause that determines the muscular
adjustment of the eye to distance ? The act is consensual, or,
using the vaguer term, instinctive, in respondence to a visual
sensation or picture — an act of which there is no direct con-
sciousness, and over which the will has no direct control.
Though the process is confused and uncertain at first, unlike
in that regard the process in the lower animals, yet it is not
long before the proper muscular adaptations are acquired and
definite muscular intuitions organized. Plainly, then, very
much is due to the pre-arranged constitution of the nervous
centres even in man. And while we assert that sensation is
not an inborn faculty of constant value in man, it behoves
us not to forget the fact that there are implanted in the con-
stitution of his nervous centres the capabilities of certain
definite associated movements answering to certain sensations.

The idea to be formed and fixed in the mind from a consi-
deration of the phenomena of the development of sensation, and
necessary to its proper interpretation, as indeed to the interpre-
tation of every manifestation of life, is the idea of organization.
The mind is not like a sheet of white paper which receives just
what is written upon it, nor like a mirror which simply reflects
more or less faithfully every object, but by it is connoted a
plastic power ministering to a complex process of organization,
in which what is suitable to development is assimilated, what
is unsuitable is rejected. By the appropriation of the like in
impressions made upon the senses we acquire a sensation, of
which we might speak, as we do when speaking of idea, as
general or abstract; it henceforth exists, latent or potential, as
a faculty of the sensory centres, and on the occasion of the
appropriate impression renders the sensation clear and definite —
in other words, gives the interpretation. It is exactly like what
happens in the spinal centres, and exactly like what happens, as
we shall hereafter see, in the ideational centres. Coincidently
with the assimilation of the like in impressions, there is neces-

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 107

sarily a rejection of the unlike, which, being then appropriated
by other cells, becomes the foundation, or lays the basis, of the
faculty of another sensation, just as nutrient material which is
not taken up by one kind of tissue element is assimilated by
another kind. In the education of the senses, then, there takes
place a differentiation of cells ; tin other words, a discernment, as
well as an improvement of the faculty of each kind of sensation
by the blending of similar residua. There is an analysis sepa-
rating the unlike, a synthesis blending the like ; and by the
two processes of differentiation and integration are our sensa-
tions gradually formed and developed. The process illustrates
the increasing speciality of individual adaptation to external
nature ; and the length of childhood in man is in relation to
the formation of his complex sensations.

The organization of our sensations is not, however, limited
simply to the formation of the particular sensation ; by it is
effected also the association or catenation of sensations. In
animals there can be no doubt that one sensation frequently calls
another into activity, in accordance with the order established
among them, without the intervention of idea ; they are much
more dependent on sensation than man is, and therefore the asso-
ciation of sensations in the causation of movements is more
marked. Hence it is that blinding of one eye produces verti-
ginous movements in pigeons, as Flourens and Longet have
shown, and that section of the semicircular canals of the ear
also produces various disturbances of movements. The trouble,
inconvenience, and occasional vertiginous feelings produced for
a time in man when he suddenly loses his hearing in one ear,
probably spring from the. interruption to the complex associa-
tion of sensations habitual to him in the daily movements of
life. He only learns how much he depends on such associations
when disorder or loss of them occurs. It is certainly difficult
in him to eliminate the influence of the higher cerebral. centres,
yet in those functions in which consensual action has most
part — in the taking of food, for example, where succeeding sen-
sations bring into successive action different complex muscular
movements and again in the sexual act — there is abundant
evidence of an association of sensations.

Thus much concerning sensation, viewed on its passive or

108 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

receptive side. Let us say something more of the active, re-
acting, or distributive side — of the movements which take place
in answer to sensations. These reactions may, like the reflex
movements of the spinal cord, be irregular, as when a wry face
is produced by a sour taste, or a general start of the body follows
a sudden loud noise ; or co-ordinate, as in coughing and sneezing.
Of the co-ordinate or designed movements, again, some are innate,
as those of the animals mostly are ; others are acquired or
secondarily automatic, as is mostly the case in man.

The instinctive acts of animals are, for the most part, innate
sensori-motor actions. They have for aim the preservation of
the individual and the propagation of the species ; and are com-
parable to such movements in man as the closure of the eyelid
when the conjunctiva is touched or the eye threatened, the
withdrawal of the hand when suddenly burnt, the sneezing by
which an offending body is ejected from the air-passages, or some
of the movements in sexual intercourse. The faculty of executing
them exists in the pre-arranged constitution of the nervous
centres, and is entirely independent of will or experience ; so
that, if we chose to assume a consciousness in the individual
cells ministering to them, we should say that they possessed a
notion of the end to be effected. Now the cells probably possess
such notion exactly in the same manner as the elements of a
chemical compound possess a notion of the end which they are
going to accomplish, or as the wind bloweth where it listeth ;*
accordingly they do not fail at times to make terrible mistakes,
and perhaps miserably to kill an individual by continuing vio-
lently a reflex action, in the cessation of which lay the only
hope of life. When the cerebral hemispheres are experimentally
removed in animals, as was done by Flourens and Schiff, the
sensori-motor acts abide : the animal appears as if in a sleep or
dream, and takes no notice ; yet if a pigeon so treated be thrown
into the air, it flies ; if laid on its back, it gets up ; the pupil

* " Whoever will examine the language of mankind, may find that we apply
expressions to bodies which belong properly to our own manner of proceeding ;
and, how well soever we know the contrary, speak of them as voluntary ageuts,
exercising powers of their own ; thus it is said that the wind bloweth where it
listeth, and we say of water that it will not mingle with oil, that it will force its
way, &c. : terms expressive of a choice, compliance, and resolution similar to
those exercised by man." — Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. ii. p. 5i5.

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 109

contracts to light, and in a very bright light the eyes are shut ;
it will dress its feathers if they are ruffled, and will sometimes
follow by a movement of the head the movement of a candle
hither and thither : certain impressions are plainly received, but
they are not further fashioned into ideas, because the nervous
centres of ideas have been removed ; and, as has been aptly
observed, the animal would die of hunger before a plateful of
food, although it would swallow the food if put far enough into
its mouth. The clenching of the teeth in man during severe
pain is sensori-motor, and only a less degree of the same kind of
reflex action which in lockjaw becomes actual spasm. Schroeder
van der Kolk mentions a lady who had her breast amputated
under chloroform, and who, though she felt no pain, wTas per-
fectly conscious on awakening that she had heard herself shriek ;
and he has witnessed violent shrieking in apoplexy, where there
was no trace of consciousness. Any one who has walked through
a parrot house, and heard the fearful noise which these scream-
ing creatures make, must surely have felt an involuntary incli-
nation to shriek also.

It must be borne in mind that the sensori-motor reaction may
be excited not only by the stimulus from without, but also by, so
to speak, sensation from within the body — by the organic stimuli.
Flourens has observed birds deprived of their hemispheres stand
on one leg, and after a time, owing probably to a sensation of
fatigue, change to the other leg; shake their heads, and put
them under the wings for sleep ; ruffle their feathers, and some-
times plume them with their beaks. Intelligence and will can
have no part in such movements ; they are sensori-motor, and
some of them obviously take place in answer to sensations
arising within the body. It is not because we have no direct
consciousness of the operation of the stimuli that they do not
therefore influence the mental life. In animals, the actions
respondent to them constitute the principal manifestations of
their psychical life ; and in man, when the influence of the
higher nervous centres is weakened by disease, or when an
organic stimulus has an abnormal activity, as happens often in
insanity, we sometimes see the instinct for food or the sexual
instinct manifested with an utter shamelessness. In such cases
there is great truth in an observation made by Jacobi, that the

1 1 0 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chai».

actions of the insane have an instinct-like character, as their
physiognomies take on an anii lal-like look. The great revo-
lution effected in the mental nature of man at the time when
the organs of reproduction come into functional activity, affords
a striking illustration of a physiological effect which in less
degree is common to all the organic stimuli. And no account of
the sensori-motor actions can be complete which fails to give due
appreciation to the influence of a stimulas arising within the
organism as an exciting cause of certain associated or aim-
working-movements.

Of more importance than the innate sensori-motor acts in
human development are those which are acquired, and which
are often called the secondary automatic acts. When any one
moves about in a house or a ro- 'in with the objects in which he
is quite familiar, he is scarce more conscious of the greater part
of his movements or of the objects around than he is of the
movements of his breathing or of his particular steps in walking;
notwithstanding which he does not run against the chairs nor
stumble at the stairs, but fairly adapts his movements to the
positions of objects. But if some new piece of furniture be
placed in a part of the room where there was nothing before, the
chances are that he does stumble against it, until, by familiarity
or habit, the sensation of its presence has been associated with
a corresponding movement. It will sometimes happen that,
when the mind has been deeply occupied, a person has walked
from one place to another through busy streets and yet been
unable, on reflecting afterwards, to say positively which way
he took, though he has undoubtedly had sensory perceptions
of -the objects which he has avoided in his walk. In dancing,
in playing some musical instrument, in writing, in that grace
and ease of movement acquired by social cultivation, we have
other excellent examples of acquired consensual acts. A more
striking instance, perhaps, than any of these is the association
which is established by education between particular sounds, or
particular visual sensations, and the adapted complex movements
for the articulation of the appropriate words. Children plainly
exhibit a great tendency to imitate a particular sound, when
there is certainly not yet any idea of what the sound means ;
and, as every one knows, it is sufficiently easy to read aloud

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. Ill

without the slightest attention to the meaning of what is read,
the consciousness being otherwise engaged. A story is told of
a child which could speak both in English and German, but
which always replied to a question in the language in which it
was addressed, and could not reply to an English question in
German, or to a German question in English. Without doubt
the child connected definite ideas with the words used ; but the
fact that it could not put the same ideas into one language or
the other, as required, showed the dominion exercised by the
sound over the articulating movements — the mechanical con-
nexion established between sensation and movement. Language,
difficult as it is of acquisition, ultimately gets all the ease of a
reflex act, and so many waste floods of fruitless words are poured
forth without fatigue by some who, like Peter proposing to build
the three tabernacles, know not what they say. Consciousness is
not a necessary accompaniment ; talking may be conscious, semi-
conscious, or entirely unconscious. Secondary automatic acts of
a like kind are also observably acquired by animals, although in
them the consensual acts are mostly innate ; particular habits
or tricks being observably taught to them or acquired by them.
How many of the common actions of man's everyday life fall
under the category of consensual acts, few people sufficiently
consider.

It is of 'the utmost importance to a true conception of the
nature of mental action that the full meaning and real bearing
of the foregoing facts should be distinctly realized. From a
physiological point of view they are readily enough admitted ;
but the moment sensation is viewed as a mental faculty, an
entirely new order of ideas commonly supervenes, and it appears
to be thought monstrous to suppose that the full sensation is
not innate, but gradually matured through years of experience.
Then, again, it is almost impossible to make those who take the
metaphysical view of mental action, realize the organic connexion
which is established between the stimulus, or the sensation, and
certain movements, whereby these finally become mechanical or
automatic : when any end is accomplished, they fail not instantly
to assign intelligence, and to assume design. It is not necessary
to repeat here what was said of design, when treating of the
spinal cord : the act, with whatever of design it contains, is the

112 SECONDARY NERFOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

necessary result of a certain constitution, innate or acquired, of
the nervous centres. In the hirubler animals the life-aims are
merely organic ; the sensory ganglia suffice, therefore, as nervous
apparatus ; and the faculties of them, being primordial, are
comparatively few, fixed, and simple. In man, however, whose
relations are so much more numerous and special, whose life-aims
reach far beyond the mere organic, there is not only a further
complication of the nervous system as an original fact, but there
is an acquired adaptation throughout life of the sensory ganglia
to the complex external relations, so that their functional mani-
festations are more numerous, special, and complex. But in the
latter case, as in the former, the action is ultimately automatic,
and then as effectually accomplished without consciousness as
with it. Until the psychologies ground their conceptions on
these simple truths, they must continue to struggle fruitlessly in
the maze of undefined words.

Observation has been so much vitiated, and the understanding
so enslaved, by the influence of time-honoured metaphysical
conceptions of mental phenomena and by the use of meta-
physical language, that it is one of the hardest things in the
world to observe mental acts faithfully and accurately, and to
interpret them naturally. There would seem to be a positive
inability in certain minds to conceive mental action of any kind
taking place with different degrees of consciousness or with no
consciousness at all ; and this constitutes the great difficulty in
the endeavour to set forth in their natural order the phenomena
of sensation and sensori-motor action, and to appraise their real
nature. Now it admits of no question whatever that sensations
and their respondent movements, which excite consciousness
when first experienced, gradually become completely organized
in the appropriate nerve centres, and then take place without
consciousness. "We cannot, therefore, strictly speaking, use the
word memory as applicable to such cases, because of the absence
of consciousness ; the memory which exists is an unconscious
memory. Furthermore, the term perception is very apt to cause
confusion in its application to the senses. Where there is
sensation, it is said, there is perception ; and where there is
perception, there is idea or intelligence : how then can you
justly discriminate between the sensorial functions and the

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 113

ideational functions? The fallacy here lies in the vague use
of the word "perception" — in the confounding of all kinds of"
perception under the one general notion. There are in reality
different kinds of perception — sensorial perception and ideational
or intellectual perception ; the former a kind of instinctive act,
the latter an intellectual act. Though, like all other species in
nature, these run into one another, they still present marked
differences, and must be distinguished in a true science of mind.
A conception of the kind of perception which animals without
cerebral hemispheres have, or of that which the somnambulist
has, the functions of whose cerebral hemispheres are in abeyance,
will materially assist us in the apprehension of the phenomena
of sensorial perception in man and in the right interpretation
of them. What degree of consciousness accompanies this per-
ception is not easily determined ; the common notion of con-
sciousness, which is applied in all cases, is taken entirely from
reflective consciousness, or self-consciousness, the seat of which
undoubtedly is in the highest ganglionic centres — the nerve
centres of intelligence ; but a reflection upon the degree of con-
sciousness which any one has of the different steps of his toilet,
or of the objects in a room among which he moves when his
mind is fully occupied, and of the entire unconsciousness with
which a sensation of light causes contraction of the iris, or the
distance of an object looked at causes an accommodation of the
eye, will convey an idea of the small part which consciousness
plays in the ordinary perception of the senses, and in the motor
reactions thereto.

If those who are disposed to take the metaphysical view of
mental action, insist on seeing an act of intelligence in every
kind of perception, then it will be necessary to give another
name to that sensory perception of impressions which takes place
where there are no cerebral hemispheres, or where these have
been removed, which takes place in fact without the animal
perceiving that it perceives. Even so philosophical a writer as
Muller thought the sensory centres to be endowed with some
degree of voluntary power, because of the remarkable actions to
which they minister; thus unwarrantably introducing into his
observation, and applying to his interpretation, of the functions
of the secondary nerve centres, conceptions derived from his

i

114 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

knowledge of the higher or primary nerve centres. This was to
reverse the natural order of investigation, and to apply the
complex and obscure to the interpretation, or rather the misin-
terpretation, of the more simple, instead of ascending inductively
through the simple to the complex. Those who maintain every
kind of perception to be an act of intelligence are guilty of the
same error as that which Muller fell into ; and they will assuredly
continue to stumble into confusion and error until they modify
in some degree, or get entirely rid of, the metaphysical notions
of consciousness.

The reaction of the motor ganglia in the sensoriurn commune,
whether designed or undesigned, co-ordinate or irregular, may
be excited not only by impressions conveyed to them by afferent
nerves, and by the so-called organic stimuli, but also by a
stimulus descending from above. An idea or an impulse of the
will, coming from the higher nervous centres, may act upon the
ganglionic secondary centres, and call forth those movements
which are commonly reflex to impressions from without. In
such case it is tolerably certain that the idea or volitional im-
pulse does not act directly on the motor nerve-fibres, but that it
acts indirectly through the ganglionic cells of the motor nuclei,
in which the potentiality of the movement exists latent, statical,
or abstract; the stimulus from above disturbing the organic
equilibrium, and, as it were, releasing or setting free the move-
ment together with whatsoever of design there is in it ; the same
operations are performed, and through the same means, as when
the impression conveyed by the afferent nerve from without
excites the movement. Thus the will is entirely dependent for
its outward realization upon that mechanism of automatic action
which is gradually organized in the subordinate centres ; it
cannot, as we shall hereafter see, at once instigate successfully
a new movement, nor can it execute any movement without
a guiding sensation of some kind : the cultivation of the senses,
and the special adaptations of their reactions, which are gradually
organized, are necessary antecedents, essential prerequisites,
to the due formation and operation of will. The sensoriurn
commune represents, in fact, various independent nervous
centres, and never does act merely as a conductor transmitting
unmodified the stimulus, whether this ascend from without, or

iv.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. 115

descend from the cerebral hemispheres. Bear this clearly in
mind, and the memory of it will help to get rid of some diffi-
culties, when we come to deal with the will.

It is not needful to say anything here of the seeming dispro-
portionate amount of force given out in the movement which is
respondent to a moderate stimulus to the sensory ganglia ; inas-
much as what was said in this regard of the spinal centres is
strictly applicable to the secondary nervous centres. A special
investigation would only serve here, as elsewhere, to adduce
needless evidence in support of the principle of the conservation
of force.

And now let us briefly indicate the general causes of disorder
of the functions of the sensory ganglia : they are mainly such
as have been already pointed out as causes of disturbance of the
functions of the spinal cord : —

1. As a natural fact, there may be an innate vice, feebleness,
or instability of composition of the ganglionic cells. Such fault
of nature is commonly owing to the existence of some nervous
disease in the hereditary antecedents ; but it may of course be
due to any other of the many recondite causes of degeneration
of nerve element. Hallucinations of vision are by no means
un frequent amongst some children at an early age, especially
among such as suffer from chorea. And in those rare cases in
which insanity occurs in children almost from the time of their
nativity, it is chiefly exhibited in violent and irregular sensori-
motor movements ; herein resembling essentially the insanity
that sometimes ensues in animals. The unnatural laughter,
the shrieking, the biting, and the tearing of the insane infant
assuredly testify to a degenerate state of the motor and sensory
cells in the sensorium commune : one might even venture to say
that there was a true sensorial madness. It is most interesting
to add that the disorder may alternate with, or be replaced by,
general convulsions, the madness ceasing when the convulsions
supervene, and supervening when the convulsions cease ; there
is a transference of the disturbance from one system of nervous
centres to another.

Again, there may be every degree of deficient sensibility down
to actual insensibility of the ganglionic cells of the sensory
ganglia. It is obvious that people differ naturally in the acute-

12

116 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

ness of their senses ; and in idiots the senses notably partake of
the general stupidity. In them the hearing is frequently defec-
tive ; smell is often imperfect, the olfactory bulbs being insuffi-
ciently developed ; taste absent or extremely vitiated, so that
they will eat unconcerned the filthiest or the most pungent
matters ; and the sensibility of the skin is sometimes extensively
absent, or it is generally dull, so that they suffer very little pain
from injuries. The idiots of the lowest class have usually
no other affection but that of hunger, which they exhibit by
unrest, grunting, or the like; but even some of these miser-
able creatures have at times attacks of fury, without evident
reason, in which they scratch, strike and bite, as the insane
infant does.

D ulness of sensibility, when not nearly reaching the stage of
idiotic degeneration, is of course unfavourable to intellectual
acquisition ; but, on the other hand, a very acute and delicate
sensibility is attended with evils and dangers of its own. In
the former case, although there is a hindrance to assimilation,
yet that which is appropriated is commonly retained with great
persistency ; in the latter case, there is certainly quick reaction,
but no lasting appropriation, and, if the sensibility is intensified
beyond a certain point, there may even be a lapse into that
degenerate state in which, not the special sensation, but pain is
felt, and irregular and convulsive reaction takes place. It is of
no small importance that these natural differences in the consti-
tution of the ganglionic cells should be plainly recognised, for
they unquestionably are at the root of certain differences in
individual character and intellect.

2. An excessive use of the senses, without due intervals of rest,
produces exhaustion, or actual degeneration of them ; here, as
elsewhere, the force expended must be restored, if the energy of
the matter is to be maintained. A too powerful impression
made upon any sense may also diminish, or actually destroy, its
power of reaction ; immediate paralysis of sight, of hearing, or
of smell has followed a sudden and powerful impression upon the
particular sense ; and if the paralysis is not complete, the sensi-
bility of the sense for weaker impressions may still be lowered for
some time. Moreover, the sensation itself may persist for a while
after the cause of it has disappeared, as when an image of the

v.] SENSORY GANGLIA, ETC. UJ

sun remains after we have ceased to look at it, or the roar of the
cannon abides in the ears after the firing has ceased. Such per-
sistence of action in the ganglionic cell will serve to convey a
notion of the condition of things when there is hallucination
otherwise caused.

3. The state of the blood has the most direct effect upon the
functions of the sensory ganglia. Too much blood, as is well
known, gives rise to subjective sensations, such as flashes of light
before the eyes, and roaring ill the ears ; but it is not so generally
known that, when the abnormal action reaches a certain intensity,
movements responsive to, or sympathetic with, the hallucina-
tions may take place. .Nevertheless, they may : as the sensory
ganglia have an independent action in health, so also may they
act independently in disease ; and as in health there is co-ordinate
or designed sensori-motor action, so in disease there may be
convulsive sensori-motor action evincing more or less co-ordina-
tion or design. Of violent, but more or less co-ordinate, action
we have, I think, a good example in the raving and dangerous
fury which often follows a succession of severe epileptic fits, and
which I take leave to describe as in great part a true sensorial
insanity. The patient's senses are possessed with hallucinations,
his ganglionic central cells in a state of convulsive action ;
before the eyes are blood-red flames of fire, amidst wdiich whoso-
ever happens to present himself, appears as a devil, or otherwise
horribly transformed ; the ears are filled with a terrible roaring
noise, or resound with a voice imperatively commanding him to
save himself; the smell is perhaps one of sulphurous stifling;
and the desperate and violent actions are, like the furious acts
of the mad elephant, the convulsive reactions to such fearful
hallucinations. The individual in such state is a machine set in
destructive motion, and he perpetrates the extremest violence
or the most desperate murder without consciousness at the
time, and without memory of it afterwards. "When we come to
the general pathology of insanity, we shall have more to say
upon this matter.

A deficiency of healthy blood is a cause of disorder of the
sensory centres. A great loss of blood powerfully affects the
senses ; the ansemia of chlorotic and hysterical women is the
probable cause of the many anomalous sensations and motor

118 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

disturbances, which disappear as the condition of the blood im-
proves ; and a manifest poverty of blood often accompanies the
chorea of children with its hallucinations.

A perverted condition of the blood, whether from something
bred in the body or introduced from without, is known to be a
powerful cause of sensory disorder. Evidence of such injurious
influence we have in the hallucinations which sometimes follow
for a time certain acute diseases, as well as in the delirium which
occurs in the course of them ; in the effects which alcohol pro-
duces upon the senses ; in the actions of poisons, such as bella-
donna and aconite, which markedly affect the senses ; and
especially in the operation of haschisch, a poison which appears
to concentrate its action upon the sensorium commune* Jn
hydrophobia the presence of a virus in the blood notably gives
rise to most violent nervous disturbance ; the sight or sound of
a fluid, a movement in the room, or a current of air, being suffi-
cient to excite terrible convulsions.

4. An irritation operating by reflex action is undoubtedly the
occasional cause of sensorial disturbance. Pressure upon or
wound of a sensitive nerve has sometimes produced extensive
paralysis of sensibility ; a bad tooth may notably give rise to
amaurosis ; vertigo, hallucinations, and illusions are now and
then plainly the result of an irritation proceeding from a centri-
petal nerve, not perhaps felt in any other way than as it is
testified by effects which disappear with the removal of the irri-
tation. An interesting example of severe disturbance of the
nervous centres from a slight eccentric irritation, is related by
Dr. Brown-Sequard, to whom it was communicated by Mr.
C. De Morgan. A lad, aged fourteen, as he was getting up in
the morning, was heard by his father to be making a great noise
in his bedroom. On the latter rushing into the room, he found
his son in his shirt, violently agitated, talking incoherently, and
breaking to pieces the furniture. His father caught hold of him
and put him back into bed, where at once the boy became com-
posed, but did not seem at all conscious of what he had done.
On getting out of bed he had felt something odd, he said, but

* Regarding the effects of haschisch, I may refer, in addition to Moreau's well
known experiments, to De Luca in the Journal de Pharmacie, 1862, tome xlii.
p. 396.

iv.l SENSORY 0 AN GLI A, ETC. 119

he was quite well. A surgeon, who was sent for, found him
reading quietly, with clear tongue and cheerful countenance, and
wishful to get up. He had never had epilepsy, but had enjoyed
good health hitherto. He was told to get up ; but on putting
his feet on the floor, and standing up, his countenance instantly
changed, the jaw became violently convulsed, and he was about
to rush forward, when he was seized, and pushed back on to the
bed. At once he became calm again, said he had felt odd, but
Mas surprised when asked what was the matter with him. He
had been fishing on the previous day, and having got his line
entangled, had waded into the river to disengage it, but was not
aware that he had hurt his feet in any way, — that he had even
scratched them. " But on holding up the right great toe with
my finger and thumb, to examine the sole of the foot, the leg
was drawn up, and the muscles of the jaw were suddenly con-
vulsed, and on letting go the toe these effects instantly ceased."
There was no redness, no swelling, but on the bulb of the toe a
small elevation, as if a bit of gravel, less than the head of a pin,
had been pressed beneath the cuticle. On compressing this
against the nail cautiously, a slight convulsion ensued ; there
was no pricking when pressed, but he said something made him
feel very odd. The slightly raised part was clipped away ; no
gravel was found, but the strange sensation was gone, and never
returned*

The general bodily feeling which results from the sum of the
different organic processes is not attended with any definite
consciousness, or idea, of the causes that give rise to it ; the
organic stimuli are, in fact, organically felt, but do not in the
natural state of health excite, as a stimulus to one of the special
senses does, a particular state of consciousness ; and when the

* Lectures on the Physiology and Pathology of the Central Nervous System, by
Dr. Brown-Sequard, 1860. A case singularly like the one above related is quoted
by Burrows (Commentaries on Insanity, p. 215) from Hufeland. A boy between
thirteen and fourteen years* of age suddenly began to talk in a very wild and
incoherent way, and at length became ungovernable. This state was assuaged by
soporifics. But the paroxysm was observed to recur whenever he was placed on
his feet. On examination, a reddish spot was noticed on one foot, which, when
pressed, always occasioned a fresh paroxysm. Upon an incision being made, a
minute piece of glass was discovered, and extracted. During the operation the
patient was furious, but every symptom of violence vanished when the offending
cause was removed.

120 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, OR [chap.

organic stimuli do force themselves into consciousness, as
happens in disease, then it is in pain that their action is felt.
In respect of our organic feeling ve are, in reality, not unlike
those humble animals that have a general sensibility without
any organs for special discrimination and comparison. Having
no idea of the particular cause of any modification in this
general feeling, we are plainly most favourably placed for the
generation of illusions with regard to the cause. Consequently
it is not surprising to find that the insane frequently have
extravagant hallucinations and illusions respecting the cause of
an abnormal sensation, which is actually due to a morbid state
of some internal organ ; they think to interpret it as its unusual
character seems to demand, and in accordance with their
experience of the definite perceptions of the special senses ;
and accordingly they attribute tbt anomalous feeling to frogs,
serpents, or other such creatures that have got into their
insides.

5. Whether any beneficial influence is exerted upon the
nutrition of the nervous centres of the sensorium commune by
the centres that he above it, must remain uncertain, though it is
extremely probable. No trustworthy conclusions can be drawn
from experiments in which the cerebral hemispheres have been
removed, for the mischief done is far too great to warrant any
inference. It is certain that an area of morbid activity in the
cerebral hemispheres may act injuriously upon the sensory
centres, and give rise to secondary derangement of their
functions ; but the result is then most likely due to reflex or
sympathetic action, the morbid centre acting as a morbid centre
of irritation in another internal organ notably does.

In concluding this account of the sensory nervous centres, we
have only to add that a review of their relations and functions
does certainly establish a close analogy with the relations and
functions of the spinal centres. In both cases there are nervous
centres which have the power of independent reaction, though
they are usually subordinated to the control of higher centres ;
in both cases the faculties are for the most part organized in
relation to outward circumstances through the plastic power of
the nervous centres ; and, in both cases, the independent power
of action of the centres may, by reason of disease, be exhibited

iv.] SENSORY OANGLIA, ETC. 121

in explosive demonstration. The convulsive paroxysm which
seizes on the cells of the sensorium commune, and drives the
furious epileptic on to desperate violence, is as little within his
control as is the convulsion of his limbs that is owing to disease
of the spinal cord.

NOTES.

1 (/>.102). — It ought not to be forgotten that Dr. Darwin distinguished
voluntary from sensori-motor movements. " Many common actions of
life are produced in a similar manner {i.e. by sensation). If a fly
settle on my forehead, whilst I am intent on my present occupation, I
dislodge it with my finger without exciting my attention or breaking
the train of my ideas." — Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 40. " Other muscular
motions, that are most frequently connected with our sensations, as
those of the sphincter of the bladder and anus, and the musculi
erectores penis, were originally excited into motion by irritation, for
young children make water, and have other evacuations, without
attention to these circumstances — *et primis etiam ab incunabulis
tenduntur seepius puerorum penes, amore nondum expergefacto.' So
the nipples of young women are liable to become turgid by irritation,
long before they are in a situation to be excited by the pleasure of
giving milk to the lips of the child." — Ibid., p. 38. "There is a
criterion by which we may distinguish our voluntary acts or thoughts
from those that are excited by our sensations. The former are always
employed about the means to acquire pleasurable objects, or to avoid
painful ones ; while the latter are employed about the possession of
those that are already in our power." And he goes on to say that the
ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are almost per-
petually produced by their present pleasure or their present pains;
they seldom busy themselves about the means of procuring future
bliss or avoiding future misery. — Ibid., vol. i. p. 184.

2 (p. 105). — " Alciphrox : — If vision be only a language speaking
to the eyes, it may be asked, when did men learn this language ? To
acquire the knowledge of so many signs as go to the making up a
language, is a work of some difficulty. Eut will any one say he hath
spent time, or been at pains, to learn this language 1

" Euphraxor : — No wonder we cannot assign a time beyond our
remotest memory. If we have been all practising this language ever
since our first entrance into the world — if the author of nature con-
stantly speaks to the eyes of all mankind, even in their earliest infancy,

122 SECONDARY NERVOUS CENTRES, ETC. [chap.iv.

whenever their eyes are open in the light, whether alone or in company,
it doth not seem to be at all strange that men should not he aware that
they had ever learned a language bejun so early, and practised so con-
stantly as this of vision. And if we also consider that it is the same
throughout the whole world, and not like other languages, differing in
different places, it will not seem unaccountable tbat man should mistake
the connexion between the proper objects of sight and the things sig-
nified by them to be founded in necessary relation, or likeness, or that
they should even take them for the same things. Hence it seems
easy to conceive why men, who do not think, should confound in this
language of vision the signs with the things signified, otherwise than
they are wont to do in the various particular languages formed by
the several nations of men." — Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philosopher,
vol. i, p. 393.

CHAPTEE V.

HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA ; CORTICAL CELLS OF THE CEREBRAL
HEMISPHERES; IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES;* PRIMARY
NERVOUS CENTRES; INTELLECTORIUM COMMUNE.

npHAT the nerve-cells which exist in countless numbers in the
■* grey cortical layers of the hemispheres are the nervous
centres of ideas, is fully admitted by all those who have most
studied the physiology of the brain, and are best entitled to
speak on the matter. The cerebral hemispheres represent, in
reality, two large ganglia that lie above the sensory centres, and
are superadded in man and the higher animals for the further
fashioning of impressions, or of sensory perceptions, into ideas
or conceptions. This important step in the evolution of the
human mind consists in the abstraction of the essential from the
particular and its re-embodiment in idea ; it is strictly an ideali-
zation of the sensory impressions, and represents, so to speak, an
epigenetic development of nature : what the true artist does in
his art nature does continually in the development of the human
mind. Looking not at the individual man and his work as the
end, but looking at him as a small and subordinate part of the
vast and harmonious whole, as a means to a far-off end, it is suf-
ficiently evident that the history of mankind is the history of
the latest and highest organic development — that in the evolution
of the human mind nature is undergoing its consummate de-
velopment through man. And the law manifest in this highest
display of organic development, is still that law of progressive

* " "We have not a name for that complex notion which embraces, as one whole,
all the different phenomena to which the term ' Idea ' relates. As we say ' Sen-
sation, ' we might also say ' Ideation ; ' it would be a very useful word ; and there
is no objection to it, except the pedantic habit of decrying a new term." — James
Milt., Analysis of the Human Mind, p. 42.

124 HEMISPHERICAL OANOLIA, OR [chap.

specialization and increasing complexity which has been trace-
able through the long chain of organic beings. So exquisitely
delicate, however, are the organic processes of mental develop-
ment which take place in the minute cells of the cortical layers,
that they are certainly, so far as our present means of investiga-
tion reach, quite impenetrable to the senses ; the mysteries of
their secret operations cannot be unravelled : they are like nebulae
which no telescope can yet resolve.

The cerebral hemispheres are not alone the nerve centres of
ideas, but they are also the centres of emotion and volition.
In animals that are deprived of their hemispheres, all trace of
spontaneity or will in their movements disappears ; this effect
being, as might be expected, much more evident in experiments
on the higher than on the lower Vertebrata. In Fishes, as for
example in the carp, scarcely any difference is observed in its
swimming after its hemispheres have been removed ; but if its
movements be watched more carefully, and compared with those
of a carp which has not been mutilated, a certain change will be
recognised. According to Vulpian, it moves forward in a straight
line, never turning to one side or the other except when it meets
with an obstacle, and not stopping until it is completely fatigued ;
it seems impelled to move by some necessity, a necessity oc-
casioned probably by the stimulus of the water on its body.
The more marked effects produced in the higher Vertebrata by
the removal of the hemispheres have already been described.

The anatomists believe that they have now demonstrated that
the nerve-tlbres which ascend from the spinal cord through the
medulla oblongata do not pass directly to the surface of the
hemispheres, but end in the ganglionic cells of the corpora
striata and optic thalami ; new fibres starting from these cells,
and radiating to the cortical cells, to establish the communication
between the primary and secondary nervous centres.* There is,
then, a sufficient anatomical reason for an inference previously
made on other grounds, which is, that an idea, or an impulse of

* Vulpian, however, believes that some fibres from the cerebral peduncles pass
directly to the cerebral hemispheres of the corresponding side, either through the
corpus striatum or beneath it ; founding his opinion on some cases in which he
has seen lesion of the hemispheres, not affecting the corpus striatum, followed by
a descending atrophy of nerve fibres analogous to that which follows lesiou of the
corpus striatum.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 125

the will, cannot act directly upon the motor nerve-fibres of the
body, but can only act through the medium of the proper subor-
dinate centres. There is an explanation also of the fact that
irritation of the white substance of the brain does not occasion
either movements or signs of pain. It is extremely probable,
again, that different convolutions of the brain do discharge dif-
ferent functions in our mental life ; but the precise mapping out
of the cerebral surface, and the classification of the mental
faculties, which the phrenologists have rashly made, will not
bear scientific examination. That the broad, high, and prominent
forehead indicates great intellectual power was believed in Greece,
and is commonly accepted as true now ; the examination of the
brains of animals and idiots, and the comparison of the brain of
the lowest savage with the brain of the civilized European, cer-
tainly tend to strengthen the belief. Narrow and pointed hemi-
spheres assuredly do mark an approach to the character of the
monkey's brain. There is some reason to believe also, that the
upper part of the brain and the posterior lobes have more to do
with feeling than with the understanding. Huschke has found
these parts to be proportionably more developed in women than
in men ; and Schroeder van der Kolk thought that his patho-
logical researches had afforded him the most convincing proofs
that the anterior lobes of the brain were the seat of the higher
intellectual faculties, while the upper and posterior lobes
ministered rather to the emotional life. Eecently some obser-
vations have been made with the view of establishing a theory,
that a portion of the anterior lobe, the third frontal convolution
of the left hemisphere, was the seat of language ; but the obser-
vations reported are unsatisfactory, directly contradictory obser-
vations are overlooked or ignored, and it is contrary to the first
principles of psychology to suppose that language, complex and
organic as it is in its intellectual character as the sign or symbol
of the idea, can have so limited and defined a seat in the brain.
On the whole, it must be confessed that, so far, we have not any
certain and definite knowledge of the functions of the different
parts of the cerebral convolutions. The anatomists cannot even
agree on any convolution as peculiar to man ; all that they can
surely say is, that his convolutions are more complex and less
symmetrical than those of the monkey. " If man was made in

126 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

the image of God, he was also made in the image of an
ape."*

The cortical cells of the hemispheres, like the ganglionic cells
of the sensory centres and of the spinal cord, may certainly act
as nervous centres of independent reaction. Without any vo-
lition, or even in direct defiance of volitional effort, an idea
which has become active may pass outwards, and produce move-
ment, or some other effect upon the body. The suddenly excited
idea of the ludicrous, for example, causes involuntary laughter ;
the idea of an insult, a quick movement of retaliation ; the idea
of a beautiful woman, a glow of amatorial passion ; the idea of a
great impending danger, or of a sudden terrible affliction, serious
or even fatal disturbance of the organic life; the idea of an
object, sometimes an actual hallucination. Most of the earlier
actions of children are prompted by ideas and feelings which are
excited by suggestions from without, and which immediately
react outwards. In the phenomena of electro-biology or hyp-
notism, the mind of the patient is possessed with the ideas
which the operator suggests, so that his body becomes an auto-
matic machine, set in motion by them. Every one's experience
will recall to him occasions on which an idea excited in his
mind could not be dismissed therefrom by the will, and perhaps
would not let him rest until he had realized it in action, even
though such realization appeared to his judgment inadvisable.
Those, who have attended carefully to the course of their own
thoughts, and reflected upon their actions, will readily acknow-
ledge that an idea sometimes arises and produces a movement
without there having been any active consciousness of it, the
effect being that which first arouses consciousness, if it be
aroused at all. How many of the daily actions of life, thus
accomplished, are we never conscious of unless we set ourselves
deliberately to reflect. It is most certain that there may be a
reaction outwards of an ideational nerve-cell, independently of
volition, and even without consciousness.

As it is with the faculties of the spinal and the sensory
centres, so is it with the faculties of the ideational centres :
they are not innate, but are developed by education. The
notion of innate idea, in the exact meaning of the word, as con-

* Hallam, Introduction to History of Europe.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 127

natural or contemporary with birth, is not less untenable and
absurd than an innate pregnancy. Q) But if by innate is only
meant that, by the necessity of his nature, a well-constituted
individual placed in certain circumstances will acquire certain
ideas, then all the phenomena of a man's life, bodily or mental,
are just as innate or natural. It is necessary here to distinguish
between what is predetermined by the nature of things, and what
is preformed. The formation of an idea is an organic evolution
in the appropriate nervous centres, a development which is
gradually completed in consequence of successive experiences of
a like kind. The impressions of the different properties or
qualities of an object received through the different senses, are
combined in the compound idea of it which is gradually matured
in the mind ; there is a consilience of sensory perceptions in
the production of the idea ; and henceforth we can make asser-
tions concerning the object when it is not present to sense. The
cells of the cerebral ganglia do, in reality, idealize the sensory
perceptions : grasping that which is essential in them, and sup-
pressing or rejecting the unessential, they mould them by their
plastic faculty into the organic unity of an idea, in accordance
with fundamental laws. Every idea is thus an intuition,- and
implicitly comprises far more than it explicitly displays. It is
not the idea of any particular object or event, but the idea of
every object and event of a particular kind. Herein the process
of ideation only follows the law of organic development as
manifest everywhere, and as previously illustrated in the de-
velopment of nerve element itself. Whosoever, biassed by the
metaphysical conception of mind, finds it difficult to realize
this process of the organic growth of idea, let him reflect upon
the manner of organic growth which confessedly takes place in
the language in which our ideas get embodiment. Language
was not innate in mankind ; it has undergone a slow develop-
ment through the ages, in conformity with the development
of thought ; and by using the study of language as an instru-
ment of the analysis of ideas, we may make use of the science
of what is seen to indicate the nature of processes that at
present are unseen.

Those who are metaphysically minded have done with idea as
they have done with sensation : they have converted a complex

128 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

notion or general term summing up a great number of varied
phenomena into an actual entity, and thenceforth allowed it to
tyrannize over the thoughts. It \: a great and mischievous error
to suppose that an idea of the same object or event has always
a uniform quantitative and qualitative value ; and the May in
which it is the custom to speak of certain abstract ideas, as if
they were constant entities admitting of no variation, nor of the
shadow of a change, is a remarkable example of that self-decep-
tion by which man fondly fools himself -with many words
making nothing understood." An idea may be definite, clear,
and adequate, or it may be indefinite, obscure, and inadequate ;
it by no means follows, therefore, that because the same name
is given to an idea in two persons, it has the same value in each.
Certain ideas will always have a different value in persons at
a different stage of cultivation ; and when the well-meaning
traveller, or the ardent missionary thinks to find in the miser-
able savage the idea of a god, he should take heed that he is not
erroneously interpreting the savage mind by the text of his own.
The ideas of virtue and vice, for which the Australian savage
confessedly has no words in his language, cannot be implanted
or organized in his mind, until, by cultivation contimied through
generations, he has been humanized and civilized. (2)

To acquire those so-called fundamental ideas, universal in-
tuitions, or categories of the understanding, of which some meta-
physicians make so much, as constant elements, though they
differ greatly in value in different people, there is no other need
but, using Hobbes' words, " to be born a man, and live with the
use of his five senses." (3) Because all men have a common nature,
and because the nature by which all men are surrounded is the
same, therefore are developed certain ideas which have a universal
application, but they are nowise independent of experience ; on
the contrary, the universality of their character is owing to the
very fact that in every experience they are implicitly suggested
or involved, so that they finally become fixed as endowments
in the acquired nature or organization of the nervous centres ;
conscious acquisition becoming here, as elsewhere, unconscious
faculty, by virtue of an organic process. But their absolute
truth, as expressions of certain fundamental relations between
man and nature, is only guaranteed by the assumption of an

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 129

unchanging persistence of these relations ; a new sense conferred
upon him would entirely change the aspect of things, and render
necessary a new order of fundamental ideas.* (4)

Having said thus much concerning the manner in which our
ideas are acquired, I proceed to indicate the different ways in
which the reaction of an idea, when active, may be displayed :
.having considered idea as statical, it now remains to consider it
in actual energy.

(a) The reflex action or reaction of an ideational nerve-cell
may be downwards upon the motor centres, and may thus give
rise to what has been called ideomotor movement. + (5) The energy
may be exerted either upon the involuntary or upon the volun-
tary muscles ; and in the latter case, it takes place either with
consciousness or without consciousness. The idea that the bowels
will act may notably sometimes so affect their involuntary
peristaltic movements as to produce evacuation of them ; the
idea that vomiting must take place, when a qualmish feeling-
exists, will certainly hasten vomiting; the idea of a nervous
man that he cannot effect sexual intercourse assuredly may
render him incapable of it ; and there is a very remarkable
instance told in the Philosophical Transactions of a man who
could for a time stop the motions of his heart, j These are

* "We can conceive ourselves as endowed with smelling and not enjoying any
other faculty. In that case, we should have no idea of objects as seeable, as
hearable, as touchable, or tasteable. We should have a train of smells ; the
smell at one time of the rose, at another of the violet, at another of carrion,
and so on. Our life would be a train of smells." — J. Mill, Analysis of the Human
Mind.

f "To prove that Ideas, as well as Sensations, are the cause of muscular
actions, it is necessary to make choice of cases in which the idea is in no danger
of being confounded with that state of mind called the Will. And hardly any
case will answer this condition, except some of those which are held to be
involuntary, for the Idea itself never can be very clearly distinguished from the
Will. "—J. Mill, op. tit. p. 265. He instances yawning on seeing some one yawn,
the infectious power of convulsions, laughter, sobbing, the swallowing of saliva,
if assured that you cannot. " It seems, therefore, to be established by a simple
induction, that muscular actions follow ideas, as invariable antecedent and con-
sequent, in other words, as cause and effect ; that, whenever we have obtained a
command over the ideas, we have also obtained a command over the motions ;
and that we cannot perform associate contractions of several muscles, till we have
established, by repetition, the ready association of the ideas." — Ibid. p. 274.

% ' ' There is an instance told in the Philosophical Transactions of a man who
could for a time stop the motions of his heart when he pleased ; and Mr. D. has

K

130 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap

examples of the influence of idea upon the involuntary muscles,
and they are conformable to what has been previously said of
the subordination of the organic nerve centres to the cerebro-
spinal system. Some people even are able, through a vivid idea
of shuddering, or of something creeping over their skin, to pro-
duce a cutis anserina, or goose's skin : the immediate effect of
the idea in this case, however, is probably to excite the appro-
priate sensation which thereupon gives rise to the sequent
phenomena. Examples of the action of idea upon our voluntary
muscles are witnessed in every hour of our waking life. Very
few, in fact, of the familiar acts of a day call the will into
action : when not sensori-motor they are mostly prompted by
ideas. But the point on which I would lay stress here is, that
such ideomotor movements may take place, not only without
any intervention of the will, but also without consciousness ;
they are automatically accomplished, like the actions of the sleep-
walker, in obedience to an idea or a series of ideas, of which there
is no active consciousness. It may seem paradoxical to assert,
not merely that ideas may exist in the mind without any con-
sciousness of them — which every one admits in their dormant,
latent, or statical condition they may — but that an idea, or a
train of associated ideas, may be quickened into action, and
instigate movements, without themselves being attended to.
But it is unquestionably so : a great part of the chain of our
waking thoughts, and of the series of our daily actions, actually
never is attended to : at first consciously acquired, these have
now become automatic. Persons who have a habit of talking to
themselves are generally unaware that they are talking, and
yet they are performing both associated ideas and associated
movements.

It is surprising how uncomfortable any one may be made by
the obscure notion of something which he ought to have said
or done on some occasion, but did not say or do, and which he
cannot for the life of him now remember. There is a dim feel-
ing of some impulse unsatisfied, an effort, as it were, of the lost
idea to get into consciousness ; this activity is not sufficient to

often told me he could so far increase the peristaltic motion of his howels by
voluntary efforts as to produce an evacuation by a stool at any time in half-an-
hour." — Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 39.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 131

excite consciousness, but sufficient to react upon the unconscious
mental life, and to produce a feeling of discomfort or vague
unrest, which is relieved directly the idea bursts into conscious-
ness. Then, again, when an active idea has once taken firm
possession of consciousness, how hard a matter it is to dismiss
it ! Some weak-minded persons cannot do so until they have
expended its force in suitable action : let a hysterical woman
get a vivid idea of some action that she must do : the idea
becomes a fate which she must sooner or later obey, not other-
wise than as in electro-biology or hypnotism the patient is
governed by the idea which the operator suggests. Let a quick-
tempered man conceive a great insult suddenly done to him : in
a moment, without any intervention of the will, the idea reacts
upon the muscles of his body, and produces more or less general
tension of them. Let a man engaged in a fight get the idea that
he will be beaten : his muscular energy is weakened, and he is
already half conquered.

(b) The reflex action of an ideational nerve-cell may operate
downwards not only upon the motor nuclei, but also upon
the sensory ganglia. As the idea is excited into activity by
the impression on the senses, so it may in turn react down-
wards upon the sensory centres, giving rise even under certain
circumstances to illusions and hallucinations. The idea of a
nauseous taste may excite the sensation to such a degree as to
produce vomiting ; the sight of a person about to run a sharp
instrument over glass will set the teeth on edge ; the images of
dreams are sometimes, as Spinoza has remarked, really visible
for a while after the eyes are open. The celebrated Baron von
Swieten, says Dr. Darwin, who illustrates this kind of ideational
action by many instances, " was present when the putrid carcase
of a dead dog exploded with prodigious stench ; and, some years
afterwards, accidentally riding along the same road, he was
thrown into the same sickness and vomiting by the idea of the
stench, as he had before experienced from the perception of it."

The action of idea upon our sensory ganglia is a regular part
of our mental life ; for the co-operation of sensory activity is
nothing less than necessary to clear conception and representa-
tion. In order to form a distinct and definite conception of what
is not present to sense, we are compelled to form some sort of

k 2

132 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

image of it in the mind ; the sense of sight, which anatomically
is in most extensive connexion w'th the cerebral ganglia, afford-
ing us the greatest assistance in this regard. Men differ much
in the power which they have of thus rendering an idea sensible.
Goethe could call up an image at will, and make it undergo
various transformations, as it were, before his eyes ; Shelley
appears to have been, on one occasion at least, the victim of
positive hallucinations generated by his id°as. But the most
remarkable instance of a habit of seeing his own ideas as actual
images was afforded by the engraver, William Blake. " You
have only to work up imagination to the state of vision, and the
thing is done," was his own account of the genesis of his visions*
To render definite the creations of the imagination, and to give
fit expressions to them, they must be accompanied by some
sensorial representation. The great writers whose vivid descrip-
tions of scenery or events hold our attention and stir our feelings,
have this power in high degree ; they create for themselves a
world of sense by the influence of idea, and then strive to present
vividly to us what they have thus represented to their own minds.
Natural endowments being equal, those writers who have the
greatest number of residua stored up in consequence of much
and varied experience, are best qualified to call up vivid images,
and best qualified to call up such as are truly representative of
nature; wiiilst those who are wanting in experience, or who

* " Dr. Ferriar mentions of himself that, when at the age of fourteen, if he
had been viewing any interesting object in the course of the day, as a romantic
ruin, a fine seat, or a review of troops, as soon as evening came the whole scene
was brought before him with a brilliancy equal to what it possessed in daylight,
and remained visible for some minutes." — Abercrombie, On the Intellectual
Powers. Sir I. Newton could recall an ocular spectrum of the sun when he went
into the dark and directed his mind intensely, ' ' as when a man looks earnestly
to see a thing which is difficult to be seen." From these recollected images of
objects of sense, which the reason duly distinguishes from the realities around,
we meet with examples marking a gradual transition to those spectral images or
illusions which cannot be distinguished from realities, which, in fact, compel
belief and excite emotions and actions in accordance with their character. Aber-
crombie mentions a patient who had the power of creating the illusion by an
effort of will, but had no power of removing it. A step farther, and there is
neither the power of calling up an illusion at will — for it rises in spite of the will —
nor of distinguishing it from realities, nor of dismissing it at will. It is excited
by some morbid cause, confounds itself with realities, compels belief, and domi-
nates the conduct.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 133

have not sufficiently cultivated observation, are apt to become
visionary, vague, and unreal. Even in matters of scientific
research, the scientific imagination by which hypotheses are
successively framed until a fit one is obtained, its verification
completed, and a discovery thus made, is based upon a previous
careful training of the senses in scientific observation, and works
by means of sensory representations. Natural endowments not
being equal, however, we then perceive the wide difference which
there is between one who has an adequate idea and one who has
not. The latter, in describing scenery or events, will give a tedious
picture characterised by minute industry and overwrought detail,
in which there is no due subordination of parts, no organic unity
of idea — in which truly soul is wanting — and from which, there-
fore, no one can carry away a true idea of the whole : unpregnant
of his subject, he has been going about to give a photographic
copy or a minute delineation of what cannot be photographed ;
he has laboured to realize the appearance until at last only
something unreal remains* The former, on the other hand, pro-
duces, by virtue of the plastic power of idea, a picture in which
the unessential is suppressed, the essential thoroughly grasped
and moulded into an organic unity, in which due subordination
and co-ordination of parts prevail, and from which, therefore, a
true idea of the whole may be educed ; truly comprehending or
grasping his subject, he has in fact idealized the sensory per-
ceptions, producing the illusion of a higher reality, and has
displayed a real development of nature. This sort of difference
between men is not less evident in scientific working. One man
records, with a praiseworthy but tedious industry, the uncon-
nected impressions made upon his senses, and never gets further
than that : fondly thinking that he sees with his eye, and not
through it, he would, were he set to describe the sun for the
first time, describe it as a bright disc about the size of a big

* " For facts," Lord Shaftesbury observes in his Characteristics, " unably
related, though with the greatest sincerity and good faith, may prove the worst
sort of deceit : and mere lies, judiciously composed, can teach us the truth of
things beyond any manner. But to amuse ourselves with such authors as neither
know how to lye, nor tell truth, discovers a taste which methinks no one should
be apt to envy. The greatest critic says of the greatest of poets, when he extols
him the highest, that above all others he understood hoiv to lye : Ae5i8a<rxe 8e
nd\«rTa"OfA.7ipos Ka\ rovs aWovs irfffvSfj \eye7y ws Sci."

134 HEMISPHERICAL OANOLIA, OR [chap.

cheese, and rest content for the future with this sensory repre-
sentation of it. The other and t~Tier man of science succeeds
in combining, by means of the organizing power of idea, the
scattered impressions made upon the senses, is able by com-
parison to complement or correct the impression made on a
particular sense, and to form to himself a true image of the sun,
not as a mere disc of fire, but as an immense central body
moving through space, with its attendant planetary system.
Only those who are destitute of idea would dream of rejecting
entirely the aid of idea in scientific inquiries.

These observations will not be a useless digression if they
serve to teach how essential to the completeness of conception
is the functional action of the sensory ganglia, how much our
intellectual development depends not only upon the cultivation
of careful habits of observation, but also upon the co-operation
of the sensory centres in the subsequent intellectual action. The
excitation and cultivation of the sensorial cells are necessary
antecedents, in the order of mental development, to the activity
of the ideational cell ; and the ideational cell in turn effects its
complete function in the formation of a distinct conception by
reacting downwards upon the sensory centres. This secondary
intervention of the sensory ganglia is not peculiar to man, being,
perhaps, more evidently displayed in some of the lower animals.
"When the dog scents the rabbit, and begins to scratch furiously
at the burrow, it is plain that the sense of smell has excited
either directly the visual image of the rabbit, or rather, as the
dreaming of the dog would seem to indicate, the idea of the
rabbit, which idea thereupon calls up the appropriate image.
It is worthy of remark in this relation, how singularly effective
in man the sense of smell is in recalling vividly the ideas and
images of forgotten scenes and places. The reaction of ideas upon
the senses is again very notable in dreams ; and in insanity,
when the nerve centres are disordered and their relations dis-
turbed, actual hallucinations of a sense, such as cannot be
corrected by the evidence of unaffected senses, or by reflection,
are sometimes due to the influence of morbid ideas. This dis-
ordered action is, after all, only an exaggeration of a process
which is natural in our mental life. The idea cannot receive
its stimulus directly from the external world, nor can it react

\

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 135

directly upon the external world ; both in its origin and in its
expression are the senses concerned.

(c) A third important, though little recognised, way in which
idea may operate, is upon the functions of nutrition and secre-
tion. Whether the idea act, as is probable, directly upon the
organic elements of the part through its nerves, or indirectly
by an effect upon the vaso-motor system, it is certain that
the influence of an idea may increase or lessen a secretion,
and may modify nutrition. The idea of food will cause a flow
of saliva ; a sympathetic idea, a flow of tears ; the idea of itching
in a particular spot will give rise to an itching there ; and the
•idea that a structural defect will certainly be removed by a par-
ticular act does sometimes so affect the organic action of the
part as to produce a cure. The most successful physician is ever
one who inspires his patient with the greatest confidence in the
virtue of his remedies. Bacon rightly, therefore, would have us
inquire into the best means to " fortify and exalt the imagina-
tion." " And here," he says, " comes in crookedly and danger-
ously a palliation and defence of a great part of ceremonial
magic. For it may be speciously pretended that ceremonies,
characters, charms, gesticulations, amulets, and the like, do not
derive their power from any tacit or sacramental contract with
evil spirits, but serve only to strengthen and exalt the imagi-
nation of him who uses them."*

(d) There is yet another path which the energy of an idea
may take. As, in reflex action of the spinal cord, the residual
force which was over and above what passed directly outwards
in the reaction travelled upwards to the sensorium commune and
excited sensation ; and as in seusori-motor action the residual
force which was over and above what passed outwards in the
reaction travelled up to the cortical cells, and gave rise to idea ;
so #in ideational action the force which does not pass, or the
residual force which may be over and above what does pass,
immediately outwards in the reaction, abides in action in the
cortical centres, and passes therein from cell to cell. There is
no superimposed collection of cells of a higher kind to which it
might now ascend, and wherein it might excite a higher kind
of mental activity ; there is, instead, an infinite multitude of

* De Augmentis Scientiaruin, B. iv.

136 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

nerve-cells in the cortical layers, having most numerous, varied,
and intricate connexions, whereby excitation may be communi-
cated from one to another. This communication is what does
take place, when one idea calls up another by some association,
itself partly or wholly disappearing in the act. It is probable
that one idea can only call another into activity through its own
partial or entire disappearance from consciousness, as one wave
disappears in the production of another ; but it is, perhaps,
doubtful wThether this, which is Miiller's simile, expresses the
condition of things so well as that of Hobbes, who looked upon
one idea as obscured by the more active one, " in such manner
as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars ; which
stars do no less exercise their virtue, by which they are visible,
in the day than in the night." * (•) There is, as would appear,
not only a transference, but a transformation of force from cell
to cell within the hemispherical ganglia ; and the energy of the
particular cell, or the idea for the moment active, is attended
with consciousness. "We are now come, then, to another sphere
of mental activity, namely, activity within consciousness, or
reflection.

It behoves us here to settle clearly in our minds the relation
of consciousness to ideational function, or at any rate to be on
our guard against considering consciousness as co-extensive with

* Dr. Brown (Physiology of the Mind, p. 223) held, however, that the slightest
attention to the successive states of mind would show, " that a conception, after
giving rise to some new conception, does not always cease to he itself a part of our
continued .consciousness." He thought that it often remained so as to co-exist
with the conception which itself had induced, and might afterwards suggest other
conceptions, or other feelings, with which it might then co-exist in a still more
complex group. " "We compare, we choose, in our internal plans, because
different objects are together present to our conceptions." Sir W. Hamilton
limited to six the number of objects which might exist in consciousness at the
same time ; and Mr. J. S. Mill, in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's
Philosophy, allows a " great multitude of states, more or less conscious, which
often co-exist in the mind!" On this question Sir H. Holland has some excellent
remarks in his " Chapters on Mental Physiology ; " and for a fuller notice of it
than would be proper here, I may refer to a review, in the Journal of Mental
Science for January 1866, of Mr. J. S. Mill's criticism of Sir W. Hamilton. It
would appear that ideas are in this regard like movements : several of them may
be in simultaneous action, though not equally present to consciousness. Experience
proves again that a more acute pain will frequently obscure or suspend a less
severe one before existing, though the causes of the latter are still active.
Similarly a new and stronger emotion will often banish weaker one.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 137

such function. "When the whole energy of an idea that is excited
passes immediately outwards in ideomotor action, then there is
scarce any, or there may be no, consciousness of it ; in order that
there may be consciousness of the idea, it is necessary not only
that its excitation reach a certain intensity, but that the whole
force of it do not pass immediately outwards in the reaction.
The persistence for a time of a certain degree of intensity of
energy in the ideational cell would certainly appear to be the
condition of consciousness. Accordingly when the process of
reflection is going on, quietly and rapidly, through the regular
association of ideas, there is no consciousness of the steps ; in
the train of thought one idea calls another into activity without
being itself attended to, so that the result may appear as if
sudden and accidental, and it may be very difficult, or quite
impossible, to retrace the steps, or take up the successive links,
by which it was evolved. In the course of a day how many
thoughts or ideas do thus suddenly start into consciousness, or,
as we may say, suddenly strike us ! The excitation of one
ideational cell would seem to be communicated immediately to
another, and the energy thus to run through a series by a con-
tinuous transformation, with no residual persistence at any of
the intermediate stages.

A conception of the way in which a group or series of move-
ments are observably associated, and the faculty of them is
firmly organised in the nervous centres, so that they are hence-
forth automatically performed, will be found most serviceable
in the interpretation of the phenomena of ideational activity.
Like muscular motions, ideas are associated in groups or series ;
like them, they become easier with repetition ; like them, they
are excited into action by an appropriate stimulus ; like them,
when once associated, they are not easily separated ; like them,
they may be accomplished without consciousness; like them,
they demand an appreciable time for their accomplishment;
and like them, they are fatigued by prolonged exercise. The
question of the time necessary for the performance, so to speak,
of an idea is really a most important one, which has not hitherto
received sufficient attention. It is sometimes not less than the
time required for the performance of a muscular motion ; for, as
Dr. Darwin observed, a musician can press the keys of a harpsi-

138 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

chord with his fingers in the order of a tune which he has been
accustomed to play, in as little a time as he can run over those
notes in his mind. Nay, an ide;.' may even require more time
than a movement : how many times in a day do we cover our
eyes with our eyelids without ever perceiving that we are in
the dark? In this case, as Dr. Darwin has also observed, the
muscular motion of the eyelid is performed quicker than the
idea of light can be changed for that of darkness : the twinkling
of an eye being quicker than thought. (7) The interference of
consciousness is often an actual hindrance to the association of
ideas, as it notably is to the performance of movements that
have attained the complete ease of an automatic execution.
It happens that we try hard to recall something to mind, and
are unable by the utmost effort of volition, and the strongest
direction of consciousness, to do so : we thereupon give up the
attempt, and direct our attention to something else ; and, after
a while, the result for which we strove in vain, flashes into
consciousness : the automatic action of the brain has worked it
out. That is exactly what we might expect to happen : for if
consciousness implies a persistence of the tension of a nerve-
cell's energy, then in proportion to the degree of persistent
tension must be the retardation of, or hindrance to, the process
of association of ideas, which is effected by a transference of
energy from one to another of the catenated cells. An active
consciousness is always detrimental to the best and most suc-
cessful thought : the thinker who is actively attentive to the
succession of his ideas is thinking to little purpose ; what the
genuine thinker observes is that he is conscious of the words
which he is uttering or writing, while the thought, unconsciously
elaborated by the organic action of the brain, flows from unpene-
trated depths into consciousness. Reflection is then, in reality,
the reflex action of the cells in their relations in the cerebral
ganglia : it is the reaction of one cell to a stimulus from a
neighbouring cell, and the sequent transference of its energy to
another cell — the reflection of it. Attention is the arrest of the
transformation of energy for a moment — the maintenance of a
particular tension. Bear in mind what was said of the varying
value of an idea and of the manner of its gradual organization
in the nervous centres, and the applicability of the term dclibcra-

v.] 'IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 139

tion to a process of thought, as a weighing or balancing of one
reason against another, will be evident. Or if we prefer the
term ratiocination, we may say, with Hobbes, that by it is meant
computation. " Now to compute is either to collect the sum of
many things that are added together, or to know what remains
when one thing is taken from another. Ratiocination, therefore,
is the same with addition and subtraction." Subtract the energy
of an opposing idea from a more powerful one, and the energy
left represents the resultant force of impulse after deliberation ;
add the energy of a like idea to another, and the sum represents
the force of the resolution. After severe reflection or delibera-
tion the decision or resolution may be held to signify that we
have resolved, to the best of our ability, the complex equation
set us.

Though reflection is a process of mental activity that takes
place within consciousness, yet consciousness itself, when fairly
examined, will show how limited is the power of the mind over
the train of its ideas. The formation of an idea is an organic
process that takes place by imperceptible degrees beyond the
range of consciousness ; the idea, when formed, exists in a latent,
quiescent or dormant state ; and it may even be made active,
and its energy duly expended, without consciousness. In like
manner the catenation of a group or series of ideas is an organic
process of which consciousness has no knowledge, and over
which volition has no control ; once the train is firmly linked
together by this organized coherence, the excitation of one must
needs bring on the excitation of the others, one after another, as
it traverses its appointed orbit, rising above the mental horizon
into consciousness, and in due order again sinking below it.
The power of the mind over the succession of its states is
plainly at best but a limited faculty ; herein corresponding
with that limited control which an individual has over the
phenomena of his bodily life, where conscious and uncon-
scious, voluntary and involuntary, acts are so intimately inter-
mixed. To make states of consciousness synonymous with
states of mind, as some have heedlessly done, is scarcely less
unwarrantable than it would be to assert all bodily acts to be
conscious acts.

There yet remains something more to be said concerning the

140 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

association of ideas. The anatomical connexions of a nerve-cell
in the cerebral ganglia do, of a necessity, limit the direction and
extent of its action upon other jells ; it cannot act on other
cells indifferently ; for it may be deemed tolerably certain that
as the conduction in nerve-fibres demonstrably does not pass
from one to another except by continuity of tissue, so the
activity of one cell cannot be communicated to another except
along an anastomosing process. Besides, or within, this neces-
sary limitation, which exists in the anatomical constitution
of the nervous centres, there is a further determination of
the manner of association by the individual life experience,
just as is the case with movements. "Not every thought to
every thought succeeds indifferently ;" but, as all ideas have
been acquired by means of experience, and we have " no imagi-
nation whereof we have not formerly had sense in whole or
in parts," so the connexions which ideas have with one
another in the brain must answer in some manner the order
of experience ; and even an individual's habit of association of
.ideas will witness to the influence of his particular education
and surroundings. Social life would simply be rendered impos-
sible if we could not depend upon the uniformity of the laws
of nature in man as well as out of him ; if one idea followed
another casually, it would be all one as if one event in nature
occurred without connexion with another. That one idea does
seemingly follow another casually, or at any rate without recog-
nisable coherence, justifies us, we are in the habit of thinking,
in shutting a man up in a lunatic asylum ; and one of the first
signs of insanity confessedly is an unaccountable change in, or
disruption of, the particular uniformity of an individual charac-
ter. The foundation of our laws, and the maxims of life,
entirely rest upon the constancy of laws in the human mind ;
" a prisoner who has neither money nor interest," Hume very
aptly says, " discovers the impossibility of his escape as well
when he considers the obstinacy of the gaoler as the walls and
bars with which he is surrounded ; and, in all attempts for his
freedom, chooses rather to work upon the stone and iron of the
one than upon the inflexible nature of the other." Although
ideas are thus as definitely associated in the mind by phy-
sical necessity as are cause and effect in external nature ; yet,

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 141

because sometimes one idea lias succeeded another in our ex-
perience, and sometimes another, it is not certain always in so
obscure and complex a labyrinth what idea shall in a given
case ensue ; only this is certain, that it shall be an idea that
has been associated with it at one time or another. Neces-
sity is, in truth, confessed in every deliberation and in every
act of our life.

Because each one has a certain specific nature as a human
being, and because the external nature in relation with which
each one exists is the same, therefore are inevitably formed cer-
tain general associations which cannot without great difficulty,
or anywise, be dissociated, just as different movements are so
linked together in all men that they cannot be dissociated.
Such are what have been described as the general laws of asso-
ciation of ideas — those of cause and effect, of contiguity in time
and space, of resemblance, of contrast ; in all which ways, it is
true, one idea may follow another, though also in many other
ways. We are enabled, however, by virtue of the general laws of
association in which all men agree, to predict the general course
of human conduct, and to establish laws for the regulation of the
social state. Within these general principles, however, there are
numerous subordinate differences; the special character of an
individual's association of ideas being determined partly by his
original nature, and partly by his special education and life-
experience.

That natural differences in the mental susceptibilities of dif-
ferent persons do influence the character of their association of
ideas, is shown, as Dr. Priestley long since pointed out,* by the
greater ease with which some men associate those co-existences
of sensory perceptions which combine to constitute the idea of
an object, while others associate more readily those successive
sensory impressions which go to form the idea of an event.
These different tendencies and dispositions are really at the
foundation of two different types of mind. In the former case,
there is a mind attentive to the discrimination of impressions,
skilful in discernment, and susceptible to the pleasurable and
painful properties of things — in fact, a mind good at description,
and fond of natural history ; in the latter case, there is a mind

* In his Introduction to Hartley.

142 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

observant of the order of occurrence of phenomena, prone to the
investigation of the genesis of things, or the connexion of cause
and effect — in fact, a philosophic intellect, affecting science and
abstract truth, to which an event that can be nowise explained
or displayed as an evolution of antecedent causes, is a painful
tribulation. Such mind is at the opposite end of the scale to
that of the " poor idiot born," who, by reason of his imperfect
constitution, has but few ideas, and cannot duly associate those
few, just as he is capable of but few imperfectly associated
movements. Forget not, however, that between the idiot at
the bottom of the scale of human life, and the philosopher
at its summit, there are to be met with beings representing
every grade of the transition.

Special adaptations to particular circumstances of life also
concur to lay the foundation of individual habits of thought
and conduct. The successful tact or skill of one man in circum-
stances in which the awkwardness or failure of another is
striking, is the consequence of a rapid association of ideas
which has, from repeated special experience, become so familiar,
so much a habit, as to appear like an intuition. In such case
the group, or series of ideas, is so closely united, so firmly
organised, as to behave almost as one idea ; while the excitation,
though sufficient for the desired end, does not take place to such
degree as to produce consciousness.* Even the instantaneous
and acute judgment of a much experienced and well-trained
mind, which is sometimes so rapid as to look like an instinct or
intuition, is founded upon a previous careful training in obser-
vation and reflection ; it depends in reality on an excellent
association of ideas that has been organized in correspondence

* " Not only do simple ideas, by strong association, run together, and form
complex ideas ; but a complex idea, when the simple ideas which compose it have
become so consolidated that it always appears as one, is capable of entering into
combinations with other ideas, both simple and complex. Thus two complex
ideas may be united together by a strong association, and coalesce into one, in
the same manner as two or more simple ideas coalesce into one. This union of
two complex ideas into one, Dr. Hartley has called a duplex idea. Two also of
these duplex ideas, or doubly compounded ideas, may unite into one ; and these,
again, into other compounds without end." .... " How many complex or
duplex ideas are all united in the idea of furniture ? How many more in the idea
of merchandise ? How many more in the idea called Every Thing ? " — J. Mill,
op. cit. p. 82.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 143

with, or adaptation to, the series of co-existenees and succes-
sions in external nature ; and thus it comes to pass that even
the judgment of an individual in his particular relations of life
becomes almost automatic. "When it is said, again, that a man's
character is completely formed, we express thereby the fact that
he has acquired certain definite combinations and associations
of ideas which, firmly organized, henceforth avail him in the
different circumstances of life. It is evident, then, that if we
had a complete knowledge of the inner nature of an individual,
if we could penetrate that most exquisitely organised fabric of
thought which by reason of his particular education and life-
experience has been grafted on the original capabilities, it
would be possible to foretell with certainty his mode of thought
and conduct under any given circumstances. Is not this a pre-
diction which, as it is, those who know a man best can often
make, with close approximation to truth? But inasmuch as
no two minds are exactly alike originally, and as no two persons
have precisely similar experiences, the speciality of human con-
ditions being infinite in variety, we cannot obtain the exact and
complete elements for a correct and definite judgment of the
operation of a given cause upon any individual. None the less
true is it that every cause does operate definitely by as stern
a necessity as any which exists in physical nature.

Once more, then, is it rendered evident how necessary to
a complete psychology of the individual is the consideration
of the circumstances in which he has lived, and in relation to
which he has developed, as well as the observation of his habits
of thought, feeling, and action. From what has been said of
ideas and their associations, it is obvious that in the same
language, when used by different people, there must often be
considerable difference in regard to the fulness and exactness
of the ideas conveyed by it. (8) In translation from one language
to another it plainly appears that ideas, which have a general
resemblance, have yet certain special differences according to
the depth of thought, the religion, the manners and customs
of the different nations; it is as hard a matter to convey
adequately in the French language the meaning of German
philosophy as it is to express adequately, by the corresponding
German words, the exact meaning of the French names for

144 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

different shades of elegant vice or elegant cookery. And who-
soever enters upon the stuiy of psychology with the assumption
that an idea deemed or called the same has always the same
constant value in different people of the same nation, will be led
into the vainest errors by so false a metaphysical conception.
Do not men owe most of their errors and disputes to the fact
that they cannot come to a right understanding of words ?
How should they, indeed, when by the same word is frequently
signified an idea at very different stages of its evolution ?

It remains only to add here, that the successive formation of
ideas in mental development and the progressive complexity of
their association and of their interaction in the supreme centres
of the brain, illustrate, as do the development of the spinal
centres and the development of the sensory centres, an increas-
ing organic specialization in tho relations of man to external
nature; that Yon Baer's law of progress from the general
and simple to the special and complex here, as elsewhere in
organic development, has sway.

Thus far, then, we have exhibited the path of distribution for
the energy of an idea when it does not pass outwards in a direct
reaction to the stimulus from without : it travels from cell to
cell within the cortical layers of the hemispheres, and thus gives
rise to reflection. But at the end of all this wandering or of the
various transformations, as the final result of reflection, there
may still be a reaction downwards, and consequent outward
activity of the individual. "When that takes place it is voli-
tional action : the will, abstractly speaking, is the resultant of
the complex interaction of the supreme ganglionic cerebral
cells. We ascend gradually to this highest manifestation of
force by tracing upwards the fundamental reaction of nerve-cell
through reflex action, sensori-motor action, and ideo-motor
action : in our knowledge of the more simple phenomena we
have a guide with which to enter on the study of those which
are more complex and obscure. As, however, there is usually
present in the action of w7ill some desire of a good to be
obtained, or of an evil to be shunned, it will be proper, before
considering the nature of volition, to deal with the emotions.
To them, therefore, shall the next chapter be devoted.

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 145

NOTES.

1 (p. 127). — "For what is meant by innate 1 If innate be equivalent
to natural, then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be
allowed to be innate or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter
words, whether in opposition to what is uncommon, artificial, or mira-
culous. If by innate he meant contemporary to our birth, the dispute
seems to be frivolous ; nor is it worth while to inquire at what time
thinking begins, whether before, at, or after our birth. Again, the
word idea seems to be commonly taken in a very loose sense by Locke
and others as standing for any of our perceptions, our sensations and
passions, as well as our thoughts. Now, in this sense, I should desire
to know what can be meant by asserting that self-love, or resentment
of injuries, or the passion between the sexes, is not innate ? " — Hume,
Essay concerning the Human Understanding.

2 (p. 128). — " I cannot but think that the two main articles of
belief which have been set down to the credit of the Indian — namely,
the Great Spirit or Creator, and the Happy Hunting-grounds in a future
world, — are the results of missionary teaching, the work of the Fathers
Hennepin, Marguette, and their noble army of martyred Jesuit fol-
lowers." .... The Manitou, which we are obliged to translate
" Spirit," exists everywhere ; they believe there is a manitou in water,
in fire, in stars, in grass, &c. ; it is the essence of Fetishism. " It is
doubtful whether these savages ever grasped the idea of a human soul."
. ..." I do not believe that an Indian of the plains ever became a
Christian. He must first be humanized, then civilized, and, lastly,
Christianized ; and, as has been said before, I doubt his surviving the
operation." — The City of the Saints, by E. F. Burton, p. 133.

3 (p. 128). — "There is no other act of man's mind that I can
remember, naturally planted in him, so as to need no other thing in
the exercise of it, but to be born a man and live with the use of
his five senses. Those other faculties of which I shall speak by and
by, and which seem proper to man only, are acquired and increased
by study and industry, and of most men learned by instruction and
discipline ; and proceed all from the invention of word and speech." —
Hobbes, Leviatlian, ch. iii.

4 (p. 129). — "The first consideration I have upon the subject of
the senses is that I make a doubt whether or no man be furnished
with all natural senses. I see several animals who live an entire and

L

146 HEMISPHERICAL GANGLIA, OR [chap.

perfect life, some "without sight, others without hearing ; who knows
whether to us also, one, two, three, or many other senses may not be
wanting? For if any one be wanting, our examination cannot dis-
cover the defect." " 'Tis the privilege of the senses to be the utmost
limit of our discovery ; there is nothing beyond them that can assist us
in exploration, not so much as one sense in the discovery of another.". . .

" There is no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that does
not by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If we
were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony and of the
voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our
science ; for, besides what belongs to the proper effect of every sense,
how many arguments, consequences, and conclusions, do we draw to
other things, by comparing one sense with another 1 Let an under-
standing man imagine human nature originally produced without the
sense of seeing, and consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect
would bring upon him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul ; he
will then see by that of how great importance to the knowledge of
truth, the privation of such another sense, or of two or three, should
we be so deprived, would be. We have formed a truth by the con-
currence of our five senses ; but, perhaps, we should have the consent
and contribution of eight or ten to make a certain discovery of it in its
essence." — Montaigne's Essays.

5 (p. 129). — It would appear that one hemisphere of the brain can
only act, whether by means of idea or volitionally, on the limbs of the
opposite side, that it cannot act upon the limbs of the same side of the
body. Philipeaux and Vulpian injured or removed portions of the
left hemisphere in dogs. All of them are said to have exhibited a
slight degree of paralysis of the right side, and moved in a circle
when forced to move. The hemiplegia was slight, though evident, for
the animals supported themselves on the enfeebled limbs. But was
there a true hemiplegia? Was not the paralysis spurious, and due
really to the loss of intelligence and volition in the damaged hemi-
sphere, so that the animal only had sensori-motor power left on that
side ? Accordingly, as the left side continued to act freely under the
instigation of the will proceeding from the right hemisphere, while the
left depended on sensori-motor action only, or on synergy with the
right, the animal was made to move in a circle.

e (p. 136). — "The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay
of the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it, in such manner as
the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars ; which stars do no
less exercise their virtues, by which they are visible, in the day than in

v.] IDEATIONAL NERVOUS CENTRES. 147

the night. But because among many strokes which our eyes, ears,
and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is
sensible ; therefore, the light of the sun being predominant, we are
not affected with the action of the stars." — Leviathan, ch. vi.

7 (]). 138). — "The time taken up in performing an idea is likewise
much the same as that taken up in performing a muscular motion. A
musician can press the keys of an harpsichord with his fingers in the
order of a tune he has been accustomed to play in as little time as he
can run over these notes in his mind. So we many times in an hour
cover our eyeballs, without perceiving that we are in the dark ; hence
the perception or idea of light is not changed for that of darkness in
so small a time as the twinkling of an eye, so that, in this case, the
muscular motion of the eyelid is performed quicker than the perception
of light can be changed for that of darkness." — Zoonomia, vol. L p. 24.

8 (p. 143). — "It will easily appear from the observations here made
upon words, and the associations which adhere to them, that the lan-
guages of different ages and nations must bear a general resemblanee to
each other, and yet have considerable particular differences ; whence any
one may be translated into any other, so as to convey the same ideas
in general, and yet not with perfect precision and exactness. They
must resemble one another because the phenomena of nature, which
they are all intended to express, and the uses and exigencies of human
life, to 'which they minister, have a general resemblance. But then,
as the bodily make and genius of each people, the air, soil, and
climate, commerce, arts, science, religion, &c, make considerable
differences in different ages and nations, it is natural to expect that the
languages should have proportionable differences in respect of each
other." — Hartley's Tlieory of the Human Mind, by Dr. Priestley.

"Wherefore, as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right
understanding of speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunder-
standing of the same ; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed
only from man, so from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false
opinions. For speech has something in it like to a spider's web (as it
was said of old of Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender
and delicate wits are ensnared and stopped ; but strong wits break
easily through them." — Hobbes, vol. i. p. 36.

l2

CHAPTEE VI.

THE EMOTION a.

MAN is patient and agent ; he suffers certain passions, and
does certain actions. Passion is actual suffering, and
depresses ; action is the cure for suffering, and elevates. A
calm deliberation involves an equilibrium between suffering and
doing ; but in so far as an idea is attended with some feeling,
whether of pleasure or of pain, or of a more special character,
it is to that extent emotional ; and if the feeling preponderate,
the idea is obscured, and the state of mind is then called an
emotion or a passion. The definite farm of the idea in the
material substratum is obscured or partially lost in the agitation
or commotion of the nerve elements. Strictly speaking, all con-
scious psychical states are, at first, feelings; but, after having been
experienced several times, they are adequately and definitely
organized, and become almost automatic or indifferent under
ordinary circumstances. So long as the ideas or mental states are
not adequately organized in correspondence with the individual's
external relations, more or less feeling will attend their excita-
tion : they will, in fact, be more or less emotional. When the
equilibrium between the subjective and objective is duly estab-
lished, there is no passion, and there is but little emotion. (2)

It has been sufficiently evident, up to the present point, that
the condition of the nervous centres is of the greatest conse-
quence in respect of the formation of the so-called mental
faculties, and of the manifestation of their functions; it will
now be seen that this condition is of still more manifest im-
portance in regard to the phenomena of the emotions. Every
one's experience teaches him that an idea winch is at one time
indifferent, being accompanied by no feeling of pleasure or

chap, vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 149

discomfort, may, at another time, be attended by some feeling of
discomfort, or become positively painful. And it requires no very
attentive observation of men to discover that different persons
are very differently affected by one and the same object, and
often pass very different judgments upon it in consequence. So
much is this the case that we are in the constant habit of dis-
tinguishing men by the difference of their emotional disposition,
or of the temper of their minds, and of speaking accordingly of
one man as timid ; of another as courageous ; of one as irritable,
quick-tempered ; of another as even-tempered, placid. One of
the earliest symptoms of an oncoming insanity, and one that is
almost universally present as the expression of a commencing
deterioration, howsoever caused, of the nervous centres, is an
emotional disturbance, upon which follows more or less per-
version of judgment. It is feeling, or the affective life, that
reveals the deep essential nature of the man ; for it expresses the
tone of his nerve element, which again is the result of its
actual constitution or composition, inherited and acquired.

The first occurring observation is, that an idea which is favour-
able to the impulses or strivings of the individual, to self-ex-
pansion, is accompanied by a feeling of more or less pleasure ;
and that an idea which betokens individual restriction, which is
opposed to the expansion of self, is attended with a feeling of
more or less discomfort or pain. As the organic germ does,
under circumstances favourable to its inherent developmental
impulse, incorporate matter from without, exhibiting its gratifi-
cation by its growth, and, under unfavourable conditions, does
not assimilate, but manifests its suffering or passion by its
decay ; so likewise the ganglionic nerve-cell of the hemi-
spheres attests by a pleasant emotion the furtherance of its
development, and declares by a painful feeling of discomfort the
restriction or injury which it suffers from an unfavourable
stimulus. Even in the earliest sensation, therefore, the exist-
ence of pain or pleasure is a sort of obscure judgment on its
advantage or disadvantage to the personality or self — a judgment
in which, as Herbart has observed, the subject cannot yet be
separated from the predicate that expresses praise or blame.*

* " Ein Urtheil, in dem irar das Vorgestellte sich noch nicht von dem
Predicate, das Beifall oder Tadel ausdriickt, sondern lasst. " — Herbart.

150 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

Among so many clangers, then, " to have a care of one's self is,"
in the words of Hobbes, " so far from being a matter scornfully
to be looked at, that one has neither the power nor wish to have
done otherwise. For every man is desirous of what is good for
him, and shuns what is evil, but chiefly the chiefest of natural
evils, which is death ; and this he doth by a certain impulsion
of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downwards." (2)
Children and savages best exhibit in a naked simplicity the
different passions that result from the affection of self by what,
when painful, is deemed an ill ; when pleasurable, a good.

It is necessary to bear in mind that a stimulus, which in
moderation gives rise to a pleasant idea, or rather emotion, will,
when too prolonged or too powerful, produce discomfort or pain,
and consequent efforts to escape from it. There is then a desire
to shun the stimulus, like as one altogether noxious is shunned ;
the desire becoming the motive or spring of action. The impulse
in such case is described as desire, because there is consciousness
of it ; but it is without doubt the equivalent in a higher kind of
tissue of that effort which the lowest animal organism exhibits,
without consciousness, in getting away from an injurious stimu-
lus. In both instances there is, in truth, the display of the
so-called self-conservative impulse which is immanent in all
living matter — an impulse or instinct, which, whatever deeper
facts of intimate composition may be connoted by it, is the
essential condition of the continued existence of organic element.
Such reaction of organic element is as natural and necessary as
the reaction of any chemical compound, because as much the con-
sequence of the properties of matter thus organically combined.
"When the stimulus to a hemispherical nerve-cell is not in
sufficient force to satisfy the demands of the latter, — when, in
fact, it is inadequate, — then there is the manifestation of an
affinity or attraction by the nervous centre, an outward impulse,
appetency, or striving, which, again, as it occurs in consciousness,
is revealed to us as desire, craving, or appetite. There is no
difference, indeed, as Spinoza observes, between appetite and
desire, except in so far as the latter implies consciousness ;
desire is self-conscious appetite. (3) Because we have an appetite
or desire for something, therefore we judge it to be good : it
certainly is not because a thing is judged to be good that we

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 151

have an appetite or desire for it. Here, again, there is an
exact correspondence with that attraction, impulse, or striving
of organic element towards a favourable stimulus manifested
throughout nature, and the necessary correlate of which is a
repulsion of what is unfavourable. Because the affinity is
exhibited in vital structure, we are prone, when observing it,
to transfer our own states of consciousness to the organic element,
and, therefore, to represent it on all occasions as striving, by
means of a self-conservative impulse or instinct, for the stimulus
favourable to its growth. But the attraction is no less a physical
necessity than the attraction of an acid for an alkali, of the
needle to the pole, or of positive for negative electricity ; if
there were no stimulus, there would be no reaction on the part
of the organic element ; if the stimulus were in injurious excess,
or otherwise unfavourable, there must be disturbance of the
statical equilibrium, and a reaction of repulsion ; and when the
stimulus is favourable but deficient, the reaction is evinced in
an attraction or affinity for an additional amount, like as a non-
neutralized acid will take up more alkali, or as unsatisfied
appetite craves more nutriment. Now, it is most important
that we do not allow the presence of consciousness to mislead us
as to what is the fundamental condition of things in the gan-
glionic cells of the brain. Here, as elsewhere, healthy organic
element manifests its fundamental properties, pursuing the good,
eschewing the ill ; and consciousness is something superadded,
but which nowise abolishes them. The striving after a pleasing
impression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a
physical consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its
relation to a certain stimulus ; and the reaction or desire becomes
the motive of a general action on the part of the individual for
the purpose of satisfying a want, or of shunning an ill. The
care of himself no man in good health has the power of neglect-
ing. To cease to strive is to begin to die, physically, morally,
and intellectually.

It is obvious then, not only how desires become the motives
of action, but how they are gradually evolved into their complete
form out of the unconscious organic appetites. In the desire of
the adult there is necessarily some sort of conception of what is
desired, though it is at times a not very definite one ; but in

152 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

the child, as in the idiot, we frequently witness a vague restless-
ness evincing an undefined want of, or desire for, something of
which itself is unconscious, but which, when obtained, presently
produces quiet and satisfaction : the organic life speaks out with
an as yet inarticulate utterance. Most striking is that example
of the evolution of organic life into consciousness which is
observed at the time of puberty, when new organs come into
action ; then vague and ill-understood desires give rise - to
obscure impulses that have no defined aim, and produce a rest-
lessness which, when misapplied, is often mischievous : the
amorous appetite thus first declares its existence. But to prove
how little it is indebted to the consciousness which is a natural
subsequent development, it is only necessary to reflect that even
in man the desire sometimes attair.s to a knowledge of its aim,
and to a sort of satisfaction, in dreams before it does so in real
life. This simple reflection might of itself suffice to teach psy-
chologists how far more fundamental than any conscious mental
state is the unconscious mental or cerebral life. Given an ill-
constituted or imperfectly developed brain at the time when the
sexual appetite makes its appearance, and what is the result ?
None other tnan that which happens with the lower animal,
where love is naked lust, and the sight of the female excites a
desire that immediately issues in uncontrollable efforts for its
gratification. Given, on the other hand, a well constituted and
naturally developed brain, the sexual desire undergoes a complex
development in consciousness : from its basis are evolved all
those delicate, exalted, and beautiful feelings of love that consti-
tute the store of the poet, and play so great a part in human
happiness and in human sorrow. What, however, is true of
these particular desires is true of all our desires : it may be
fitly said, with Bacon, " that the mind in its own nature would
be temperate and staid, if the affections, as winds, did not put it
in tumult and perturbation;" or, with Nova' is, that "life is a
feverish activity excited by passion."

When the circumstances are exactly adapted to the capacity
of the organic element, then are they most favourable to the
development of the latter; and a steady growth of it fails not to
testify to the complete harmony of the relations. Or, adopting
the language proper in such case to the highest relations of man,

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 153

there is an equilibrium between the subjective and the objective,
and no passion : there is neither a painful feeling with consequent
desire to avoid a suffering, nor is there a feeling of insufficient
satisfaction with consequent desire to increase or continue an
enjoyment; but a steady assimilation, promoting the evolution of
idea, goes favourably on : intellectual development is then most
favoured. As there is no outward striving or craving in such
case, the energy of the response to the stimulus is expended in
the growth of the idea and in the reaction of it upon other ideas,
— in other words, in intellectual development. Conception and
desire, therefore, stand in a sort of opposition to one another,
although in every mental act they co-exist in greater or less
relative degree ; in every conception there is, or has once been,
as previously said, some feeling ; and again, in every distinct
desire there is a conception of something desired. But the oppo-
sition between them is in reality a matter of the degree of for-
mation of the idea or conception ; for, whatever its nature, there
is always more or less feeling with it when first experienced,
which, however, disappears in proportion as it becomes definitely
organized ; and even though some little feeling or desire remains
connected with the idea, it may often remain in consciousness,
or only modify reflection, not being of sufficient degree to pass
into outward manifestation. May we not then justly affirm, as
we clearly perceive, that the intellectual life does not supply the
motive, or impulse, to action ; that the understanding, or reason,
is not the cause of our outward actions, but that the desires are ?
A strong desire or longing for a certain object in life often brings
• its own accomplishment. The desire is the expression of the
individual's character, the manifestation of the essential affinities
of his nature ; accordingly he strives with all his might to attain
unto the aim which he sets before him, and probably succeeds
either in a direct or a circuitous way. Thus it is that aspirations
are often prophecies, the harbingers of what a man shall be in a
condition to perform. Men of great reasoning powers, on the
other hand, are notoriously not unfrequently incapacitated thereby
from energetic action; they balance reasons so nicely that no one
of them outweighs another, and they can come to no decision :
with them, as with Hamlet, meditation paralyses action. In fact,
the power of the understanding is reflective and inhibitory, being

154 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

exhibited rather in the hindrance of passion-prompted action,
andin the guidance of our impulses, than in the instigation
of conduct ; its office in the individual as in the race is,
as Comte observed, not to impart the habitual impulsion, but
deliberative. (4)

As there are two factors which go to the production of an
emotion — namely, the organic element and the external stimulus
— it is plain that the character of the emotional result will not
be determined only by the nature of the stimulus, but will
depend greatly also upon the condition of the organic element.
The equilibrium between the individual and his surroundings
may, in fact, be disturbed by a subjective modification, or an
internal commotion, as well as by an unwonted impression from
without. When some bodily derangement has affected the con-
dition of the cells of the cerebral ganglia, either directly or by
a sympathetic action, then an idea arising is accompanied with
certain emotional qualities, though it is an idea which, in health,
is commonly indifferent ; just as when a morbid state of an organ
of sense, or of its sensory ganglion, renders painful an impression
which in health would be indifferent or even agreeable. Every
one's experience teaches how much his tone of mind varies ac-
cording to his bodily states. The drunken man, at a certain
stage of his degradation, gets absurdly emotional ; and the
general paralytic, whose supreme nervous centres are visibly
degenerate, is characterised by great emotional excitability, as
well as by intellectual feebleness. The general feeling of well-
being which results from a healthy condition of all the organs of
the body, which is indeed the expression of a favourably pro-
ceeding organic life, is known as the coencesthcsis, and is some-
times described as an emotion : but it is not truly an emotion ;
it is the body's sensation or feeling of its well-being, and marks
a condition of things, therefore, in which activity of any kind
will be pleasurable — in which an idea that arises will be
pleasantly emotional, not otherwise than as bodily movement
is then pleasurable. On the other hand, the general feeling of
discomfort which follows upon a visceral disturbance, or some
other cause, is a condition in which activity of any kind will be
rather painful than otherwise ; there is a restricted or hindered
personality, and an idea arising is apt to be gloomily emotional.

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 155

It plainly amounts to the same thing, whether an excessive
stimulus acts upon nerve element when in a stable and
healthy state, and produces suffering; or whether a natural
stimulus acts upon it when in an enfeebled or unstable con-
dition, and similarly gives rise to suffering : in both cases,
there is, physically speaking, a disturbance of the equilibrium
of the nervous element, or a resolution of it into lower but
more stable compounds ; or, psychologically speaking, there is,
in both cases, an idea excited which is attended with painful
emotional qualities — an idea unfavourable to individual expan-
sion. The pain which is occasioned is the cry of organic ele-
ment for deliverance. The greater the disturbance of nerve
element, however produced, the more unstable is its state ; and
an instability of it, signifying, as it does, a susceptibility to rapid
molecular or chemical retrograde metamorphosis, furnishes the
most favourable conditions for the production of emotion, passion,
or commotion, as the term was of old. It is easy to perceive,
then, how it is that great emotion is exceedingly exhausting —
for the same reason, in fact, that repeated electrical discharges
by the gymnotus or torpedo produce exhaustion ; it is easy to
perceive, also, that whatever cause, moral or physical, works an
exhausting or depressing effect upon an individual, inclines him
to become emotional.

The original nature of nerve element is, however, as nothing
in the determination of the special character of the higher
emotions, compared with its acquired nature as this has been
slowly organized by education and in relation to the circum-
stances of life. Much discussion has taken place as to whether
an emotion is merely a feeling of pleasure or pain accompanying
a particular idea ; whether, for example, benevolence is nothing
more than the pleasant feeling that accompanies the idea of
accomplishing the good of another, malice the feeling that attends
the idea of injuring another, and so on. But there is some
danger here of being confused or misled by words ; it certainly
must be allowed that there is something in the emotion more
special than the general feeling either of pleasure or pain: such
feeling is present, no doubt, but it does not determine the special
character of the emotion; it is something superadded, which
determines only the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the

156 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

emotion. It is, in reality, the specific character of the idea
which determines the specific character of the emotion ; and
accordingly emotions are as many and various as ideas.(5) And
it has been before shown that the character of the idea is deter-
mined by the nature of the impression from without, and by the
nature, as it has been modified by a life experience, of the
reacting nervous centre : this now containing an organization
of ideas as its acquired nature, or as the expression of its due
development. How difficult it is to explain matters from a
psychological point of view, is easy to perceive ; while we
are considering the relation of emotion to idea, they are both
concomitant effects of a deeper lying cause. As there are
subjective sensations, so also are there subjective emotional
states. It depends upon the nature of the fundamental ele-
ments, the internal reacting centre and the external impression,
whether in a given case we shall have a definite idea with little
or no emotional quality, or whether we shall have the emotional
quality so marked that the idea is almost lost in it. The hemi-
spherical cells are confessedly not sensitive to pain ; but they
have a sensibility of their own to ideas, and the sensibility
which thus declares the manner of their affection is what we
call emotional. And as there may be a hyperesthesia or an
anaesthesia of sense, so also there may be a hyperesthesia or an
anaesthesia of ideas. Certainly there do not appear to be satis-
factory grounds either in psychology or physiology for supposing
the nervous centres of emotion to be distinct from those of idea.
As we justly speak of the tone of the spinal cord, by the
variations of which its functions are so much affected, so we
may fairly also speak of a mental or psychical tone, the tone of
the supreme nervous centres, the variations of which so greatly
affect the character of the mental states that supervene. And
as it appeared when treating of the spinal cord that, apart from
its original nature and accidental causes of disturbance, the
tone of it was determined by the totality of impressions made
upon it, and of motor reactions thereto, which had been organized
in its constitution as faculties ; so with regard to the supreme
centres of our mental life, from the residua of past thoughts,
feelings, and actions, which have been organized as mental
faculties, there results a certain psychical tone in each indi-

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 157

vidual. This is the basis of the individual's conception of the
ego — the affections of which, therefore, best reveal his real
nature — a conception which, so far from being, as is often said,
fixed and unchanging, undergoes gradual change with the
change of the individual's relations as life proceeds. Who-
soever candidly reflects upon the striking modification, or rather
evolution, of the ego, which happens at the time of puberty
both in men and women, will surely not find it hard to con-
ceive how the self may imperceptibly but surely change through
life. The education and experience to which any one is sub-
jected likewise modify, if less suddenly, not less certainly, the
tone of his character. By constantly blaming certain actions
and praising certain others in their children, parents are able so
to form their character that, apart from any reflection, these
shall ever in after life be attended with a certain pleasure ;
those, on the other hand, with a certain pain. Experience
proves that the customs and religions of different nations differ
most widely ; what one nation views as crime another praises as
virtue ; what one nation glorifies in as a legitimate pleasure,
another reprobates as a shameful vice : there is scarcely a single
crime or vice that has not been exalted into a religious observ-
ance by one nation or other at one period or other of the world's
history. The prayer of the Thug was a homicide, his sacrifice a
corpse. How much, then, is the moral feeling or conscience de-
pendent upon the due educational development of the mind ! (6)

The manner in which music affects some people, producing a
lively feeling of immediate pleasure, calming mental agitation
and exalting the mental tone, and thereby indirectly much
affecting mental activity, affords an excellent example of a
marked effect upon the psychical tone by physical agency;
it might be adduced, if it were necessary, to attest the cor-
poreal nature of the process. Such sentiments as the love of
wife and the love of children, various as they are in kind and
degree in different persons, are not definite emotions so much
as the general tone of feeling resulting from certain relations in
life; they represent a mental state in which ideas in harmony
with the tone of mind will be attended with a pleasant emotion,
and discordant ideas with a painful emotion, just as harmony in
music produces pleasure and discord produces pain. So also of

158 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

the gentle feeling of social propriety, which is easily recognised
in one who has it, and the absence of which cannot be con-
cealed, is indeed made more evident by the pretence of it;
there is not a definite emotion, but a disposition or tone of
mind with which certain thoughts, feelings, and actions har-
monize so as to occasion pleasure. The refreshing and invi-
gorating influence of some writers does not depend so much
on the actual sense of the words as upon the tone of mind
produced by them. Again, the higher aesthetic feelings are
without question the result of a good cultivation, conscious
development having imperceptibly become a sort of instinctive
endowment, a refinement to which vulgarity of any kind will be
repugnant ; they are the bloom of a high culture, and, like the
ceensethesis, represent a general tone of mind which cannot be
described as definite emotion, but in which certain ideas that
arise will have pleasant emotional qualities. Reflect, again, on
the powerful effects which the aspects of nature produce' upon
philosophic minds of the highest order. The vague mysterious
feelings which such minds have, as instinctive expressions of
their fellowship with nature, thrills of that harmonious sympathy
with events whereby they are transported with an indefinite
feeling of joy in view of certain of her glories, or oppressed by
a dim presentiment of evil under different relations — these are
vague psychical feelings that in reality connote the highest intel-
lectual acquisition; they are the consummate inflorescence of
the highest psychical development, the supreme harmonies of
the most exalted psychical tone. (")

It is most necessary clearly to realize how much, not the cere-
bral centres only, but the whole system of bodily nerves, are
concerned in the phenomena of the emotional life. The beatings
of the heart, the movements of respiration, the expressions of the
countenance, the pallor of fear, or the flush of anger, and the
effects upon all the secretions and upon nutrition — all these evince
with certainty that the organic life participates essentially in the
manifestation of emotion. Before definite paths of association of
ideas, and groups of ideas, have been organised through culture
and experience, every emotion tends to react directly outwards,
either upon the organs of the organic life or upon the instruments
of the animal life. In children and savages simple emotions are

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 159

observably easily excited, and as readily manifested in outward
display ; it is only when a strong character has been fashioned
that the power exists to retain the emotional energy within the
sphere of the intellectual life ; and even in the strongest character
it sometimes happens that an emotion, too powerful or too sud-
denly excited, will escape control. It has now been sufficiently
demonstrated, by observation and experiment, that the cerebro-
spinal system does exercise an influence over the ganglia imme-
diately concerned in the phenomena of the organic life ; and it
is quite in accordance with physiological observation, therefore,
to admit that the commotion in the nerve element of the supreme
centres, which an emotion implies, will affect the nervous centres
of the organic life, and through them the organic movements, or
the more intimate processes of nutrition* In fact, the experi-
ments of Pfluger, Bernard, and others, on the influence of the
cerebro-spinal system over the small arteries ; and those of
Lister, on the movement of the pigment granules in the stellate
cells of the frog's skin, — may be said to have experimentally
demonstrated what has long been popularly observed of the
manner of action of the emotions. A joyous, hopeful, enthu-
siastic feeling has an enlivening influence on the bodily life :
when moderate, producing a quiet, equable effect ; but when
lively giving rise to more evident results, as brilliancy of the
eyes, an accelerated pulse, increased warmth, and an inclination
to laugh or sing. Though a moderate stimulation of the cerebro-
spinal system appears to favour or increase the action of the
organic centres, yet it admits of no question that an excessive
irritation of the higher centres produces an inhibitory effect upon
their functions ; wherein, again, we may perceive a sufficient
reason of the disease in an organ which is sometimes the result
of a prolonged depressing passion, especially of depression in
its highest degree — hopelessness.f And because the weak

* It is hard to conceive how it should fail to do so, if it he true that nerves end
hy an actual continuity of substance in the parts which they supply, as is now
maintained.

t Lister says, as the result of his experiments on what Pfltiger calls inhibitory
nerve phenomena {Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. xxxii. p. 367) " that one
and the same afferent nerve may, according to its operating mildly or energeti-
cally, either exalt or depress the functions of the nervous centres on which it
acts. It is, I believe, upon this that all inhibitory influence depends."

160 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

organ is ever the sufferer, because here, as elsewhere, to be weak
is to be miserable, the effect of a passion is generally experienced
in his affected organ by one who is the subject of any local
idiosyncrasy ; it more easily sympathises with the centric com-
motion. Passion, in its essential nature, really betokens the
sympathy of the whole nervous system ; and a great disposition
to passion means a great disposition to such sympathy. It is
true that, in consequence of a certain elective affinity and of culti-
vation, the effects of an emotion are usually limited to a certain
group of muscles, or to some other definite activity ; but the
less the culture, the more general are the visible effects of
emotion or passion : in the idiot an explosion of passion is
sometimes an explosion of convulsions.

But there is another important consideration with regard to
our emotions. When we fix the countenance in the expression,
or the body in the attitude, which any passion naturally occa-
sions, it is most certain that we acquire in some degree that
passion. In fact, as we complete our intellectual activity by
the participation of the sensory centres, thereby rendering our
abstract ideas definite through a sensory representation of them,
so in our emotional life any particular passion is rendered stronger
and more distinct by the existence of those bodily states which
it naturally produces, and which in turn, when otherwise pro-
duced, tend to engender it. There can be little doubt that each
passion which is special in kind has its special bodily expres-
sion ; this being truly an essential part of it. Mr. Braid found,
by experiment on patients whom he had put in a state of hyp-
notism, that by inducing attitudes of body natural to certain
passions he could excite those passions. We perceive, then,
how close is the sympathy or connexion between the bodily
system and the emotional or affective life, which supplies the
habitual impulsion to action ; while the intellectual life which,
as deliberative or regulative, controls and directs the activity of
the individual, has the closest relations with the senses. From
want of attention to the essential intervention of the whole of the
bodily in the mental life — a neglect springing from the unjustifi-
able contempt of the body inherited from the theologists — the
physical expressions of our mental states have not been properly
studied. As the Indian savage surely tracks the footsteps of his

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. \Q]

enemy where the uneducated European eye can see no trace ; or
as the American hunter, by careful attention to the appearances
of the trees, guides himself safely through pathless forests in
which the greatest philosopher would lose his way and perish ;
so it is probable that any competent observer who devoted
himself to study scientifically, with patient care and sedulous
attention, the manners of a large number of persons, the different
expressions of their features and of their actions, might discover
a certain clue to their character, and often be able to read off
with ease their feelings and desires. It was the recognition of
the intimate connexion and mutual reaction between the pas-
sions and the bodily life that moved Bichat to locate them
as the ancients did, and in common language is now sometimes
done, in the organs of the organic life. But although there was
in this view the just acknowledgment of a truth, it was only
of part of a truth ; for, in the first place, not the organs of the
organic life only, but those also of the animal life, are con-
cerned in the expression and production of passion ; and, in the
second place the feeling of the passion unquestionably takes
place in the brain. It is the display of its organic sym-
pathies. Consequently it is found that, as the effect of a
depressing passion is felt by the victim of a local idiosyn-
crasy in his weak organ, so inversely the effect of a weak
or diseased organ, is felt in the brain by an irritability or
disposition to passion, a disturbance of the psychical tone.
The phenomena of insanity furnish the best illustrations of
this sympathetic interaction.

The study of disordered emotions will naturally find a place
afterwards, when we come to treat of the pathology of mind.
Suffice it here to say that disordered emotion may act upon the
animal life, the organic life, and the intellectual life. It may
grave itself in the lineaments of the countenance, or declare
itself in the habit of the body ; it may initiate or aggravate
organic disease, producing, according to its duration, a transient
or lasting derangement, and it may temporarily obscure, or per-
manently vitiate, the intelligence. When the emotions are
disordered, as they are particularly in some forms of insanity,
and generally at the commencement of insanity, pleasuie is felt
from objects and events which should naturally excite pain, or

M

162 THE EMOTIONS. [chap.

pain from causes which should naturally occasion pleasure in
a healthy mind : scenes of disorder, excess, and violence, are
grateful to the perverted feelings ; order and moderation irri-
tating and repugnant.

It may be thought, perhaps, that it would not be amiss if
something were now said of the difference between passion and
emotion, inasmuch as the terms have hitherto been used almost
indifferently. This, however, is scarcely necessary in dealing
only with their general nature, which is fundamentally the same ;
every so-called emotion, when carried to a certain pitch, becomes
a veritable passion. If it were thought well to distinguish them
in a special analysis of the particular emotions, as it doubtless
would be, the ground of distinction would be in the egoistic or
altruistic character of them — names by which Comte distinguishes
respectively those feelings which have entire reference to self
and those which have reference to the good of others. Spinoza,
whose admirable account of the passions has never yet been,
and certainly will not easily be, surpassed, only recognises three
primitive passions, on the basis of which all others are founded —
joy, sorrow, and desire, (a) Desire, he says, is the very nature
or essence of the individual, whence it is that the joy or sorrow
of each individual differs from that of another as the nature or
essence of one differs from that of another, (b) Joy is the passage
from a less degree of perfection to a greater degree of perfec-
tion, and accompanies, therefore, all actions that are called good,
(e) Sorrow is the passage from a greater degree of perfection to
a less degree of perfection, and accompanies all acts that are
called evil. It will easily be understood, from what has been
already said, how much the particular character of a passion
will depend upon the education ; how, according to the difference
cf his education and circumstances, one man may repent bitterly
of an act of which another boasts exultantly.

Here, again, it is rendered evident how impossible it is to
deal satisfactorily with the emotions by considering them only
as accomplished facts, and grouping them according to their
characters as we observe them in the adult of ordinary culti-
vation. We are driven by the psychological method to study
emotion under hopeless disadvantage ; for we are constrained to
examine the complexity of an advanced development instead of

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 163

following up, as is the true method, the genesis of emotion or
the plan of its development. In the classification of the animal
kingdom, the study of its plan of development is now acknow-
ledged to be the only valid method of determining the true rela-
tions between one animal and another : in like manner the inter-
pretation of the phenomena of mind cannot be rightly grounded
except on an analysis of their development. Whosoever aspires
to give an adequate account of the emotions should devote him-
self, then, to a careful investigation of their simplest manifesta-
tions in the higher members of the animal kingdom; to the
study of the different grades of their evolution in the savage
and the civilized person, in the child and the adult, the woman
and the man, the idiot and him who is in his right mind ; to
the patient delineation of their special bodily expressions ; and
should patiently unfold that progressive specialization and in-
creasing complexity which prevail here as in every other depart-
ment of organic development. Like as ideas are blended, or
coalesce, and connected in groups and series so that, by complex
development, a character is formed, so are the feelings belonging
to the ideas and the desires accompanying them blended and
grouped in a corresponding complexity, and inclinations or dis-
inclinations of every variety and complexity are thus formed as
a part of the character. Again, the desire naturally attaching
to a certain aim is often transferred after a time to the means
by which that aim is attained, so that there ensue in this way
manifold secondary formations : the end of wealth is to give
enjoyment and comfort ; but how often does a passion for the
means oversway the end ! By looking to a desirable end, an
act naturally very distasteful, but which is necessary as means,
may, by habituation, be rendered indifferent or even pleasing ;
and some consummate scoundrels are thus gradually fashioned,
themselves unaware of the grievous issue in which many slight
effects have insensibly culminated.*

* Nemo repente fuit turpissiimis is really the expression of the physical nature
of the growth of character.

" Custom ....

Constrains e'en stubborn Nature to obey ;
Whom dispossessing oft, he doth essay
To govern in her right ; and with a pace

So soft and gentle does he win his way, [That

M 2

164 THE EMOTIONS, [chap.

As it is in the individual, so it is through generations. The
internal organic adaptations which take place in correspondence
with differences in the external conditions of existence, are
sometimes observedly propagated through generations, and that
which was a conscious acquisition in the parent becomes more
or less an innate endowment of the offspring. It seems to
admit of little doubt that this law works in the improvement
of the human brain in the course of generations : as those who
migrate from their native land to other and different climes
do in course of time endow their progeny with an inherent
adaptability to the new conditions, so that they do not perish,
but flourish in them; or as the young fox or young dog inherits
as an instinct the cunning which its ancestors have slowly ac-
quired by experience ; so the records which are available prove
that the brain of man has undergone considerable develop-
ment in the course of generations. Between the inborn moral
nature of the well-constituted civilized person and the brutal
nature of the lowest savage, all question of education and culti-
vation put aside, the difference as a physical fact is not less
than that which often exists between one species of animal
and another. The exalted ideas of justice, virtue, mercy —
which are acquired in the course of a true civilization, and
which the lowest savage has not — do, without doubt, add some-
thing to the nervous endowment of succeeding generations ; not
only is there in their constitution the potentiality of such ideas,
which there is not in the lowest savage, but there is generated
an instinctive quality of mind, an excellent tone of feeling,
which rebels against injustice of any kind ; there is formed the
potentiality of a so-called moral sense. Thus it is that the indi-
vidual rightly developing in his generation is, by virtue of the
laws of hereditary action, ordaining or determining what shall
be pre-ordained or pre-determined in the original nature of the
individual of a future age. But are we then to lose sight of
the physical aspect of this development? Certainly not: the
moral feeling betokens an improved quality, or higher kind of

That she unawares is caught in his embrace,

And tho' deflowered and thralled nought feels her foul disgrace."

Stanza of Gilbert West, quoted by Coleridge iu his
Biogiaphia Litcraria.

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 165

nerve element, which ensues in the course of a due develop-
ment, and which may easily again be disturbed by a slight
physical disturbance of the nervous element. In the exaltation
of mankind through generations, in the progress of humanization,
so to speak, this height of excellence is reached : in the dete-
rioration or degeneration of mankind, as exhibited in the down-
ward course of insanity proceeding through generations, ODe of
the earliest evil symptoms is, as we shall hereafter see, the loss
of this virtue — the destruction of the moral or altruistic feeling.
Insane persons are entirely wrapped up in self, though the self-
feeling may take many guises.

The intimate and essential relation of emotions to the ideas,
which they equal in number and variety, is sufficient to prove
that the lav/ of progress from the general and simple to the
special and complex prevails in their development. If such
relation were not a necessary one, it would still be possible
from a consideration of the emotions themselves to display that
manner of evolution. And the recognition of this increasing
specialization and complexity in the function compels us to
assume a corresponding development in the delicate organi-
zation of the nervous structure, although by reason of the
imperfection of our means of investigation we are not yet able
to trace a process of such delicacy in these inmost recesses to
which our senses have not gained entrance.

NOTES.

1 (p. 148). — "Notre ame fait certaines actions et souffre certaines
passions ; savoir : en tant qu'elle a des idees adequates, elle fait cer-
taines actions ; et en tant qu'elle a des idees inadequates, elle soufl're
certaines passions." — Spinoza, Des Passions, Prop. i.

2 (p. 150). — "Among so many dangers, therefore, as the natural lusts
of men do daily threaten each other withal, to have a care of one's self
is so far from being a matter scornfully to be looked upon, that one
has neither the power nor wish to have done otherwise. For every
man is desirous of what is good for him, and shuns what is evil, but
chiefly the chiefest of natural evils, which is death ; and this he doth
by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone
moves downwards." — Hobbes, vol. ii. p. 8.

166 THE EMOTIONS. [chap-

3 (p. 150). — "Le desir, c'est l'appetit, avec conscience Je lui-merne.
II resulte de tout cela que ce qui fonde l'effort, le vouloir, l'appetit, le
desir, ce n'est pas qu'on ait juge qu'une chose est bonne : niais, au
contraire, on juge qu'une chose est bonne par cela meme qu'on y
tend par l'effort, le voidoir, l'appetit, le desir." — Spinoza, Des Passions,
SchoL to Prop. ix.

4 (p. 154). — "But -we must frankly admit, on consideration, that the
political rule of intelligence is hostile to human progression. Mind must
tend more and more to the supreme direction of affairs ; but it can
never attain it, owing to the imperfection of our organism, in which
the intellectual life is the feeblest part ; and thus it appears that the
real office of mind is deliberative ; that is, to moderate the material
preponderance, and not to impart its habitual impulsion." — Comte,
Positive Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 240.

5 (p. 156). — "For it is not his disputations about pleasure and pain
that can satisfy tbis inquiry ; no more than he who should generally
handle tbe nature of light can be said to handle the nature of par-
ticular colours ; for pleasure and pain are to the particular affections
as bight is to particular colours." — Bacon, De Augment. Scient.

" Autant il y a d'espece d'objets qui nous affectent, autant il faut
reconnaitre d'especes de joie, de tristesse, et de desir; et en general
de toutes les passions qui sont composees de celles-la, comme la fluc-
tuation, par exemple, ou qui en derivent, comme 1' amour, la haine,
l'esperance, la crainte," &c. — Spinoza, Des Passions.

6 {p. 157). — " Mais il faut en outre remarquer ici qu'il n'est nullement
surprenant que la tristesse accompagne tous les actes qu'on a continue
d'appeler mauvais, et la joie tous ceux qu'on nomme bons. On
congoit en effet par ce qui precede que tout cela depend surtout de
l'education. Les parents, en blamant certaines actions, et repri-
mandant souvent leurs enfants pour les avoir commises, et au contraire
en louant et en conseillant cFautres actions, ont si bien fait que la
tristesse accompagne toujours celles-la et la joie toujours celles-cL
L'experience confirme cette explication. La coutume et la religion ne
sont pas les memes pour tous les hommes : ce qui est sacre pour les
uns est profane pour les autres, et les choses honnetes chez un peuple
sont honteuses chez un autre peuple. Chacun se repent done ou se
glorifie d'une action suivant l'education qu'il a regue." — Spinoza, Des
Passions, p. 159.

7 (p. 158). — Many illustrations might be adduced from Shakspeare's
plays of the wonderful harmony between the highest human feelings
and the aspects of nature ; some of these I have pointed out in an

vi.] THE EMOTIONS. 167

essay on " Hamlet" in the Westminster Review of January 1865. The
best known passage is that in the " Merchant of Venice : " —

" Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubin :
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

Again, Milton in his A rcades :

" But else in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Sirens' harmony,
That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine' spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould with gross unpuiged ear."

Sir T. Browne, in his Religio Medici, says : " It is my temper, and
I like it the better, to affect all harmony : and sure there is music even
in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than
the sound of an instrument : for there is music wherever there is
harmony, order, or proportion ; and thus far we may maintain the
music of the spheres ; for these well-ordered motions, and regular paces,
though they give no sound to the ear, yet to the understanding they
strike a note most full of harmony. .... It is a hieroglyphical and
shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God; such a
melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford
the understanding." Passages of like import might be quoted from
Goethe, Jean Paul, Humboldt, Emerson, Carlyle, and many other men
of genius.

/

CHATTER VII.

rOLJTIOX.

" Les homines se trompent en ce point qu'ils pensent etie libres. Or, en quoi
consiste nne telle opinion ? En cela seulement, qu'ils ont conscience de leurs
actions et ignorent les causes qui les determinent. L'idee que les homines se
font de leur liberte vient done de ce qu'ils ne connaissent point la cause de leurs
actions, car dire qu'elles dependent de la volonte, ce sont la des mots auxquels on
n'attache aucune idee. Quelle est en elM la nature de la volonte, et comment
meut-elle le corps, e'est ce que tout le monde ignore, et ceux qui elevent d'autres
pretentions et parlent des sieges de Tame et de ses demeures pretent k rire ou
font pitie." — Spixoza.

" En tout ce que je puis dire a ceux qui croient qu'ils peuvent parler, se taire, en
un mot, agir en vertu d'une libre decision de 1'ame, e'est qu'ils reVent les yeux
ouverts." — Ibid.

IT is strange to see how some, "who confidently base their
argument for the existence of a God on the ground that
everything in nature must have a cause, are content, in their
zeal for free-will, to speak of the "will as if it were self-deter-
mined and had no cause. As thus vulgarly used, the term "Will
has no definite meaning, and certainly is not applicable to any
concrete reality in nature, where, in the matter of will, as in
every other matter, we perceive effect witnessing to cause, and
varying according as the cause varies.

Previous considerations must have sufficiently proved the
necessity of modifying the notion commonly entertained of the
will as a single, undecomposahle faculty of constant and uniform
power ; for they have shown that under the category of voluntary
acts, as commonly made, are included very different kinds of
actions, proceeding from different nervous centres. A consider-
able proportion of the daily actions of life is confessedly due to
the automatic faculty of the spinal cord ; the sensory centres are
clearly the independent causes of other actions ; while many of
the remaining actions that would by most people be- deemed

chap, vii.] VOLITION. 169

volitional, are really respondent to an idea or emotion. This
just discrimination is, notwithstanding, entirely neglected by
those who take the metaphysical view of will ; by them, as
usual, an abstraction from the particular is converted into an
entity, and thenceforth allowed to tyrannize in the most
despotic manner over the understanding. The metaphysical
essence thus created has no other relation to a particular or con-
crete act of will, than, using Spinoza's illustration, stoneness to a
particular stone, man to Peter or Paul.

It is obviously, then, of importance, in the first place, to get
rid of the notion of an ideal or abstract will unaffected by
physical conditions, as existing apart from a particular concrete
act of will, which varies according to physical conditions. When
a definite act of will is the result of a certain reflection, it repre-
sents physically an available or a liberated force, consequent on
the communication of activity from one cell or group of cells to
other cells or groups of cells within the cortical layers of the
hemispheres. Any modification, therefore, of the condition of
these centres may, and notably does, impede reflection, and
affect the resultant power of will — a power which, in reality, is
seen to differ both in quantity and quality in different persons,
and in the same person, according to the varying conditions of
the nervous substratum. On the other hand, speaking psycholo-
gically, the definite will is the final issue of the process of reflec-
tion or deliberation which a man's life-culture has rendered him
capable of; it represents a conception of the result with desire,
such as have been determined by the character of the reflection.
A man can never will a virtuous end into whose reflection ideas
of virtue do not enter, nor can any one will a bestial act of vice,
whose appetites or desires have not been vitiated, and whose
mind is not familiar with lewd ideas. The will appears, then,
to be nothing but the desire, or aversion, sufficiently strong to
produce an action after reflection or deliberation — an action
that, as Hartley observes, is not automatic primarily or
secondarily.* Q) Since, then, it is generated by the preceding

* " Appetite, therefore, and aversion are simply so called as long as they follow
not deliberation. But if deliberation have gone before, then the last act of it, if
it be appetite, is called will ; if aversion, unwillingness. " — Hobbes.

"In a series of valuable articles On the Nature of Volition, in the Psycholo-

170 VOLITION. [chap.

association, it must needs differ greatly in quality and quantity,
according to the extent and character of the association, as this
has been established by cultivation, or is temporarily modified
by bodily conditions! Every one can easily perceive this to be
true of the will of an idiot or a child, which is palpably a very
different matter from that of a well-cultivated adult ; and he
must be very much blinded by metaphysical conceptions, who
fails to recognise the infinite variations in the power of will
which any given individual exhibits at different times or in
different relations. When one of the higher senses is wanting
in any one, he necessarily wants also the ideas, feelings, desires,
and will, which arise out of the perceptions of this sense. The
blind man cannot know the variety and beauty of colouring in
nature, nor can he will in regard to those external relations
which are revealed only through the sense of sight. Because,
however, he knows not what he lacks, he does not consider his
will inferior in quality, less complete, or less free. Were an
additional sense conferred upon any one, it would doubtless
soon teach him how much might yet be added to the will, how
little his boasted freedom is, and might, perhaps, make him
wonder much that he should ever have thought himself free.

When is it that man is most persuaded that he speaks or acts
with full freedom of will ? When he is drunk, or mad, or is
dreaming. It may be a reflection, then, worth dwelling upon,
that man thinks himself most free when he is most a slave ; but
at any moment, in whatever mood he be, he would affirm that
he is free. A person when under the influence of drink judges
very differently from what he does in his sober senses, but is
he in his own estimation less free at the time ? Passion noto-
riously perverts the judgment, warping it this way or that;
but will any appeal to the man who is in a passion elicit

gical Journal for 1863, Mr. Lockhart Clarke enters into an able analysis of the
different forms of volition, and shows that in each case the process consists in
the co-operation of two of the psychical elements which together constitute our
personal integrity ; namely the intellectual or regulative element, and the
sesthetic or dynamic element, the latter being either a sensation, an appetite, or
emotion. What are called " motives " to the " will " consist of our various
sensations, appetites, and emotions, when subjected to the judgment of the
understanding in deliberation. The "will," therefore, as a peculiar power, comes
into existence only at the time of acting, by the combination and co-operation of
its constituent elements.

vii. j VOLITION. 171

from him a confession that he is not acting with perfect
liberty ? Place the very same arguments before a man when he
is elated by some joyous, or depressed by some grievous event;
when he is in the full flow of vigorous health, or when he is
prostrate on the bed of sickness, or of death, and how different
would be his judgment upon them : but whatever others may
think of him, he will hold for certain the conclusion of the
moment, just as a man in his sleep is fully persuaded of the
reality of his dreams. While the looker-on can often predict
how a madman will act under certain circumstances, with as
much certainty as he can predict an event conformable to a
known law of nature, — who thinks himself so free as does the
madman ? Whence comes this false opinion ? It arises plainly
from this : that consciousness reveals the particular state of
mind of the moment, but does not reveal the long series of causes
on which it depends. It is a deliberate fooling of one's self to
say that actions depend upon the will, and then not to ask upon
what the will depends ! It is as though, says Leibnitz, the needle
should take pleasure in moving towards the pole, not perceiving
the insensible motions of the magnetic matter on which it
depends. As in nature we pass from event to cause, and from
this cause again to an antecedent one, and so on till we are
driven to a great first cause, so, in the sincere observation of the
mind, we see that it is determined to will this or that by a cause
or motive, which again is determined by another, this again by
another, and so on till we have gone through the whole series of
desires, aversions, hopes, and fears — the sum of which is delibe-
ration— that have preceded the last appetite or aversion, which
we call an act of will. Those who fondly think they act with
free will, says Spinoza, dream with their eyes open.

Now, if the final reaction after deliberation, which we call
will, is, like other modes of reaction of nerve element previously
described, a resultant of a certain molecular change in a definitely
constituted nervous centre, then all the design exhibited in any
given act of will must, like the design displayed in the function
of the spinal cells, or the cells of the sensory centres, be a physi-
cal result of a particular and intimate constitution or organiza-
tion of nervous matter. In other words, the act of will which
is the final expression of a process of reflection must needs

1 72 FOLITIOX. [cnAr.

contain a conception of the end desired — such a conception as
has been determined by the nature of the reflection ; the con-
ception of the result, or the design, in the act of will constituting,
in fact, the essential character of the particular volition. In
order that desire may become action for its gratification, a con-
sciousness of the result of the action is necessary — that is, a
conception of the aim of it. The desire, therefore, gives the special
impulse which is directed or regulated by reflection, and the par-
ticular act of will is not the determining agent, but is the result
determined by the impulse acting in conformity with the concep-
tion of the aim to be attained. The design, then, which a looker-
on discovers in any act of will— and, be it remembered, there is
no actual volition apart from the particular volition — will depend
upon the nature of the individual whom he is observing, as that
nature has been inherited, and subsequently developed by the
experience of life. The idiocy of any one, or his congenital
inability to adapt himself to external relations by correspondences
of internal cerebral reaction, is a physical fact : there is no design
in many of the idiot's conscious acts, because such quality or
property has not been built up by cultivation as a faculty of the
supreme nervous centres, a congenital defect of constitution
having made such organization impossible ; in other words, the
idiot is, by defect of nature, incapacitated from acquiring reflec-
tion, and cannot, therefore, have in his mind the conception of a
result to be attained, cannot display conscious design. But the
design manifest in any voluntary act of the best cultivated mind
is likewise physical necessity : in consequence of reacting cerebral
adaptations to the varieties of external impressions, reflection
has, as already set forth, been organized as a development of the
supreme nervous centres, or, in other words, as a faculty of the
mind; and according to the extent and kind of the reflection
will be the completeness of the conception of the end to be
attained, or the degree of design discoverable in any act of will.
The particular volition and whatever it contains, whether of
folly or design, is a product of the organized residua of all
former like volitions, excited into activity by the appropriate
stimulus. For volitions, like sensations and ideas, leave behind
them their residua which are organized in the nerve centres,
and thus render future volitions of a like kind more easv.

.vii.] VOLITION. 1 73

In this sense only are we warranted in speaking of abstract
volition.

It has been necessary to lay stress upon this vague and trouble-
some question of design, because mistaken notions with regard
to it appear to have been at the bottom of much error in phi-
losophy. The design manifest in a mental act has been supposed
to evince a power which transcended or anticipated experience,
instead of one that actually conforms in its genesis to experience ;
and the metaphysical conception of will as a fixed and undecoin-
posable entity, in which was no variability nor the shadow of a
turning, is greatly indebted for its origin to that error. The
mischievous doctrine of final causes which Bacon, Comte, Spinoza,
Descartes, and others scarcely less great, all agree to have done
so much harm in philosophy, has sprung from erroneous views
of the nature of design. Supposing that the argument from
design as to the existence of will as a metaphysical entity were
pressed to its logical consequences, what must be the result ?
Nothing less than this, — that the animal, with its marvellous
instinct of instant adaptation to the most complex and unfamiliar
conditions, is possessed of a higher immaterial principle than the
helpless child or the erring adult. We know right well, however,
that the instinct of the animal is sometimes positively traceable
to the acquired power of former generations ; that it has been
observably built up in the constitution of the nervous centres,
and transmitted to succeeding generations as an innate endow-
ment. It is exactly the same with the design that is formed
within the term of an individual life, and which ever testifies to
the previous cultivation of the individual; the more cultivated
the mind and the more varied the experience, the better de-
veloped is the will and the stronger its co-ordinating power over
the thoughts, feelings, and actions, not otherwise, in truth, than
as the co-ordinate reflex action of the spinal cord is developed
by experience and culture. Design, therefore, when its nature
is fairly analysed, so far from tending, to make the will a fixed
metaphysical entity, goes really to prove that the will is an in-
sensibly organized result, of varying value, quantitative and
qualitative.

Having now adduced sufficient reasons to prove that the will
is not a self-generating, self-sufficing force of constant quantity,

174 VOLITION. [chap.

but, on the contrary, a force varying in quantity and quality,
and, like every other natural force, determined by antecedent
causes, we may proceed to consider what power it actually has
in our mental and bodily life. It is manifestly ordained that
the will, as the highest mode of energy of nerve element, should
control the inferior modes of energy by operating downwards
upon their subordinate centres : the anatomical disposition of
the nervous system is in conformity with what psychological
observation teaches. But the undoubted fact, that the will of a
man can and does control inferior functions has led to a very
extravagant and ill-founded notion as to its autocratic power ;
and it must be allowed that not a little windy nonsense has
been written concerning its authority. Assuredly it is no irre-
sponsible despot in any mind, but is ever most obedient where
it has most power ; it conquers by obeying. Let us, then, con-
sider what the power of the will is (1) over the movements, and
(2) over mental operations, the two departments in which its
rule is felt.

1. (a) The will has no power whatever over certain move-
ments that are essential to the continuance of life. Not only do
such motions as those of the heart and the intestines go on
without any co-operation of the will and in spite of any inter-
vention on its part, but movements that are only microscopically
visible, such as to contractions of the small arteries, which are
of so great importance in nutrition, are not under its direct
influence. Nature has been far too prudent to rely upon such
an uncertain and comparatively late appearing force for the
movements essential to the continuance of life, or to admit its
capricious interference : let a man try to asphyxiate himself by
voluntarily restraining the respiratory movements, and he will
learn a lesson as to the impotency of will which he might use-
fully remember when studying mental phenomena. "We say
nothing here of those insensible molecular movements of the
physiological elements which, like thermal oscillations, are yet
impenetrable to sense, but which are undoubtedly at the foun-
dation of all visible vital actions.

(b) The will has no power to effect movements that are con-
fessedly voluntary, until they have been very carefully acquired
by practice. Every one knows that the theory of a particular

vii.] VOLITION. 175

skill of movement is a very different matter from the practice of
it, and that the complete capacity of accomplishing the act is
gained, not simply by desiring and willing it, hut by patient
exercise and cultivation ; the faculty of the movement is thus
gradually organized in the proper nervous centre. A special and
complex act, never hitherto attempted, will be as little likely to
be carried out, in obedience to the commands of the so-called
" autocrat of the mind," as a determination to fly.*

(c) When the will does dictate a movement, it is the event
which is determined ; it sets free, so to speak, the movement
which has been organized in the motor nerve centre ; there is no
direct volitional control over the means by which the result is
effected ; so that it may even happen, and does sometimes
happen, that in a man struck with a palsy of his limbs, all un-
aware of its impotency, the will commands a result which never
takes place. Questionless, in face of such an experience, some
would still not shrink from affirming that consciousness never
deceives. When the will dictates a certain event, its power is
propagated, first through certain nerves, and then through them
to certain muscles, in a manner of which we have no conscious-
ness whatever : all we do know is, that if we wish to select a
certain muscle, and put it singly in action, we have not the
power to do so, and that, if certain movements have been
habitually associated, it is a very hard matter to dissociate them
— a thing which a simple effort of the will certainly will not do,
but which a disease like chorea will sometimes do in spite of
the will.

2. The extent of voluntary power over the mental operations
is not nearly so great as is commonly assumed -r much the same
thing happening here as in its influence over movements. It
will not be difficult to understand how this should be so, if we
reflect that the immediate action of the will, even when dictating
movements, is not upon muscles, but upon the motor grey nuclei,
or the nervous centres of movement ; that in both cases, there-

" We know how slowly the child acquires the power of so balancing his
body as to hold it erect." .... "We observe how slowly the child learns to
perform, with the requisite precision, the contractions on which the operation of
walking depends." .... " There is another very familiar instance, that of
learning to write." — J. Mill, Analysis of the Human Mind, pp. 271 — 273.

176 VOLITION. [chap.

fore, the immediate operation is alike upon ganglionic cells,
which are, in one case, the associated centres of ideas, in the
other the associated centres of movements. (2)

(a) As the formation of our ideas gradually takes place
through experience, and as the association between ideas is also
effected in accordance with experience, both processes being
based in the organic life and beyond the domain of consciousness,
it is plain that the will does not determine either the material of
thought or the laws of the interworking of ideas : it must accept
as accomplished facts, as organized results, the ideas and the
manner of their association. As with movements, so here, the
will has no control over the means by which it works ; it cannot
dissociate firmly established connexions, nor can it determine a
new train of ideas without the first link of it being in the
thoughts ; and when the first link, however originated, is, so to
speak, grasped, the train of ideas initiated is not irregular and
alterable at will, but definite, in stern accordance with an order
and system previously established by cultivation.* It is true
that as it is with the power of will over movements, so it is
with its power over mental states — it is a power which may
be greatly enlarged and increased by exercise and cultivation.
While some persons seem quite incapable of regulating the
association of their ideas, and can hold to no subject consecu-
tively, others are distinguished by the mastery which they have
over the subject and course of their thoughts, by their powers of
dismissing what is frivolous or irrelevant, and of adhering singly
and steadily to the matter on which the mind is employed. The
will, however, always presupposes definite and fixed series of
ideas formed in the mind, series in which, without individual
co-operation, one idea must definitely and of necessity follow
another as one wave necessarily produces another as itself dis-
appears. There is an order or a necessity in the mental organi-
zation of a sane person, then, reflecting the order or necessity in

* ' ' Deliberation and investigation are like the hunting of a hound ; he moves
and sniffs about by his own activity, but the scent he finds is not laid, nor the
trail he follows drawn by himself. The mind only begins a train of thinking, or
keeps it in one particular track, but the thoughts introduce one another suc-
cessively .... which shows they have a motion of their own independent of
the mind, and which they do not derive from its action, nor will lay aside upon
its command." — Tuckeb's Light <>/ Nature, vol. i. p. 14.

vii.] VOLITION. 177

the co-existence and succession of events in external nature ;
and the will can as little control the fundamental laws of the
one as it can those of the other. Certainly it is not absolutely
powerless in the mind, any more than it is absolutely powerless
in nature ; by recognition of the laws which govern mental deve-
lopment we can so arrange the conditions of their operations
as to produce secondarily considerable modification of effects ;
the will may thus avail itself of these laws for its own profit,
using their power in an enlightened manner to aid its develop-
ment : in the one case as in the other it conquers only by obeying.
True liberty, as Milton expresses it, —

"Always with right reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being."

(b) Thus we come to a second consideration in regard to the
power of the will : it is that those who so unduly exalt it
unwarrantably derive their arguments entirely from the self-
consciousness of a well-cultivated mind, and altogether neglect
the instances of its simplest manifestations. It is merely justice
to insist upon a reference to the earlier stages of development
of cultivated mind, or to mind in its least cultivated state, as
offering the simplest and most favourable instances for the
formation of a sound induction. Will any one be so bold as to
maintain that there exists in the young child or in the idiot
volitional control over the thoughts ? Is any one so ignorant of
the genesis of mind as to uphold the existence of true volition
in the earliest stages of mental development ? The child notably
lives in the present, and its actions are direct reactions to the
feelings and ideas that are excited in its mind.

(c) But as the will cannot originate an idea or a train of
thought in the mind, so likewise it is unable sometimes to
dismiss one when desirous of doing so. A painful idea will, as
every one's experience must have taught him, return again and
again into consciousness notwithstanding every effort of the will
to get rid of it, just as a movement may take place in spite of
the will. The command which a man has over his thoughts is
very different at different times, and one person may be able to
dismiss a troublesome reflection when another cannot for the
life of him do so. We can give no exact reasons for these
variations ; the causes of them lie deeper than consciousness can

N

178 VOLITION, [chap,

reach or will control. So far, then, from the will being autocratic,
it is at the mercy of unknown conditions, which may seriously
affect at any moment its power or energy. Moreover, when an
unwelcome idea is dismissed from the mind, it is not done by a
simple despotic order of the will ; but by fixing attention on
some other idea which arises — by maintaining the tension of it,
the latter is made consciousness ; and inasmuch as two ideas
cannot exist in consciousness at the same time, or at any rate
cannot co-exist in equal intensity, that implies the dismissal of the
former idea into the background and the initiation of a new cur-
rent of reflection — a current which, however, is not uncommonly
inteiTupted by the irruption of the old idea, which refuses to
become latent or dormant. Volitional control exercised over the
thoughts manifestly presupposes the existence of many ideas in
the mind, and the possibility of some of these latent ones arising
to influence those that maybe active. Dcnken maclit fni. What
power it is by which one idea calls up another we do not know,
but we do know that it is not by the will.

Locke is admitted to have made a great advance in psychology
when he demonstrated that there were no innate ideas in the
mind, but that all its ideas were formed by observation and
reflection. The necessary consequence of his demonstration
plainly is, what the foregoing considerations have shown, that
there is no inborn will in the human mind. It would be a very
difficult matter to fix that period in the child's mental development
when volition might be acknowledged to have distinctly mani-
fested itself. Whence and when the first volition comes, would
indeed be perplexing questions if the will were admitted to be a
special faculty of the mind, distinct from other faculties, of con-
stant quality, and never falling below a certain level of energy.
Why is it that we are powerless to fix the time of the first
volition ? Because the will is not one and constant, but infinitely
variable in quantity and quality, having many nervous centres,
and not having any existence apart from the concrete act. There
are in reality as many centres of volitional reaction in the brain
as there are centres of idea ; and to assume one constant will is
a part of that metaphysical system of making abstractions into
entities by which also is made one understanding, one reason, and
the mind is mischievously parcelled out into faculties that have

vii.] VOLITION. 179

no existence in nature. It is utterly at variance both with psy-
chological analysis of the nature of will, and with physiological
observation of the constitution of the supreme nervous centres,
to assume a single nervous centre from which will proceeds ; if
we must make a definite statement on so obscure a matter, it is
that every centre of idea may be a centre of voluntary reaction.
For consider this : although we describe the effect as ideomotor,
when an idea reacts directly outwards, yet if the energy of the
idea is not instantly so expended, but persists in the mind for a
moment, so as to produce a clearer consciousness of it before
passing outwards, and especially if there is some feeling or desire
attending it, then, when it does pass outwards, we commonly
describe the effect as volitional. As consciousness may, however,
exist in every degree of intensity, it is plain that we cannot defi-
nitely fix a stage at which ideational reaction may be supposed to
become volitional, nor determine the nature of the change which
then ensues. "The will and the intelligence are one and the
same thing," is the corollary of Spinoza from his close reasoning.
Let us imagine the first appearing idea in the infant's mind
to react outwards, and to leave, as it will do, a residuum in its
nervous centre ; when the idea occurs again, there will be a
tendency to a similar reaction. Suppose, however, that the
action causes pain to the child, and thereupon a second idea is
formed in its mind, the energy of which is opposed to that of
the first. When the first idea appears again, it will, instead of
passing outwards at once, excite into activity the second idea,
which is inhibitory or preventive. That is the simplest case
of volition : the child has voluntarily refrained from doing
something, or voluntarily done something else ; and the impulse
that has prompted the choice is not any abstract power, but
springs from that fundamental property of organic element by
which what is agreeable is sought, what is painful is shunned.
Bear in mind, when weighing volition, that there is often
more power demanded for preventing or inhibiting action than
for producing it. As ideas multiply in the mind, and groups or
series of ideas are associated, of course the process becomes
more and more complicated; the residua of volitions, like the
residua of sensations or ideas, remain in the mind and render
future volitions of a like kind more easy and more definite ;

n2

180 I'OLITWX. [chap.

abstract or general volitions, as it were, are formed as the repre-
sentatives of certain trains or groups of ideas, or as the expres-
sion of their due co-ordinate activity ; and by their persistence
in the mind, when not in consciousness, and their interaction
there, the character of our thought, feeling, and action is
modified in a way which we cannot comprehend. Every one
must have felt that an act, which was at first disagreeable and
demanded a painful effort of will, may become, in fact invariably
does become, after several repetitions, much less disagreeable or
even an easy habit. Not only, however, does that particular
act lose its pamful equalities, but all acts of a like kind are
made easier ; and our manner of feeling with regard to them,
and even our judgment concerning them, are greatly modified.
Though we can give no explanation of the way in which we
are aided by the traces of past volitions, it is plain enough that
we are so aided; conscious acquisition becomes unconscious
power; and by an organic assimilation of some kind, even the
will becomes automatic in certain relations.

Three conclusions are then to be distinctly established from
the foregoing considerations : first, that the will is not an innate
and constant faculty, but a gradual and varying organization ;
secondly, that wherever an afferent nerve passes to a cell or
series of cells in the cortical layers of the hemispheres, and an
efferent nerve issues from the cell or series of cells, there is the
possible or actual centre of a particular volition ; and thirdly,
that volition or will, used in its general or abstract sense, does
not denote any actual entity, but simply expresses the due co-
ordinate activity of the supreme centres of mental force, not
otherwise than as the co-ordinate activity of the spinal cord or
medulla oblongata might be said to represent its will — the
faculty in both cases being commonly an acquired one in man.
"When the animal acts in answer to some stimulus with direct
and definite purpose, or, as we are in the habit of saying, in-
stinctively, it does so by virtue of an endowment of its nerve
centres which is original in it ; but in the formation of human
volition we observe this power of intelligent action in gradual
process of acquirement — we witness an illustration of design in
the making ; and if we only go far enough back through gene-
rations, the acquisition by the animals may sometimes be traced.

vii. j VOLITION. 181

It would belie observation less to place an ideal entity behind
the innate instinctive impulse of the animal than behind the
gradually fashioned will of man.

To the fullest action of will in an individual two conditions
are obviously necessary : first, an unimpeded association of
ideas whereby one conception may readily call up another, and
complete deliberation ensue ; and secondly, a strong personality
or character to give the decision between conflicting ideas and
desires. We shall say something of the second condition first.

The strong or well-formed character which a well-fashioned
will implies, is the result of a good training applied to a well-
constituted original nature; and the character is not directly
determined by the will, but in any particular act directly deter-
mines the will * The way in which the will does operate upon
the character, or affect the ego, is indirectly by determining the
circumstances which subsequently gradually modify it ; we may
place ourselves voluntarily in certain conditions of life, but all
the energy of the strongest will cannot then prevent some
degree of modification of character by them — cannot prevent an
equilibration taking place. In any future act of will the
altered character, or acquired nature, is expressed; and while
we, perhaps, all unaware of any change, strenuously uphold
our constancy, a looker-on clearly perceives the difference.
What we by a mental abstraction call the ego, is in reality a
combination in which are contained the residua of all former
feelings, thoughts, volitions, — a combination which is continually
changing and becoming more and more complex. That it

* Common language, Tucker observes, implies two wills or more, opposing,
impeding, restraining, and mastering one another ; when an inordinate passion
interferes with the prosecution of some design, we still regard it as a voluntary
result, because sensible of the instigation. ' ' But if we listen to the common
discourses of mankind, we shall find them speaking of several wills, several
agents, in the same person, resisting, counteracting, overpowering, and control-
ling one another ; hence the so usual expressions of the spiritual and carnal wills,
of the man and the beast, of self-will and reason, of denying our wills, subduing
our passions, or being enslaved by them, of acting unwillingly or against the
will, and the like. All which takes rise from a metonyme of the cause for the
effect ; for our actions being constantly determined either by the decisions of our
judgment, or solicitations of our desires, we mistake them for the will itself ; nor
is it a little confirmation of the will being actuated by motives, to find them so
intimately connected therewith, that a common eye cannot distinguish them
apart." — Light of Nature, i. 547.

182 VOLITION. [cHAr.

differs at different times of life, and in consequence of different
external relations, those who would most zealously uphold its
so-called identity do unconsciously admit when they acknow-
ledge that, by religious influence or otherwise, any one may
be made "quite another man," may be "converted," or be
"regenerate." The will of Saul of Tarsus was not the will
of Paul the apostle to the Gentiles. When the ego is trans-
formed in correspondence with changed external circumstances,
the changes are so gradual as to be imperceptible at the time ;
but a rapid transformation of the ego may sometimes be effected
by a great event, internal or external, — as, for example, when,
with the development of puberty, new ideas and impulses
penetrate the old circle of thought, and become constituent
parts of it, producing no little subjective disturbance until
the assimilation is completed and an equilibrium established.
When a great and sudden revolution in the ego is produced
by an external cause, it is most dangerous to the mental
stability of the individual, and very apt to become pathological :
nothing is more dangerous to the equilibrium of a character
than for any one to be placed in entirely changed external cir-
cumstances without his inner life having been gradually adapted
thereto ; and madness, when its origin is fairly examined, always
means discord between the individual and his circumstances. He
who has unexpectedly received a sudden, great exaltation in life,
and is not made mad by his good fortune, cannot realize his new
position for some time, but gradually grows to it ; he who, from
some subjective cause, believes that he has received a great
exaltation in life, while external circumstances are not correspon-
dent, is mad — the transformation of his ego being pathological.*

* Dr Channing, in a sermon On the Evil of Sin, speaking of tthe absurdity of
the notion that in changing worlds we shall change onr character, says : — "In
the first place it contradicts all our experience of the nature and laws of the
miud. There is nothing more striking in the mind than the connexion of its
successive states. Our present knowledge, thoughts, feelings, characters, are the
result of former impressions, passions, and pursuits. We are this moment what
the past has made us, and to suppose that at death the influences of our whole
past course are to cease on our minds, and that a character is to spring up alto-
gether at war 'with what has preceded it, is to suppose the most important law or
principle of the mind to be violated, is to destroy all analog}' between the present
and future, and to substitute for experience the wildest dreams of fancy. In
truth, such a sudden revolution in the character as is here supposed i-

tii. J VOLITION. 183

The history of a man is the true revelation of his character •
what he has done indicates what he has willed ; what he has
willed marks what he has thought and felt, or the character of
his deliberations; what he has thought and felt, has been the
result of his nature then existing as the developmental product
of a certain original construction and a definite life experience.
Objectively considered, the identity of the ego is neither more
nor less than the identity of the full-grown oak with the first
slight shoot from the acorn : subjectively considered, the strong
and sure conception which every one has of the ego, is not
surprising, inasmuch as it is the most frequently active idea,
being concerned with more or less consciousness in every event
of his life, being that to which every action has fundamental
reference. The fashioning of the will is the fashioning of the
character; and this can only be done indirectly by fashioning
the circumstances which determine the manner of its formation.
But, however formed, it is the character which determines what
the judgment shall decide to be most eligible, the inclination
prompt as most desirable, and the will effect. If it were pos-
sible for any one to enter thoroughly into the inmost character
of another person, and to become exactly acquainted with the
moving springs of his conduct in his particular relations of life,
it would be possible not only to predict his line of action on
every occasion, but even to work him, free will notwithstanding,
like an automaton, by playing on his predominant passion,
interest, or principle.

Secondly, there is manifestly required for the free action of
the will an unimpeded association of ideas, so that the due
materials for the formation of a sound judgment may be avail-
able. But the ease, completeness, and character of such asso-
ciation depend, as already shown, on the condition of the
nervous element, very slight disorders of which accordingly
quickly declare themselves in a deterioration of the will. As
the secondary automatic faculties of the spinal centres soon
suffer from any disorder of nerve element, and reveal their
suffering in the loss of co-ordinate power over the movements,
so in the loss of co-ordinating power over the ideas and feelings,

a man's identity. The individual thus transformed can hardly seem to himself
or to others the same heing. It is equivalent to the creation of a new soul."

184 VOLITION. [chai-.

in their irregular and independent reactions, is revealed the
deterioration of the will And as, when the disorder of the
spinal centres is still greater, all co-ordination is lost and con-
vulsions ensue ; so in the supreme ganglionic cells of the hemi-
spheres, when the disturbance is great, there is no co-ordination
of the thoughts and feelings, convulsive reactions of the cells
take place, and the individual is a raving lunatic, or a dan-
gerous one dominated by a few persistent morbid ideas. Voli-
tion is, as it were, resolved into the inferior constituents out of
which it is in the due course of things compounded, as a ray
of white light may be decomposed into several coloured rays ;
and in place of the definite, calm, co-ordinate activity of well-
formed will, there is the aimless, irregular, explosive display
of inferior activity. It is obvious, however, that even in the
sound mind the quantity and quality of the volition depend
upon the fulness of the reflection, and that any hindrance to
the due association of ideas will pro tanto affect the will : if
the particular volition were to be resolved by a retrograde
metamorphosis into its component elements, there would be an
explication or unfolding of all the ideas and desires which had
gone to form it; and going still further back in the analysis,
there would be a revelation even of those particular relations
in life which have helped to determine the individual's definite
organization of ideas, the character of his ego.

It will be proper, before finishing with the consideration of
the will, to say something of the relations of the emotions to it.
Independently reacting, as an emotional idea tends to do, it so
far weakens the will ; duly controlled and co-ordinated in reflec-
tion, as is the case after a just mental cultivation, it strengthens
the will. Before many ideas have been acquired, and their
multitudinous associations fixed, as in the young child; or
where the state of the development of the brain precludes in-
tellectual development, as in the idiot and in the animal, — the
emotions excited immediately expend their energy in outward
manifestation ; and when in the cultivated adult there exists,
from some cause, an unstable condition of nerve element, or
when the tension of the emotion or passion is exceedingly great,
it will also react directly outward in spite of the will : the law,
admitting this, would count it therefore no great crime for a

vii.] VOLITION. 185

husband to have slain a man whom he had surprised in the act
of adultery with his wife. But whosoever takes careful note of
his own mental states may call to mind occasions on which
an emotion suddenly excited strongly prompted a particular
action, which he nevertheless withstood for an instant, and
might, if necessary, have restrained altogether ; but perceiving,
with quick intuition, that he might do well to manifest the
emotion, he afterwards allowed the action to take place. The
looker on, perhaps, sees only an impulse and rashness ; and yet
the rashness was in some sort deliberate — an indiscretion which
served the end when wiser plots might have failed. Emotion
was the real motive force, but an emotion acting under the
direction of reason, and, therefore, in accordance with prudent
insight into the external relations. The individual might have
done the same action in obedience to a calm resolution of the
will, and better so, perhaps, if he had been operating upon
inanimate objects ; but in dealing with men it may sometimes
be that a prudent exhibition of feeling much aids the success of
the ends designed. Only let a man beware that, however he
impose upon others, he deceive not himself by his passion,
allowing it to obscure his reason, and pervert his judgment :
restrained within the supreme centres, it is apt to do that in
all minds, and sure to do so in weak minds; but, duly subor-
dinated and co-ordinated in reflection, it adds force to resolution,
liestrained passion, acting under the calm control of reason, is
verily a most potent force ; it gives a white heat, as it were, to
the expression of thought, an intensity to the will.

An emotional person certainly often produces great effects in
the world, and especially such effects as are destructive of some
existing system or belief; it is, indeed, commonly their great
self-feeling that gives to the reformers their abandonment,
energy, and consequent success. But an evil often outweighing
these advantages is that there is no guarantee that they are
right ; for, necessarily one-sided, they see but a part of a truth.
It is certain that a great principle has often suffered seriously
from the hasty, violent, and ill-considered action of its sincere
and earnest advocates : adverse events or circumstances, which
they in their passion could not recognise, but which, as rational
beings, it behoved them to have recognised, have swept them

186 VOLITION. [chap.

away, and the truth which they have been upholding has been
for a while the victim of their indiscretion. As in the mental
phenomena of the individual the power of reflection is often
best exhibited in the prevention of action prompted by feeling —
in an inhibitory function, so amongst men in the social state
the power of a good understanding is sometimes best shown by
not pressing an immature reform. But it is a very hard matter
for a reformer who feels strongly to perceive that what is theo-
retically desirable and right may also practically be undesirable
and wrong under existing social conditions ; he is apt to treat
adverse circumstances as if they were accidents or anomalies
in nature, having no right of existence, and thus more or less
wilfully shuts his eyes to the force of events on which he
proposes to operate, and which will, in any case, operate upon
his principle. He hurls a favourite principle, which may be a
very just one, into the world not sufficiently prepared for it,
not having reached the due level of its evolution, and which,
therefore, is necessarily hostile to it ; and if his truth is oppressed
and seemingly extinguished by the opposition which it meets
with, then he is disheartened and complains, or is angry and
rails : he is like the boy sending his paper boat on the lake
the wraters of which are lashed by a storm. However, it is not
nature which is wrong, if there be any wrong, but himself — the
reformer. The fact that he did not succeed proves that he did
not deserve to succeed ; he has not rightly estimated the cha-
racter and weighed the force of circumstances which have been
too strong for his truth, and by a simple law of nature have, for
a time at least, quenched its light. A great advance can never be
superimposed upon a people miraculously ; in order to be per-
manent it must be a natural evolution from pre-existing events
— must grow out of them; and that which most effectually
demolishes an old error is not a passionate attack upon it by the
intensely feeling reformer, but a new and better creation, which
quietly undermines it so that it falls without trouble. Creation is
a far higher order of work than destruction ; it is the quiet, self-
contained activity of definite productive aim — in other words,
of will in its highest development — as opposed to the explosive
and dissipated play of an inferior and mostly destructive emo-
tional force. But as the calm intellectual contemplation of

vii.] VOLITION. 187

events, viewing all the relations of them, is attended with no
great spur to any particular activity, but marks an equilibration
between the individual and his environment, it is easy to under-
stand how excellent a thing to put the will in motion in a par-
ticular case is some feeling or desire of good to be attained or
of ill to be shunned, in order to establish an equilibration. Then
the will, enlightened by an adequate reflection upon all the co-
operating conditions, is able to act with a calm, steady, intel-
ligent and most potent energy.

The difference, in quality and immediate energy, between
the will which is urged by strong desire and the will which
proceeds from a calm and full reflection, is strikingly evident
in the character of the work done by two kinds of reformers.

k Surveying the men who have exercised great effects on the
progress of mankind in this capacity, they appear broadly
divisible into two classes : the men of wide intellectual grasp,
vast knowledge, and serene energy, and the men of limited
vision, intense feeling, and impetuous energy — the extensive or
many-sided, and the intensive or one-sided men. The former,
taking a comprehensive survey of events, seeing in them the
simple operations of natural law, recognising the character and
the import of existing relations, and the true value of the pre-
sent question, often exaggerated by its immediate urgency, have
their feelings subordinated to their reason, and do not abandon
themselves to an unrestrained impetuosity. They may do great
work, but they do it, not like lightning, rapidly and tumultuously,
but like light, slowly, quietly, and silently ; their work is con-
structive, not destructive : they are reformers of opinion rather
than of practice ; and the fertilizing influence of their thought
is felt through many generations. The latter, on the other hand,
are possessed with a conviction so tremulous with intense self-
feeling that it seems the one important thing in the world, and
they are more or less blind to everything else ; they put all their
energy into explosive action, which, like lightning, is destructive ;
they are iconoclasts who beat down furiously the idols that are
worshipped in order to set up another in their places ; they are
reformers of practice rather than of thought ; and though they
effect a great immediate practical result, they have little or no
fertilizing influence upon the intellectual development of the

188 VOLITION. [chap.

future. The earnest desire which inspires their energy springs
from a basis of strong self-feeling.

"Without doubt the will is the highest force in Nature, the
last consummate blossom of all her marvellous efforts. The
natural product of the highest and completest reflection, it
represents the exquisitely and subtly adapted reaction of man
to the best insight into the relations in which he moves. Hence
the vast power of the human will witnessed in the lives of those
eminent men of practical genius who have exhibited its highest
evolution. They were in harmony with the current of events
among which they lived ; co-ordinating in themselves the forces
that were at work around them, they accomplished what the
world had at heart in that age. Thus the force which they dis-
played was a force not their own : the power of the universe was
behind them, and they became the organs of its manifestation.
If we reflect upon the way in which the social and intellectual
forces of an age are thus co-ordinated in the work of genius,
and again upon the manner in which the actions of the different
nerve centres of the body are subordinated and co-ordinated in
the manifestation of will, — how there are, as it were, a gathering
together and a concentration of different forces into one definite
mode of action, a unifying of their energies, — we may be able to
form a conception, by help of what we can thus observe, of the
mode of that exaltation or transpeciation of force and matter
throughout nature which we cannot follow through its inmost
processes.*

By the power of a well-fashioned will man reacts with
intelligent success upon the external world, brings himself into a
complete harmony with its surroundings, assimilates and incor-
porates nature, and thus carries forward its organic evolution.
The highest action of the will is therefore truly creative, for
in it is initiated a new development of nature ; it adumbrates
the possibilities of mankind, as a rudimentary organ in a lower
species of animal obscurely foretells the higher species in which
it will have full development. If we ask whence comes the
impulse that displays itself in this upward nisus, we can only
answer lamely that it comes from the same unfathomable source

• Transpeciation is a word used by Sir Thomas Browne which might be fouud
useful at the present day.

vii.] VOLITION. 189

as the impulse that inspires or moves organic growth throughout
nature.

NOTES.

1 (p. 169). — " Sixthly, the will appears to he nothing hut a desire or
aversion sufficiently strong to produce an action that is not automatic
primarily or secondarily. At least it appears to me that the substitu-
tion of these words for the word will may be justified by the common
use of language. The will is, therefore, that desire or aversion which
is strongest for the present time. Since, therefore, all love and hatred,
all desire and aversion, are factitious and generated by association, i.e.
mechanically, it follows that the will is mechanical also." — Hartley's
Theory of the Human Mind, p. 205.

" Appetite, therefore, and aversion, are simply so called as long as
they follow not deliberation. But if deliberation have gone before,
then the last act of it, if it be appetite, is called will; if aversion,

unwillingness Neither is the freedom of willing or not

willing greater in man than in other living creatures. For where
there is appetite the entire cause of appetite hath preceded ; and,
consequently, the act of appetite could not choose but follow : that is,
hath of necessity followed. And, therefore, such a liberty as is free
from necessity is not to be found either in the will of men or of
beasts. But if by liberty we understand the faculty or power, not of
willing, but of doing what they will, then certainly that liberty is to
be allowed to both, and both may equally have it, whensoever it is to
be had." — Hobbes, vol. i. p. 409.

" The whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes, and fears, continued
till the thing be either done or thought impossible, is that we call
Deliberation." — Leviathan, vii.

2 (p. 176). — I extract the following remarks of Hume : —

1. "But do we pretend to be acquainted with the nature of the
human soul, and the nature of the idea, or the aptitude of one to pro-
duce the other 1 . . . . We only feel the event, namely, the existence
of an idea, consequent to a command of the will. But the manner in
which this operation is performed, the power hy which it is produced,
is entirely beyond our comprehension."

2. " The command of the mind over itself is limited as well as its
command over the body ; and these limits are not known by reason.

Will any one pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these

boundaries, or show why the power is deficient in one case, not in
another?"

190 VOLITION. [chap, m

3. '• Self-command is very different at different times Can we

give any reason for these variations, except experience 1 Is there not
here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret
mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and
which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of
the will equally unknown and incomprehensible 1 "

4. " The motion of our body follows upon the command of our
will. Of this we are every moment conscious. But the means by
which this is effected, the energy by which the will performs so
extraordinary an operation ; of this we are so far from being imme-
diately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent
inquiry."

After explaining that volition does not act directly on a limb itself,
but through certain muscles and nerves, through which the motion is
successively propagated, he askt — " Can there be a ruore certain proof
that the power by which this whole operation is performed, so far
from being directly and fully known by an inward sentiment or con-
sciousness, is to the last degree mysterious and unintelligible. Here
the mind wills a certain event ; immediately another event unknown
to ourselves, and totally different from the intended, is produced.
This event produces another equally unknown ; till, at last, through a
long succession, the desired event is produced." — Inquiry concerning
the Human Understanding.

CHAPTER VIII.

MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE, AND
ACTUATION OR EFFECT ION.

rTlHUS far we have been engaged in considering the formation
Jf of the so-called mental faculties by the organization of
residua, afe this takes place in the production of simple or pre-
sentatfve ideas out of sensory impressions, — that is, in apprehen-
sion ; in the production of representative ideas or conceptions by
abstraction from the simple ideas, — that is, in comprehension ;
and in the production of volition as the result of the complex
interworking of desires and conceptions. But it is not man's
function in life merely to think ; his inner life he must express
or utter in action of some kind. Consequently there are other
residua besides those already dealt with, which enter as con-
stituents into his mental life — the residua, namely, that are left
behind by movements or actions. The movements that are
instigated or actuated by a particular nerve centre do, like the
idea, leave behind them their residua, which, after several
repetitions, become so completely organized into the nature of
the nerve centre that the movements may henceforth be auto-
matic. There is then, intervening between the volitional impulse
and the action, a department or repository of motor residua,
in which exist the immediate agents of movements — a region,
psychologically speaking, of abstract, latent, or potential move-
ments. If recourse be had to physiology, it is found that,
conformably with what psychological analysis teaches, there are
numerous special motorial nervous centres, or nuclei of ganglionic
cells, cerebral and spinal, from which motor nerves proceed,
and by the experimental irritation of which movements may

192 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

be artificially excited. The term which we have taken leave to
use for the purpose of designating psychologically the common
centres of movement is themotorium commune.

This region of motor residua, or, if we may venture so to
call it, this motorium commune, is related to conception on the
reactive side of human life, as sensation is on the receptive side.
As the residua of sensorial activity, as already seen, minister
and are necessary to a definite representative conception, so
the residua of motor ial activity in their turn enter into concep-
tion, and are indispensable to its realization in action. It may
not be amiss, then, to take notice here, again, how the highest
mental action comprehends or contains the whole bodily life.
The sensory life enters essentially into conception ; the organic
life, as previously set forth, participates in the emotional quality
of it ; and the motorial activity of the body is essential to its
due effectuation. How mischievously unjust, then, is the
absolute barrier set up between mind and body ! How mis-
leading the parcelling out of the mind into separate faculties
that answer to nothing in nature !

What name may most properly be given to this neglected but
important motorial region of our mental life ? The motor residua
that mingle in our conceptions have been called, in Germany,
motor intuitions (Bewegungs-anschauungen) ; but this description,
though admirably expressing their intervention in conception, is
perhaps too psychological to convey an adequate idea of their
physiological importance as the immediate agents or faculties of
all movements. The motor intuition, furthermore, intervenes
not alone between conception and respondent action, but also
between sensation and the motor reaction thereto, and even be-
tween the stimulus and the resultant reflex action ; so that the
term intuition is not altogether suitable, and may perhaps pro-
duce confusion. More appropriately might this region of motor
residua be described generically as the department of actuation ;
a department containing the powers or faculties through which
the nervous centres, excited into activity, act upon the muscular
system, and, by thus uttering or expressing their energies, restore
the equilibrium. It contains the means by which will, idea, or
sensation actuates definite movements, or prevents their occur-
rence. To describe it as the locomotive faculty would bring us

viii.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 1<)3

to the inconsistency of calling locomotive that the aim of which
is often inhibitory or preventive of motion, and would scarcely
include the organic reflex movements.

However it be named, there can be no doubt that such a
region of mental activity exists, and that in it are contained,
predetermined and co-ordinated, the faculties of different groups
and series of movements. It is easy to perceive, then, why the
will can only determine the result — cannot determine the action
of a particular muscle, or the combined actions of certain
muscles which have not acted together before. All it can
do is to will the event, and thereupon the proper nerve-fibres
and muscles are put in action through the medium of the motor
intuition. If the result wished is a new, unfamiliar one, no
residua thereof from previous experiences existing in the motor
centres, then the will is unequal to the accomplishment of it ;
there is not an exact and definite idea of the end to be effected,
the necessary motor intuition being wanting. After repeated
trials, the desired skill is firmly acquired, and the movement is
henceforth automatic, the motor intuition having been gradually
organized in the proper nervous centres : the result stored up
strictly corresponds with that which in other nervous centres we
describe as abstract idea. Here again we are taught that the
design manifest in any act of will is due to organic processes
similar to those which build up the design in the nerve
centres of sensori-motor action and of reflex action ; it is only
because of its being attended with consciousness that we describe
the energy of one of these definitely organized residua in the
highest centre as a conception or notion of the result — speaking
psychologically rather than physiologically. But even here con-
sciousness disappears when the organization is complete.

In the animals the motor intuitions, like their other faculties,
are mostly innate. There are no distinct, clear conceptions
accompanying their instinctive actions; but obscure sensations
and feelings excite the motor intuitions, .which then determine
the action of the proper muscles. In man, on the other hand,
although the faculties of certain co-ordinate movements do exist,
preformed in the nervous centres, the motor intuitions are
mostly acquired ; in this regard corresponding with the forma-
tion of his other mental faculties. Our ideas of distance, size,

o

194 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

and solidity furnish striking examples of the manner in which
we are indebted to our muscular intuitions, and of the difference
in respect of them between us and the animals. The young
swallow's intuition of distance appears to be as perfect when it
begins to fly as it is after a life-experience ; but it is not so with
the young child, which cannot for some time tell how far off or
how near an object is. In the first instance, the child's body
moves with the eyes, when these are fixed upon a light that is
moved about. After a few weeks the moving light is followed
by a motion of the head only ; next the eye-ball itself is
turned also ; and ultimately objects are followed with the eye
without any motion of the head. As this is going on, there is
acquired gradually a recognition of the distance of an object,
and the convergence of the axps of the eyes is seen to change
regularly and quickly with the distance of the object. Now it
is well known that the accommodation of the eyes to distance
takes place through a convergence of their axes and an accom-
modation of their lenses, two actions which are from the first
very firmly associated ; so much so that a congenital defect in
the lens is now recognised to be the frequent cause of squinting
in children. But these accommodating movements are not
determined by any act of will, nor are they within conscious-
ness; they are consensual movements in respondence to the
visual sensation, and strictly comparable with the instinctive
movements of the animals. It is not the visual sensation directly
which gives us the idea or intuition of distance, but the motor
intuition of the accommodating movement which, though un-
certain and confused at first in man, soon gets precision and
distinctness. In this example we have a type of that which
happens, with greater or less rapidity, in the case of every move-
ment in the body. The infant at first kicks out its leg — whether
from a so-called spontaneous outburst of energy, or by reason of
some organic or external stimulus, matters not — and bringing it
in contact with some external object, gets thereby a sensation,
in respondence to which, as in the consensual accommodation of
the eyes, adaptations of movements take place, and muscular
intuitions are more or less quickly and completely organized.
Certain sensations and certain movements are thus associated,
and the residua of the muscular movements, or the muscular

viii.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 195

intuitions, are henceforth essential constituents of our mental
life, whether we are distinctly conscious of them or not. Con-
sider, if further illustration be needed, the gradual acquisition of
the complex movements of speech, and the intimate connexion
which they have with the formation of our conceptions. A
weak-minded person, or a person of low cultivation, often cannot
content himself with the mental representation of a word, or
clearly comprehend a question put to him, without bringing the
actual movement to his assistance ; he must utter the word or
repeat the question aloud, in order to get his conception dis-
tinctly; the essential importance of the articulating movements
to conception is furthermore attested by the frequent deficiency
of them in idiots. It is most necessary, however, to guard against
the strong disposition which there is to look upon certain
movements, those of the eye and the tongue, as having a special
connexion with the mental life which other movements of the
body have not ; they have a specially intimate connexion, but
not a special kind of connexion. Unwarrantably separating by
an absolute barrier the mind from the body, and then locating it
in a particular corner of the latter, as is commonly done, we are
prone to forget that in mental action the whole bodily life is
comprehended — that every muscular intuition, therefore, has its
due place and influence in our mental life.

Another consideration which it is necessary to bear well in
mind is, that there is no fundamental difference in organic
nature between those motor intuitions that are original, or pri-
marily automatic, and those which are acquired in the natural
order of development, or are secondarily automatic. Between
the stimulus and the definite reflex action, whether innate or
acquired, between the sensation and its assemblage or succession
of muscular movements, the definite motor intuitions intervene
as necessarily as between the conscious conception and the
answering movement ; though in the latter case only have we the
consciousness of effort or motive energy. That the former may
take place without consciousness, proves that the motor residua
have been definitely and adequately organized in the proper motor
centres ; so that so far from design implying consciousness, as
metaphysical psychologists have thought, consciousness altogether
vanishes when the design is' firmly fixed in the nature of the

02

196 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

nervous element. Consider only the manifold co-existent and
successive movements of the many muscles of the tongue, the
palate, the pharynx, and the jaws, in mastication and deglutition
— complex movements which the will could never effect, of which
we have little or no consciousness, and before which human
ingenuity is mute — and it will be abundantly evident how much
we depend in our active life upon the region of motor intuitions.
But it should not be overlooked, it should indeed be prominently
held in remembrance, that these external motor manifestations
only represent what is contained internally in the appropriate
nervous centres ; that what is outwardly displayed exists in the
innermost ; that every motor intuition is, consciously or uncon-
sciously, an essential part of the mental life.

The foregoing observations are greatly strengthened by certain
morbid phenomena, in which a variation of the circumstances
furnishes an excellent test of the principles enunciated. In
that condition which Mr. Braid called " hypnotism," it has been
pointed out already that if the face or limbs of the patients are
placed in an attitude which is the normal expression of a certain
emotion, thereupon that emotion is actually excited ; the motor
intuition immediately awakening the appropriate conception.
This is in accordance with what we frequently observe in watch-
ing the genesis of mind in young children, where it is plain
that an attitude or gesture, unconsciously or involuntarily pro-
duced, sometimes awakens in the mind the correlative idea or
emotion, and where, on the other hand, every thought is imme-
diately translated into some movement.*

The condition of disease known as aphasia, which has been
so much studied during the last few years, is especially interesting
in its bearing on the doctrine of motor intuitions. A person
loses the power of expressing his thoughts by articulate language ;
and although in the majority of cases in which this happens
there is hemiplegia of one side, generally of the right, there
may be no paralysis at all. Moreover, in those cases in which
there is hemiplegia there is not any paralysis of the muscles of

* Vulpian {op. cit. p. 290) formularizes the general physiological law, that
every excitation of a nerve, at any point in its length, is transmitted immediately
ami simnltaneonsly both in a centripetal and centrifugal direction.

vni.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 197

articulation ; the loss of speech is not due to any defect in the
actual instruments of utterance, nor is the loss of power of
intelligent expression by speech owing in all cases, or entirely in
any case, to the loss of intelligence, though it is certainly true
that there is in many cases of hemiplegia some degree of mental
failure — some degree of enfeebled intelligence and of emotional
excitability. Intelligence, however, often fails or is lost without
loss of the power of speech ; and there are said to be met with
occasional instances of the latter defect without any appreciable
loss of intelligence — instances in which the patient is able to
communicate his thoughts by gesture-language, or by writing.
It is important to bear in mind, in regard to this question, that
language consists essentially in the establishment of a definite
relation between the idea and the sign by which it is outwardly
manifested ; that it may be verbal, vocal, graphic, or mimic ;
and that the general faculty of language includes all these
modes of expressing the thoughts. The persistence of these
other modes of expression, where the faculty of speech is lost,
proves that, notwithstanding the intelligence is most probably
decidedly weakened in all cases of aphasia, it is certainly not
weakened to such an extent that the loss of speech can be due
to the abolition of ideas. When, however, an aphasic person
cannot succeed in learning some language of signs so as to be
able to make himself understood, it can hardly admit of doubt
that he has either no ideas to express, or at any rate not suffi-
cient intelligence to learn a language which it is not difficult for
any person of common intelligence to acquire.

Where, then, does the .immediate mischief in aphasia lie ?
Is it not most probably in the centres of the motor residua
of speech, whereby the necessary motor intuitions fail, and the
patient cannot for the life of him bring to mind the words which
he wants to use, and perhaps uses, wittingly or unwittingly,
wrong words ? The essential connexion and interaction between
the sign and the thought signified, between the centres of the
motor residua of speech and the centres of ideation, is cut off,
either by some interruption of the function of their internuntiant
fibres or by injury to the functions of the motor centres them-
selves ; whence it is easily conceivable that a loss of power of
the ideas to play upon their appropriate signs will be occasioned

198 Jiui of, z;l^, uUS CENTRES, [ciiai\

— an inability to utter by speech the thoughts, a loss of memory
of the appropriate words. The failure is not strictly mental, nor
is it strictly motor, but lies in that intermediate region between
mind and movement which is essential to the due performance
of both motor and mental functions ; without which, indeed,
thought cannot attain to expression — cannot attain to know-
ledge of itself — movement cannot accomplish definite purpose.
" Herein lies the necessity of utterance, the representation of
thought," says Heyse. " Thought is not even present to the
thinker, till he has set it forth out of himself. Man, as an
individual endowed with sense and mind, first attains to
thought, and, at the same time, to comprehension of himself,
by setting forth out of himself the contents of his mind ;
and in this his free production, he comes to the knowledge of
himself, his thinking ' I.' He comes first to himself in uttering
himself."

Having regard, then, to the important, indeed the essential, part
which the motor intuitions play in the mental life, it is impossible
to conceive the loss of them taking place without secondary injury
to the ideational functions — to the intelligence; these may not
be primarily affected by the disease, but they cannot fail to suffer
secondarily. Even though the patient may not be himself aware
of any mental failure, and may feel convinced that it is only the
words to express his ideas that he lacks, yet it is not unlikely
that his condition resembles somewhat that of a person in a
dream, who fancies that he is thinking most logically, and
discoursing most eloquently, when his thoughts are confused
and his words incoherent. The history of cases of aphasia
prove that this is certainly so sometimes. It is easy to compre-
hend the disputes which arise among onlookers who endeavour
to test the intelligence in these cases : when the regular channel
by which intelligence expresses itself is closed, it must obviously
be very difficult to appraise accurately the degree of intelligence.
The simple questions which are usually put, for this purpose,
to aphasic patients certainly do not decide the question : a
demented person whose mental faculties were almost abolished,
might answer sensibly when he was asked what he would do if
the room were on fire ; and many patients in lunatic asylums
whose intelligence is in a very shattered state, are able to play

vin.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 199

cards and draughts skilfully. It is certainly quite possible for
an aphasic patient to make intelligent responses to simple ques-
tions and obvious suggestions when lie has lost all power of
sustained and definite thought. And, apart from all theoretical
considerations, the evidence which exists at present is in favour
of the opinion that the intelligence is decidedly weakened in
aphasia.

There is one observation more to make before passing from
this subject. Some writers are in the habit of affirming that it
is in names we think, and that they are the indispensable
instruments of thought. "I therefore declare my conviction,"
says Max Midler, "whether right or wrong, as' explicitly as
possible, that thought in one sense of the word, i.e. in reasoning,
is impossible without language." This sounds too absolute a
statement : the example of Laura Bridgman, who was deaf,
dumb, and blind, as her case is admirably described by Dr.
Howe, proves that a person may have human thought without
being able to speak ; the instances of aphasic patients who can
express their ideas in writing point in the same direction; but
neither these instances, nor the case of Laura Bridgman, can be
used to prove that it is possible to think without any means of
physical expression. On the contrary, the evidence is all the other
way. Laura Bridgman's fingers worked, making the initial move-
ments for letters of the finger-alphabet, not only during her
waking thoughts, but in her dreams. If we substitute for "names"
" the motor intuitions," or take care to comprise in language all
the modes of expressing thoughts, whether verbal, vocal, writing
or gesture-language, then it is unquestionable that thought is
impossible without language. In man the tongue has been
almost exclusively appropriated for the expression of thought,
but there is no absolute reason why his fingers, hands, and arms
might not be used, like the antennas of ants, to express all the
results of mental action. The reasons why the tongue has been
specially selected for this purpose are obvious : first, because of
its connexion with the vocal organs, whereby its movements, in
conjunction with those of the lips, modify in a great variety of
ways the different sounds, and thus make audible language,
which is plainly on the whole more useful to man than visible
language ; secondly, because of the great variety and complexity

200 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

of movements of which the numerous muscles of the tongue are
capable in so small a space ; and, thirdly, because the movements
of the hands are required for other purposes, while it is difficult
to perceive what other purpose the wonderful variety of the
tongue's movements could have served, when it was not engaged
in the taking and mastication of food.

The influence of the motor department of mental action, the
region of actuation, might receive further illustration from the
phenomena of insanity and of certain convulsive diseases. It
scarcely admits of question that some of the delusions of the
insane have their origin in what may justly be called muscular
hallucinations : a disorder of the nervous centres of the muscular
intuitions generates in consciousness a false conception, or delu-
sion, as to the condition of the muscles, so that an individual
lying in his bed believes himself to be flying through the air,
or imagines his legs, arms, or head, to be separated from his
body, just as he has hallucinations of sense when the sensorial
centres are disordered.* In dreams we may sometimes ob-
serve the same kind of thing, as when from hindered respiratory
movements a person suddenly wakes up with the idea that he is
falling over a precipice. Illusory movements, or illusory posi-
tions, are the characteristic traits of vertigo ; other subjective
sensations, such as noises in the ears, flashes before the eyes,
and painful sensations in the head, accompanying them. In
dreams, and also in drunkenness, there is no power of correcting
these subjective muscular experiences ; and the brain or mind,
rendering them conscious, converts them into false conceptions
of space. Such muscular illusions, or hallucinations, can of
course only ensue when the reaction of the disordered motor
intuition is into consciousness ; if, as may happen, and commonly
does happen, the reaction takes place outwards, there are
irregular or convulsive movements, but no delusion is generated.
In fact, when the motoriwm commune is disordered, its morbid

* " I had some years since," Dr. Whytt writes, "a patient affected with an
erysipelas in his face, who, when awake, was free from any confusion in his ideas ;
but no sooner did he shut his eyes, although not asleep, than his imagination
began to be greatly disturbed. He thought himself carried swiftly through the
air to distant regions ; and sometimes imagined his head, arms, and legs, to be
separated from his body, and to fly off different ways." — Obs. on Nahire, Causrs,
and Cure of Nervous, Hypochondriacal, and Hysteric Disorders. 1765.

viii.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 201

function may be displayed in irregular or convulsive muscular
action, and, if the deterioration proceed far enough, in paralysis ;
or it may react upon the mental life, and give rise to disorder of
intelligence.

The phenomena of convulsions, properly examined, will serve
to illustrate the existence and to exhibit the independent nature
of the motor intuitions. Every kind of movement which may be
normally excited by the will may occur as a convulsive act,
when, of course, there is no question of the exercise of will, and
when there is often an entire absence of consciousness. As the
individual in sound health must give intense attention in order
to isolate a certain muscular movement, which usually takes
place as a part of a complex series, and then cannot always
succeed, it is not surprising that there should often be more or
less co-ordination of movements in spasmodic or convulsive
muscular action, the design in the centres of motor intuition not
being eDtirely abolished. In cases of cerebral haemorrhage, it
sometimes happens that the articulating movements of single
sounds, or of a certain series of sounds, syllables, or words, are
produced without any mental act, or even against the will of
the patient. Eomberg relates a remarkable case of what he calls
rotatory spasm in a girl ten years of age, and another case of
co-ordinated spasm in combination with chorea, which occurred
in a boy aged six, who was occasionally attacked with an irre-
sistible desire to climb in spite of every impediment; in the
intervals he was affected with chorea. Consciousness is not
always entirely abolished ; and then patients are able to give an
account of the impulse which instigates the movements, and
which they are unable successfully to resist. It is well known
that the idea of convulsions, whether excited by present percep-
tion or by memory, may express itself in convulsive movements
— movements which, nevertheless, often display a considerable
amount of co-ordination. It is evident enough how, in a healthy
person, swallowing, coughing, and yawning are excited by the
observation of these acts in another ; and as instances of simi-
larly produced morbid actions, Eomberg adduces those dancing
epidemics of the Middle Ages, in which co-ordinate spasmodic
movements were notoriously excited in delicate women to an
extent and for a period such as the strongest man could not

202 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

have endured in health. It behoves ns to keep in mind that as
so many of our co-ordinate actions are automatically done in
health, so there may be considerable co-ordinate automatic
action in disease.

There yet remain further important considerations. Let a
man have the will to command or effect a certain movement,
and a notion of the result desired, without any paralysis of
motor power, and he may still be impotent to perform the move-
ment. And why? Because there may be a paralysis of sensi-
bility in the muscles, by reason of which he has no means of
knowing what is the condition of the muscles of the part, the
instruments which he has to use — cannot tell whether they are
acting or not ; he lacks that information which the muscular
sense should rightly afford him. In order that the will may
actuate a movement, there are necessary, then, not only a con-
ception of the end desired and a motor intuition of the muscular
movements subserving that end, but also a sense of the action of
the muscles. Any psychological arguments as to the value of
this guiding muscular feeling are rendered needless by patho-
logical experience, which plainly proves that, when the muscular
sense is paralysed, the movements cannot be performed except
some other sense come to the rescue. The sense of sight usually
does this : a woman whom Sir Charles Bell saw, who had lost
the muscular sense in her arm, could nevertheless hold her child
when she kept her eyes upon it ; but the moment she turned
her eyes away she dropped the child. I have seen a similar
instance recently of a woman, epileptic in consequence of
syphilis, who had lost the muscular sense in her left arm, and
who did not know, except she looked at the limb, whether she
had got hold of anything with her hand or not ; if she grasped
a jug, she could hold it quite well as long as she looked at it,
but if she looked away then she dropped it : she had no loss of
tactile sensation. In such morbid states the difference between
tactile sensation and the muscular sense is well marked. " Olli-
vier details a case in which the patient had lost the cutaneous
sense of touch throughout the side in consequence of concus-
sion ; at the same time he was able to form a correct estimate
of the weight of bodies with his right hand. The physician
observed by Marcet, who was affected with anaesthesia cutanea

viii.] OR MOTORWM COMMUNE. 203

of the right side, was perfectly able to feel his patient's pulse
with the fingers of the right hand and to determine its frequency
and force, hut in order to determine the temperature of the skin
he was obliged to call in the aid of his left hand." Anaesthesia
of the muscle, without loss of tactile power, does, according to
Bomberg, invariably accompany the disease called tabes dorsalis .*
The eyes of patients so affected are their regulators or feelers,
and consequently their helplessness, when their eyes are shut, or
they are in the dark, is extreme ; if told to shut their eyes while
in the erect posture, they begin to oscillate until they fall down,
unless supported. The skin remains sensitive except during the
last stage of the disease.

Eomberg, 'Duchenne, and others have, moreover, described
similar morbid conditions in anaemic and hysterical women,
which can hardly be called paralysis, as they are manifest only
in the night or when the eyes are shut : the patients can perform
movements, but these do not answer accurately to the will ;
they are deceived as to the amount of force necessary to be put
forth, and sometimes cannot undertake the movement of a limb
without the help of sight. In these cases there is the desire to
effect a certain action, there is the motor intuition of the move-
ment necessary to the end desired, but there is wanting the
guiding sensation of the muscular sense ; and accordingly the
action cannot be done unless the sense of sight takes upon it
the function of the defective muscular sense.

"What relation has the muscular sense to the motor intuition?
It is not an easy question to answer either from a psychological
or from a physiological basis. The relation appears to be not
unlike that which the sensation of a special sense has to the
corresponding idea : as the sensation of the special sense is
necessary to the formation of the idea, but, once formed, not

* It must be remembered that simple loss of muscular feeling is not Tabes
Dorsalis ; in tliis disease, the characteristic phenomenon is a loss of the power of
co-ordination of the muscles, and the morbid appearances are those of degeneration
of the posterior columns of the spinal cord — the motor repository or centres of
co-ordination of the movements of the limbs. Hence the disease is now more
properly called Progressive Locomotor Ataxy. Loss of muscular feeling is a
symptom that may occur in different diseases ; if another sense takes its place,
movements are still effected ; so that the power of movement, the repository of
motor residua, is not affected.

204 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.

necessary to its existence or function, so tlie muscular feeling
would seem to be an essential prerequisite to the formation
of the motor intuition, but, once formed, not necessary to its
latent existence, or indeed to its active function, provided only
another sense furnish the guiding information. Like other senses,
the muscular sense is receptive ; it ministers to the building up
of the fundamental ideas of solidity, size, figure, and distance,
through the impressions which it receives from without and
conveys inwards, and the subsequent internal adaptations which
take place ; and in the outward intelligent reaction of the
individual upon external nature, by virtue of these ideas, it
furnishes the guiding feeling by which he is enabled to direct
the action and to regulate the amount of force applied in any
given case. How admirably graduated is the application of force
by the skilful hand in delicate handicraft operations ! How
clumsy and incapable is the beginner in such crafts until, by fre-
quent practice, the requisite motor intuitions have been acquired !
Consider how awkward any one is at so simple a matter as
winding up a watch even for the first time ; and how quick,
easy, and certain the operation afterwards becomes. Observa-
tions made upon persons born blind prove that there is nothing
essential to the highest intellectual processes that may not be
acquired in the absence of sight, mainly through the muscular
feeling in combination with touch.

Because the muscular feelings gradually build up the motor
intuitions in accordance with the order, synchronous or succe°-
sive, of our experience, it is not difficult to deceive them by
a new experience modifying or reversing that order. It is well
known that, if the middle finger be crossed over the fore-finger,
and a pea or a like round body be put between them, while
the eyes are turned away, there will be the sensations of two
bodies ; the impression on that side of the fore-finger which is
habitually associated in action with the thumb excites indepen-
dently its residua, and that side of the middle finger which is ac-
customed to act with the third finger excites also its residua ; and
the consequence is a feeling of two bodies which it requires the
evidence of another sense to correct. So closely and definitely,
however, are our different senses associated in their functions, that
they may, instead of aiding and correcting one another, as is their

viii.] OR MOTOR WM COMMUNE. 205

proper function, sometimes actually help to deceive one another.
When the metal potassium was first shown to an eminent
philosopher, he exclaimed, on taking it into his hand, "Bless me,
how heavy it is ! " and yet potassium is so light as to float on
water. The metallic appearance had suggested a certain resist-
ance, or the putting forth of so much muscular energy as
previous experience of substances having a similar look had
proved necessary ; , and for a moment the suggestion of the
visual sense overswayed the actual experience of the muscular
sense : the latter was deceived as the man is who concludes
that a certain co-existence or succession in nature must always
exist because he has observed it in a great many instances ; or
as, at the disinterment of a body suspected to have been
murdered, one of the spectators who fainted on account of the
bad smell was deceived ; for, when the coffin was opened, it was
found to be empty.

The perfect function of the muscular sense is not only of
essential importance to the expression of our active life, but, like
the function of any one of the special senses, it has its due part
in our mental life. In the general paralysis of the insane there
are two prominent characteristics : the first is the general para-
lysis in greater or less degree of the muscles of the body ; and
the second is the extraordinary delusions of grandeur. It is a
question well worth consideration, whether these characteristic
symptoms do not stand in some degree of causal connexion to
one another. A tailor who is suffering from general paralysis
will readily promise to make a magnificent waistcoat, and, if the
materials are supplied to him, will at once set to work. It is
not improbable that, deceived by his quiet assurance, and know-
ing that to sew is his business, one may believe that he can make
the waistcoat. But, in a little while, it will be found that his
stitches are most unequal in size, and are placed in the most
disorderly way ; and it is made clear that, whatever he himself
may think, he certainly cannot sew. He has a sufficient desire
to accomplish the result, an adequate general notion of the end
desired, a full belief in his ability to effect it; but he fails
because his muscular feeling is very deficient, and because he
cannot regulate the action of the necessary muscles. That is
not all, however : as the sleeper, whose external senses are so

206 MOTOR XERFOUS CEXTRES, [chap.

closed as to shut out the controlling influence of external objects,
often does in his dreams the most wonderful things, and finds
little or no hindrance to an almost miraculous activity, intel-
lectual or bodily; so the general paralytic, whose defective
muscular feeling cuts him off from the due appreciation of
external relations, has engendered in his mind the most extrava-
gant notions as to his personal power ; he dreams with his eyes
open.* As we owe to the muscular sense the development of
our fundamental ideas of resistance, form, size, and space, it
will easily be understood that, when this sense is deficient
throughout the body, as in the general paralytic, there can
not be that intelligent accord between the inner life and
the outward relations which, when in a perfect state, it main-
tains. Here, again, we perceive bow impossible it is to separate
the mental from the bodily life ; how plainly, when we scan the
deeper relations of things in their genesis, there are displayed
the closest connexion and continuity of parts and functions.

To the action of the will, as already pointed out, a conception
of the result is essential, whether the volitional exertion be for
the purpose of causing a movement, of preventing or checking a
movement, or of dismissing a painful idea from the mind. When
a sensation excites a co-ordinate movement in so-called sensori-
motor action, we do not say there is a conception of the result,
because of the absence of consciousness ; but at the same time
we must admit that there is a motor intuition of the result, — in
other words, that there is a definitely organized residuum in the
proper motor nervous centre which, as it were, implicitly con-
tains the movement. Now it is important to bear in mind that,
when the will excites that co-ordinate movement which a sen-
sation alone may do, as not unfrequently happens, it cannot
operate directly on the motor nerves, but must necessarily
operate through the medium of the same motor intuition as
that through which the sensation acts : in other words, the

* At the present time I have under my care a general paralytic who, occa-
sionally much excited, then believes that he is fighting great battles, and winning
great victories with his fists ; he believes, too, that he wins immense sums of
money as wagers on his prowess. The disorder of his motorium commune enters
into his thoughts and engenders corresponding delusions. He is confined to his
bed or couch by reason of having lost one leg, or he would be a violent and
dangerous lunatic.

viii.] OR MOTORIUM COMMUNE. 207

movement in both cases proceeds directly from the motor ner-
vous centre in which the movement is latent. If we could
excite these centres artificially, not over-exciting and injuring
them, as in our gross experiments we necessarily do, then we
should not fail to set free the definite movements. Speaking
psychologically, the conception of the result becomes in the
execution of voluntary movements the motor intuition, and the
motor intuition excited into activity expresses itself in the
designed movement. Thus, then, it appears that, as in the action
of nature upon man, the stimulus which is not reflected in
the spinal cord passes upwards and excites sensation, and the
stimulus which is not reflected in sensori-motor action passes
upwards and becomes idea, and the stimulus which is not
reflected in ideomotor action passes from cell to cell in the
hemispheres and excites reflection ; so in the reaction of man
upon nature, the force of the will passes downwards through the
subordinate centres in an opposite direction : the will involves
a conception of the result or a definite ideational action; the
conception of the result demands for its further transforma-
tion the appropriate motor intuition ; and the motor intuition,
in whatever motor centre, spinal or cerebral, it is organized,
demands for its due expression in movement the perfect function
of the muscular feeling, and the integrity of the motor nerves
and muscles. There is an orderly subordination of the different
nervous centres, a chain of means such as is revealed in' every
department of nature. Viewing the different sciences, we per-
ceive that chemistry is dependent on physics, while physics
are independent of chemistry ; physiology is dependent on che-
mistry, while chemistry is independent of physiology ; social
science is dependent on physiology, while physiology is indepen-
dent of social science : and so the just analysis of our mental life
proves that sensori-motor action is dependent on reflex action,
while reflex action is independent of sensori-motor action ; ideo-
motor action dependent on sensori-motor action, while sensori-
motor action is independent of ideomotor action ; the will
dependent on ideomotor action, while ideomotor action is in-
dependent of the will. These different epochs in the order of
development of the nervous system are represented by different
classes of the lower animals : and it is interesting to note that,

208 MOTOR NERVOUS CENTRES, [chap.viii.

as in man there is a subordination of parts, and the will, as the
highest energy, controls the inferior modes of nervous energy,
so in the animal kingdom there is a subordination of kinds, and
the mind of man, as the highest development, controls and uses
the inferior minds of many of the lower animals.

If execution has been in any wise answerable to conception,
we have now said enough to prove the importance of that region
of mental activity in which dwell the motor residua, and which
may properly be named the region of actuation. We have only
to add that men differ much naturally as to the perfection of
this as of other mental faculties. There are some who, with
great intellectual power, never can attain to the ability of suc-
cessfully expressing themselves : and there are others, on the
other hand, who can pour forth endless talk with the most facile
fluency. The art of expression in speech, or in writing, or even
in eloquence of action, is one which, if there is not an innate
faculty for it, can never be acquired in its highest perfection :
unseen fetters hinder the full utterance, and lame execution falls
far short of ambitious conception : with the distinct conception
of what they would say, and the best will to say it, there is
something wanting in the region of actuation, whereby they are
prevented from doing justice to their thoughts, and are com-
pelled, like Moses, to delegate that function to others. " There
is Aaron : he shall be thy speaker, and thou shalt be to him
instead of God." (Exodus iv. 16.)*

* And a greater than Moses or Aaron was so gifted with the faculty of
excellent expression, that it was justly said of Him that " Never man spake as
this man speaks."

CHAPTEE IX.

MEMORY AND IMAGINATION.

"You tell me it consists of images or pictures of things. Where is this
extensive canvas hung up ? or where are the numerous receptacles in which these
are deposited ? or to what else in the animal system have they any similitude ?
That pleasing picture of objects represented in miniature on the retina of the eye
seems to have given rise to this illusive oratory. It was forgot that this repre-
sentation belongs rather to the laws of light than to those of life ; and may with
equal elegance be seen in the camera obscura as in the eye ; and that the picture
vanishes for ever when the object is withdrawn." — Db. Darwin, Zoonomia.

THOUGH Memory lias not hitherto been specially treated of
as a faculty of the mind, its true nature has been none the
less discussed largely, though incidentally, in the foregoing pages.
It may be desirable, however, to bring together into one body
the fundamental facts concerning it. There is memory in every
nerve-cell, and, indeed, in every organic element of the body.
The permanent effects of a particular virus on the constitution,
as that of small-pox, or that of syphilis, prove that the organic
element remembers for the rest of life certain modifications
which it has suffered ; the manner in which the scar on a child's
finger grows as the body grows evinces, as Mr. Paget has pointed
out, that the organic element of the part does not forget the
impression that has been made upon it ; and all that has so far
been said respecting the different nervous centres of the body
cannot fail to demonstrate the existence of memory in the nerve-
cells which lie scattered in the heart and in the intestinal walls,
in those that are collected together in the spinal cord, in the cells
of the sensory and the motor ganglia, and in the ideational cells
of the cortical layers of the cerebral hemispheres. The residua
by which our faculties, as already shown, are built up, are the

p

210 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [chap.

organic conditions of memory. These organized residua of the
cerebral centres, which, when excited into activity by some ex-
ternal impression, enable us to perceive distinctly, or apprehend
the object, appear, when excited by some internal cause, as
memory or recollection. When an organic registration has been
completely effected, and the function of it has become automatic,
we do not usually speak of the process as one of memory, because
it is entirely unconscious. Thus, for example, when a beginner
is learning his notes on the pianoforte, he has deliberately to call
to mind each note ; but when, by frequent practice, he has
acquired complete skill in playing on that instrument, there is
no conscious memory, but his movements are automatic, and so
rapid as to surpass the rapidity of succession of conscious ideas.
As with such movements, so it is with many ideas, which are so
completely organized that they are automatically and quickly
performed in our mental life without conscious memory. (x)

The organic registration of the results of impressions upon our
nervous centres, by which the mental faculties are built up, and
by which memory is rendered possible, is the fundamental pro-
cess of the mental life. There can be no memory of that whereof
we have not had experience in whole or in parts ; and nothing
of which we have had experience can be absolutely forgotten.
But it is most mischievous to regard mental phenomena as mere
pictures of nature, and the mind as a vast canvas, on which
they are cunningly painted. Such representation, as Darwin
well observes, belongs rather to the laws of light than to those of
life ; the real process is one of organization, and is rightly con-
ceivable only by the aid of ideas derived from the observation of
organic development, — namely, the fundamental ideas of Assimi-
lation and Differentiation.

There is in mental development, then, the organic registration
of the simple ideas of the different senses ; there is the assimila-
tion of the like in ideas which take places in the production or
organic evolution of general ideas ; there is the special organiza-
tion, or differentiation, or discrimination, of unlike ideas ; and
there is the organic combination of the ideas derived from the
different senses into one complex idea, with the further manifold
combinations of complex ideas into what Hartley called duplex
ideas. In fact, no limit is assignable to the complexity of

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 211

combinations which may go to the formation of an idea. Take,
for example, the idea of the universe. But how comes it
to pass that a new creation of the mind, to which nothing in
nature answers, is effected ? By a similar organic process to
that by which like residua are blended, and general or abstract
ideas formed. There are no actual existences answering to our
most abstract ideas, which are, therefore, so far new creations of
the mind. In their formation there is a comparison of our ideas,
and a blending or coalescence of their like relations takes place
— the development of a concept. There is, as it were, an extrac-
tion of the essential out of the particular, a sublimation of the
concrete ; and, by the creation of a new world in which these
essential ideas supersede the concrete ideas, the power of the
mind is most largely extended. Although there is no concrete
object in nature answering to these abstract ideas, yet they are
none the less, when rightly formed, valid and real subjective
existences that express the essential relations of things, as the
flower which crowns development expresses the essential nature
of the plant. Thus it is that we rise from the particular idea of
a man to the general idea of man, and then again to the abstract
idea of virtue ; so that for the future we can make use of the
abstract idea in all our reasoning, without being compelled to
make continual reference to the concrete.* Herein, be it remem-
bered again, we have a process corresponding with that which
ministers to the production of our motor intuitions ; the acquired
faculty of certain co-ordinate movements by means of which
complicated acts are automatically performed, and we are able
to do, almost in the twinkling of an eye, what would cost hours
of labour if we were compelled on each occasion to go delibe-
rately through the process of special adaptation, is the equivalent,
on the motor side, of the general idea by which so much time
and labour are saved in reasoning : in both cases there is an
internal development in accordance with fundamental laws, and
the organized result is, as every new phase of development is,
a new creation. Creation is not by fits and starts, but it is con-
tinuous in nature.

* But it should not be forgotten, as it is so apt to be, that the meaning of the
general or abstract is to be sought in the concrete, not the interpretation of the
concrete in the general or abstract.

p2

212 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [chap.

These considerations are of importance in respect of the nature
of Imagination, which must ever be incomprehensible on the
mischievous assumption of ideas as pictures or images of things
painted on the mind. Though imagination is certainly depen-
dent on memory, is it not, it may be asked, more than reproduc-
tive,— is it not, in fact, 'productive ? Productive, we reply, as to
form, but certainly only reproductive as to material. When any
one affirms that he can imagine something — as, for example,
some animal of which he has not had experience, what he does
is to combine into one form certain selected characters of dif-
ferent animals of which he has had experience ; creating in
this way, as nature is continually doing, new forms out of old
material. When the artist embodies in ideal form the result of
his faithful observation, he has, by virtue of that mental process
through which general ideas are formed, abstracted the essential
from the concrete, and then by the shaping power of imagination
given to it a new embodiment. In every great work of art there
is thus an involution of the universal in the concrete: it is
pregnant in its meaning, yielding a wide range to the action
of another's imagination when he contemplates it. So it is
that high art does not express anything essentially evanescent :
it confers on the moment the stedfastness of eternity, repre-
senting the "snows of nature frozen into a motionless im-
mortality." The man of science, who unlocks the secrets of
Nature by means of observation, experiment, and reflection, thus
systematically training his mind in conformity with Nature by
exact interrogation and faithful interpretation of her works, has
recourse, when he proceeds to react upon nature, to a scientific
imagination thus carefully cultivated, and is enabled to construct
wonderful works of art that are truly an advance upon, or a
development of, nature — new creations. What else then, funda-
mentally, is the true imagination but the nisus of nature's
organic development displaying itself in man's highest function ?
What is human art but nature developed through man ? There
is going on a recreation of nature by human means, but nature
makes the means * The productive or creative power of Imagi-

* " Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean ; so, over that art,
"Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 213

nation, which seems at first sight to be irreconcilable with
knowledge gained entirely through experience, is then at bottom
another, though the highest, manifestation of that force which
impels organic development throughout nature ; and the imagi-
nation of any one either creates truly, or brings forth abortions
and monstrosities, according as the mind is well stored with
sound knowledge and has true concepts, or as it is inadequately
furnished with knowledge and has erroneous concepts — accord-
ing, in fact, as the individual is or is not in harmony with nature:
As imagination thus exhibits an evolution of the mental organi-
zation, so the well-grounded imagination of the pliilosopher or
the poet is the highest display of nature's organic evolution,
and works, like nature, unconsciously* (2)

How much of what we call memory is in reality imagination !
When we think to recall the actual, the concrete, it is often the
ideal, the general, that we reproduce ; and when we believe that
we are remembering, we are often ?7mremembering, being in-
fluenced by the feelings of the moment, and unable to reproduce
the feelings of the past. The faculty by which we recall a scene
of the past, and represent it vividly to the mind, is at bottom
the same faculty as that by which we represent to the imagina-
tion a scene which we have not witnessed. " For ^avra^eaOt
and meminisse, fancy and memory, differ only in this, that
memory supposes the time past, which fancy doth not." Me-
mory, indeed, has been called the grave of the past, imagina-
tion the womb of the future ; but the grave of the past ever is
the womb of the future. How much of our perception even is
actually imagination ! The past perception unavoidably mingles
in the present act, prevents us often from discriminating minute
differences which exist, and thus causes us to perceive wrongly

That nature makes

This is an art

Which does mend nature — change it, rather : but
The art itself is nature." — Winter's Tale.

* " All power is of one kind," says Emerson, " a sharing of the nature of the
world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current
of events, and strong with their strength. One man is made of the same stuff of
which events are made ; is in sympathy with the course of things ; can predict
them."

214 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [chap.

or observe incorrectly. What shall be admitted as a fact in
scientific observation, depends entirely upon the observer's pre-
vious knowledge and training. So strong is the disposition to
assimilate a present observation with a past perception, to blend
together the like in two ideas, that we are apt to overlook those
special differences which demand a discrimination or organic
differentiation ; there is, indeed, almost as great a danger of
hasty generalization in perception as there is in reasoning. If a
new observation will not easily assimilate vith existing ideas,
there is a feeling of dissatisfaction and of positive discomfort,
and one is apt to pass the unwelcome fact by. But if a proper
mental training prevents such neglect, the fact is deliberately
appropriated or registered as a special fact, although small satis-
faction is felt in the martyrdom of thus registering it, isolated
as it appears ; after a while, however, other observations cluster
about it, some blending with it, others connecting it with
ideas to which it seemed entirely unrelated, until this pariah of
the mind is found perhaps to fill up a gap in knowledge, and
organically to unite distant ideas. It is a most necessary habit
to acquire in the true cultivation of the mind, that of observing
accurately, of carefully noting minute differences, and of scru-
pulously registering them, so as to effect an exact internal
correspondence with external specialities.

As we perceive more accurately, so shall we remember more
correctly, judge more soundly, and imagine more truly. The
habit of hasty and inexact observation, the unwarranted blending
of residua that are not truly like, is necessarily the foundation
of a habit of remembering wrongly ; and the habit of remem-
bering wrongly is of necessity the cause of an incorrect judgment
and erroneous imagination : exact internal correspondence to
external relations being the basis of an imagination true to
nature, — in other words, of a true organic mental development.
For these reasons, " the whole powers of the soul may," as
Hartley observes, " be referred to the memory, when taken in
a large sense. Hence, though some persons may have strong
memories with weak judgments, yet no man can have a strong
judgment with a weak original power of retaining and remem-
bering." Infinite mischief and confusion have been caused by
the habit of speaking of ideas as if they were the mechanical

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 215

stamps of impressions on the memory, instead of as, what they
truly are, organic evolutions in respondence to definite stimuli ;
our mental life is not a copy but an idealization of nature, in
accordance with fundamental laws.

As organic growth and development take place in obedience
to the laws of nature, and yet constitute an advance upon them,
so it is with the well-cultivated or truly developed imagination,
which brings together images from different regions of nature^
yokes them together by means of their occult but real relations,
and, thus making the whole one image, gives a unity to variety :
there is an obedient recognition of nature, and there is a develop-
mental advance upon it. This esemplastic faculty, as Coleridge,
following Schelling, named it, is perhaps indicated by the Ger-
man word for imagination, namely, Einbildung, or the one-making
faculty* Its highest working in our great poets and philoso-
phers really affords us an example of creation going steadily on
as a natural process ; and creative or productive activity is
assuredly the expression of the highest mental action : whosoever
has such capacity has more or less genius ; whosoever has it not
will do nothing great, though he work never so hard. What an
amount has been unwisely written by the sedulous followers of
a so-called inductive philosophy in disparagement of imagination
and in favour of simple observation ! " Men should consider,"
says Bacon, " the story of the woman in iEsop, who expected
that with a double measure of barley her hen would lay two
eggs a day ; whereas the hen grew fat and laid none." It were
as wise in a man to load his stomach with stones instead of
food as to load his mind with facts which he cannot digest and
assimilate. It is in the great capacity which it has of assimi-
lating material from every quarter, and of developing in pro-
portion, that the superiority of genius consists ; and it is in the
excellence of its imagination, whether poetical, artistic, philo-
sophic, or scientific, that its superior energy is exhibited.

Because the least things and the greatest in Nature are indis-
solubly bound together as equally essential parts of the myste-
rious but harmonious whole, therefore the intuition into one

* More correctly, perhaps, Ein for en (in), and Bildung (formation, — internal
image, i.e. imagination.

216 MEMORY AND IMA GINATION. [chap.

pure circle of her works by trie high and subtile intellect of the
genius contains implicitly much more than can be explicitly
displayed in it. Hence it comes to pass at times that, in the
investigation of a new order of events by such an intellect, the
law of them will, as by a flash of intuition, explicitly declare
itself in the mind after comparatively few observations : the
imagination successfully anticipates the slow results of patient
and systematic research, flooding the darkness with the light of
a true interpretation, and thus illuminating the obscure relations
and intricate connexions. Therein a well-endowed and well-
cultivated mind manifests its unconscious harmony with nature.
The brightest flashes of genius come unconsciously and without
effort : growth is not a voluntary aet, although the gathering of
food is.

Certainly the intuition of truth can never be the rule amongst
men, inasmuch as the genius capable of intuition, so far from
being common, is a most rare exception amongst them. And
the result, however brilliantly acquired, can never be safely
accepted as lasting, until it has been further subjected to the
tests of observation, experiment, and logical reasoning, — until it
has undergone verification. The man of genius who has revealed
a great truth may probably, on some other occasion, promulgate
an equally great error. Happily his errors are indirectly most
useful ; for the experiments and observations provoked and
directed by them, and prosecuted for the purpose of displaying
their instability, often lead to valuable discoveries. Mischief is
undoubtedly wrought by the rash promulgation of ill-grounded
theories on the part of those who have neither superior original
capacity, nor a mind well stored with the results of observation,
nor an imagination properly cultivated. It is the ignorant only,
however, whom such persons deceive : those who possess an
adequate knowledge of the subject can always recognise in the
unwarranted theory the exact amount of knowledge which its
authors have had, and the character of the defect in their reason-
ing. Those, again, who take a philosophical view of things, and
look upon the progress of human knowledge as a development
that is going on continuously through the ages, will find it con-
formable to their experience of every other form of vital growth
that there should be, coincidently with advance, a retrograde

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 217

metamorphosis, degeneration or corruption of that which is not
fitted for assimilation, and which is ultimately rejected : as the
body dies daily as the condition of its life, so false theories and
corrupt doctrines are conditions of the progress of knowledge.*
That there is a deep distrust of hasty generalization is a mani-
festation of the self-conservative instinct ; it prevents the human
mind from being led astray by vain and windy doctrines, and
thus promotes a true development. It is not, however, in
the individual, where so much active change takes place in so
short a time, that the regular corruption and decay of false doc-
trines will be clearly perceived, but in the historical development
of the race, where the gradual evolution of the mind may be
better traced.

Thus much concerning memory and imagination, which, when
properly examined, reveal, better perhaps than the analysis of
any other of the so-called mental faculties, the complex organi-
zation which mind really is. It remains only to add here, that
the manifold disorders to which memory is liable illustrate in
the most complete manner its organic nature. Its disorders are
numberless in degree and variety ; for there is not only every
degree of dulness, but there is met with every variety of partial
loss, as of syllables in a particular word, of certain words, places,
names. So various and numerous are its possible defects, that
it has not yet been possible to reduce them to any system,
although it is probable that a careful classification of them
might be very useful. All that we can at present conclude
from them is, first, that memory is an organized product ; and,
secondly, that it is an organization extending widely through the
cortical layers of the cerebral hemispheres. It is interesting to
observe that differences exist in different persons in the character
of the organic function which ministers to memory : one man,

* I may make the following quotation from an article by me, on " Eecent
Metaphysics," in the Journal of Mental Science, January 1866: — "As in the
growth and development of the body there is a correlative degeneration or retro-
grade metamorphosis of organic element going on — a daily death in strict relation
with the activity of life ; so in the organic growth of thought through the ages,
there is a corresponding decay, or corruption of erroneous doctrines — a death of
the false in strict relation with the growth of the true ; thus healthy energy
throws offv effete matter, which, in the very act of becoming effete, gives up force
that is available for the development of the living element of truth."

/

218 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [chap.

for example, has a good memory for particular facts, but is no
way remarkable for reasoning power, or is even singularly
deficient therein — the registration of the concrete impressions
taking place with the greatest ease, but the further digestion of
the residua not being accomplished ; another, on the other hand,
has no memory for particular isolated facts, — they must have
some relation to ideas already appropriated, or must fall under
some principle, if he is to recollect them ; the digestion of
residua is well effected, so that there exists a great power of
generalization. The latter is the memory of intellect ; the
former is not unfrequently the memory of idiots.

Some flaw in the memory, some breach in its exquisite organi-
zation, is ever one of the first indications of a disorder or dege-
neration of nerve element. But its slight, early affections are
very apt to be overlooked, forasm ach as they do not reveal them-
selves in a conscious inability to remember something, but in an
unconscious deterioration of the power of abstract reasoning,
and of the moral sense that is so closely connected therewith.
The most delicately organized residua, representing the highest
efforts of organic assimilation, are here the first to attest by their
sufferings any interference with the integrity of nerve element,
just as disorders of the finest associated movements of the spinal
cord are the first to declare the commencing degeneration of its
centres. Long before there is any palpable loss of memory in
insanity, even before an individual is recognised to be becoming
insane, there is a derangement of his highest reasoning and of
his moral qualities ; his character is more or less altered, and,
as it is said, " he is not himself." If the degeneration of nerve
element proceeds, we witness successively every stage of declen-
sion in the disorder of the complex organization of the memory;
namely, manifest perversion of the higher social feelings, then
greater or less destruction of the organic connexions of ideas,
whence follows incoherence of thought, and, finally, general for-
getfulness, declining into complete abolition of memory.

It is not difficult to understand how it is that the old man
sometimes has a tenacious memory of the past, and can reason
tolerably correctly with regard to it, when he cannot duly appro-
priate and rightly estimate the present. The brain, like every
other organ of the body, suffers a diminution of power of activity

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 219

with the advance of age ; it reacts to impressions with less and
less vigour and vivacity, and there is less and less capacity to
assimilate the influence of them, so that there are a dulness of
perception and an incorrect appreciation of events. Meanwhile,
however, the past is a part of the organic nature of the brain,
and may be sufficiently remembered, though perhaps with less
vivacity than formerly. It is easy, again, to perceive how it is
that children, like animals, live almost entirely in the present ;
they have no store of ideas organized in the mind which might
be called into activity to influence the present idea, and they react
directly to the impressions made upon them. The best possible
evidence of the gradual process of mental organization is indeed
afforded by the mental phenomena of young children ; for the
residua of impressions not being completely organized, their
memory is fallacious, and, a firm organic association between
ideas not being established, their discourse is incoherent. The
old man and the child both fail in judgment : the former, because
he has forgotten more or less of the past, and has lost the
standard by which to measure the present perception, or because
he cannot take in accurately the present perception, and measures
it entirely by the past ; the latter, because it has not yet any
past. By the necessity of the case almost, an old man becomes
conservative and the laudator temporis acti; for the evolution of
events goes on when his nature has ceased to assimilate and
develop ; he has accordingly no sympathy with them, but, re-
treating within the shell of a calcified past, obstinately brands as
revolutionary what is truly evolutionary. How different with the
youth ! The curtain of life rises, and he is fascinated with the
show ; his nature expands trustfully, and though he may often
mistake fleeting illusions for lasting truths, and come to no little
sorrow thereby, yet he assimilates, grows, and develops.

Lastly, it will not be amiss to bear in mind, in regard to the
organic nature of memory, that we cannot remember pain. It is
certainly possible to remember that we have suffered a particular
pain ; but vividly to recall the pain as we can a definite idea
is not possible. And why? Because the idea is an organized
product which abides, while the disorganization or disturbance
of nerve element which pain implies, passes away with the
restoration of the integrity of the nerve centre. Tor the same

220 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [ch^p

reason, we cannot easily or adequately recall a very powerful
emotion in which the idea or the form has been almost entirely
lost in the commotion — where, in fact, the storm among the
intimate elements has been so great as to be destructive of form :
Shakspeare's words, "formless ruin of oblivion," admirably
expressing the state of things. When we do strive to bring to
mind a particular sensation or emotion, it is by vivid representa-
tion of its cause, and consequent secondary excitation of it : we
remember the idea, and the idea generates the emotion or the
sensation. But the sensation of pain is a very different matter
from the sensation of one of the senses ; it is the outcry of
suffering nerve element, and cannot be generated by any idea ;
it is not the result of organization, but the token of disorgani-
zation. How, then, should it be accurately remembered ?

NOTES.

1 {p. 210). — " The truth that memory comes into existence when the
connexions among psychical states cease to be perfectly automatic is in
complete harmony with the obverse truth, illustrated in all our expe-
rience, that as fast as the connexions of psychical states which we form
in memory become, by constant repetition, automatic, they cease to be
part of memory. "We do not speak of ourselves as remembering those
relations which become organically, or almost organically, registered ;
we remember those relations only of which the registration is not yet
absolute. No one remembers that the object at which he is looking
has an opposite side ; or that a certain modification of the visual
impression implies a certain distance ; or that the thing which he sees
moving about is a living animal. It would be a misuse of language
were we to ask another whether he remembers that the sun shines,

that fire burns, that iron is hard, and that ice is cold And

similarly, though, when a- child, the reader's knowledge of the meaning
of successive words was at first a memory of the meanings he had
heard given to them ; yet now their several meanings are present to
him without any such mental process as that which we call remem-
brance."— Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, p. 551.

2 (p. 213). — Jean Paul Fuchter, in one of his Letters, says : "The
dream is an involuntary art of poetry : and it shows that the poet
works more with the bodily brain than another man. How is it that

ix.] MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. 221

no one has wondered that in the detached scenes of dreaming, he puts
in the mouth of the actors the most appropriate language, the words most
exactly characteristic of their nature ; or rather that they prompt him,
not he them ? The true poet even is in writing only the listener, not

the language-teacher of his characters Victor's observation that

the opponent of his dreams often put before him more difficult
objections than a real bodily one, may be made of the dramatist, who
can in no manner be the spokesman of his company without a
certain inspiration, though he is at the same time easily the writer of
their parts. That dream-forms surprise us with answers with which
we ourselves have inspired them is natural ; even when awake every
idea springs forth suddenly like a spark of fire, though we attribute it
to our attention ; but in dreams we lack the consciousness of attention,
and we must thus ascribe the idea to the figure before us, to which
also we ascribe the attention." Again : — " Das Machtigste in Dichter,
welches seinen Werken die gute und die bose Seele einblaset, ist
gerade das Unbewusste." — Aesthetik.

Carlyle, whose writings exhibit in a marked degree the influence of
Jean Paul and Goethe, says of Shakspeare : — " Shakspeare is what
I call an unconscious intellect ; there is more virtue in it than he is
himself aware of. His dramas are products of Nature, deep as Nature
herself. It is Nature's highest reward to a true, simple, great souL
that he gets thus to be a part of herself. Such a man's works, whatever
he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish,
grow up withal unconsciously from the unknown deep in him, as the
oak-tree grows from the earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters
shape themselves."

Dr. Brown (Philosophy of the Mind, p. 200), when enumerating
what he calls the Secondary Laws of Suggestion, lays much stress on
constitutional differences in individuals — the differences of Genius,
Temper, or Disposition. The tendencies in some minds are wholly to
suggestions of proximity ; in other minds there is a powerful tendency
to suggestions of analogy. It is in this latter tendency to the new
and copious suggestions of analogy that the distinction of genius
appears to consist ; a mind in which it exists is necessarily inventive ',
" for all to which we give the name of invention, having a relation to
something old, but a relation to that which was never before suspected
or practically applied, is the suggestion of analogy." There would be
nothing new if objects were to suggest only, according to proximity,
the very objects that had co-existed with them; but there is a
perpetual novelty of combination, when the images that arise after

222 MEMORY AND IMAGINATION. [chap. ix.

each other, by that shadowy species of resemblance which we are
considering, are such as never existed before together or in immediate
succession. Hence the rich figurative language of poetry — the
expressions of resemblances that have arisen silently and spontaneously
in the mind ; hence the discoveries and inventions of science, &c.
He goes on, too, to point out that this novelty of combination in
imagination cannot depend upon the will. It is absurd, he says, to
suppose that we can will directly any conception, since, if we know
what we will, conception must be already a part of consciousness.

" Hence, in proportion as the memory is enriched and provided
with materials, in the same proportion the rational mind, if backed by
a happy genius, will be able skilfully, felicitously, and approximately,
and agreeably to the truth, to distribute its analysis into series, to
adjust and conclude them, of many analytic conclusions again to form
new analyses, and in the end to evolve its ultimate analyses." —
Swedenborg's Animal Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 348.

In a note he adds — " This is corroborated by the common opinion,
that the knowledge and intelligence of an individual are in proportion
to the furniture of his memory. But it does not follow from this,
that a powerful memory is always accompanied with ability, or by an
understanding of equal grasp. For the faculty of reducing the con-
tents of memory to order is a fresh intellectual requisite. An edifice
is not built simply by the accumulation of implements, bricks, tiles,
and the materials. These and skill must be tasked to put all things
together in their places."

PART II.
THE PATHOLOGY OF MIND.

Chapter I. On the Causes of Insanity.

II. On the Insanity of Early Life.

III. On the Varieties of Insanity.

IV. On the Pathology of Insanity.
V. On the Diagnosis of Insanity.

VI. On the Prognosis of Insanity.
VII. On the Treatment of Insanity.

CHAPTEE I
ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY.

fTlHE causes of insanity, as usually enumerated by authors, are
-*- so general and vague as to render it a very difficult matter
to settle in the mind what they really are. But it is hardly less
difficult, when brought face to face with an actual case of in-
sanity, and when there is every opportunity of investigation,
to determine with certainty what have been the causes of the
disease. It is a question, however, asked over and over again of
the physician by the members of an insane person's family, who
appear sometimes more anxious to know what can have caused
the disease than to know what will cure it. The uncertainty
springs from the fact that, in the great majority of cases, there is
a concurrence of conditions, not one single effective cause. All
the conditions which conspire to the production of an effect are
alike causes, alike agents ; and, therefore, all the conditions,
whether they are in the individual or in the circumstances in
which he is placed, which in a given case co-operate in the pro-
duction of disease, must alike be regarded as causes. When we
are told that a man has become deranged from anxiety or grief,
we have learned very little if we rest content with that state-
ment. How does it happen that another man, subjected to an
exactly similar cause of grief, does not go mad ? It is certain
that the entire causes cannot be the same where the effects
are so different ; and what we want to have laid bare is the
conspiracy of conditions, internal and external, by which a
mental shock, inoperative in one case, has had such serious
consequences in another. A complete biographical account of
the individual, not neglecting the consideration of his hereditary

Q

226 OX THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITY. [< hap.

antecedents, would alone suffice to set forth distinctly the causa-
tion of his insanity. If all the circumstances, internal and
external, were duly scanned and weighed, it would be found that
there is no accident in madness ; the disease, whatever form it
might take, by whatsoever complex concurrence of conditions, or
by how many successive links of causation, it might be gene-
rated, would be traceable as the inevitable consequence of certain
antecedents, as plainly as the explosion of gunpowder may be
traced to its causes, whether the train of events of which it is
the issue be long or short. The germs of insanity are sometimes
latent in the foundations of the character, and the final outbreak
is the explosion of a long train of antecedent preparations.

When the causation of insanity may thus extend over a life-
time, it is easy to perceive how little is taught by specifying a
single moral cause, such as grief, vanity, ambition, which may
after all be, and often is, one of the earliest symptoms of the
disease. Do we not, in sober truth, learn more of its real causa-
tion from a tragedy like " Lear " than from all that has yet been
written thereupon in the guise of science? An artist like
Shakspeare — penetrating with subtile insight the character of the
individual, and the relations between him and his circumstances,
discerning the order which there is amidst so much apparent
disorder, and revealing the necessary mode of the evolution
of the events of life — furnishes, in the work of his creative
art, more valuable information than can be obtained from the
vague and general statements with which science, in its present
defective state, is constrained to con.Nnt itself. Because of these
difficulties, I believe that I shall help +o accomplish my task
of conveying distinct notions of the causation of insanity by
bringing forward in an appendix, as illustrations, the notes of
some cases, the histories of which I have thoroughly in-
vestigated. Before doing this, however, it is necessary to make
some general observations in order to establish certain principles,
and to prevent repetition afterwards.

It is the custom to treat of the causes of insanity as physical
and moral, though it is not possible thus to discriminate them
with exactness. Where hereditary taint exists, for example, and
is the cause of some defect or peculiarity of character which
ultimately issues in insanity, one person might describe the

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 227

cause as moral while another would describe it as physical.
Certainly, where there existed manifest defective development
of the brain in consequence of inherited mischief, as in some
cases of idiocy, every one would agree as to its physical nature ;
but where there was no observable morbid condition in the
brain, and the evil only declared itself in a vice of disposition in
the individual, most people would consider it of a moral nature,
though really as certainly due to physical conditions as idiocy
confessedly is. In reality, every moral cause operates through
the physical changes which it produces; and in the great
majority of cases in which the cause has been pronounced moral
there has been something in the physical constitution by the co-
operation of which the result has been brought about. "Life in
all its forms, physical or mental, morbid or healthy, is a relation ;
its phenomena result from the reciprocal action of an individual
organism and external forces : health, as the consequence and
evidence of a successful adaptation to the conditions of exist-
ence, implies the preservation, well-being, and development of
the organism, while disease marks a failure in organic adaptation
to external conditions, and leads, therefore, to disorder, decay,
and death. Now it is obvious that the harmonious relation
between the organism and the external world, which is the con-
dition of health, may be disturbed either by a cause in the
organism, or by a cause in the external circumstances, or by a
cause, or rather a concurrence of causes, arising partly from one
and partly from the other. When it is said that mental anxiety,
produced by adverse circumstances, has made any one mad,
there is implied commonly some infirmity of nerve element
inherited or acquired, which has co-operated : were the nervous
system in a state of perfect soundness, and in possession of that
reserve power which it then has of adapting itself, within certain
limits, to the varying external conditions, it is probable that the
most unfavourable circumstances would not be sufficient to dis-
turb permanently the relation, and to initiate mental disease.
But when unfavourable action from without conspires with an
infirmity of nature within, then the conditions of disorder are
established, and a discord, or madman, is produced.

From what has been said, it would seem that it cannot con-
duce to exact knowledge to maintain the violent distinction

Q 2

228 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

between physical and moral causes of insanity. This will appear
more plainly if we call to mind the conclusions established in
the First Part of this book. There it was distinctly shown that
thoughts, feelings, and actions leave behind them certain residua
which become organized in the nervous centres, thenceforth
modifying the manner of their development so as to constitute
an acquired nature ; consequently, the moral manifestations
throughout life inevitably determine physical organization ; and
a slowly operating moral cause of insanity is all the while pro-
ducing physical changes in the occult recesses of the supreme
nervous centres of the mental life. In fact, the brain which is
exercised so habitually in a given manner as to acquire during
health a strong peculiarity or bias of action is sometimes more
liable to disorder in effect of thii ; and, when the disorder is pro-
duced by an independent cause, this bias or habit may aggravate
its effects. When insanity occurs as the consummate exaggera-
tion of a particular vice of character, as it sometimes does, the
morbid mental manifestations mark a definite habit of morbid
nutrition in the supreme nervous centres, — a gradually effected
modification of the mental organization. On the other hand, the
brain which is habitually exercised in the best possible way
acquires a strong and healthy habit of thought and volition
which counteracts the effects of a morbid cause.

I shall deal first with the consideration of those general con-
ditions which are thought to predispose in any way to insanity,
and which may be summed up as its remote or predisposing
causes. Of so vast a subject it is plainly impossible to treat
here in any but the most summary way ; to attempt to traverse the
wide field over which the predisposing causes of human degene-
racy extend would be to enter upon a survey of human history.

Predisposing Causes. — There are general causes, such as the
state of civilization in a country, the form of its government and
its religion, the occupation, habits, and condition of its inha-
bitants, which are not without influence in determining the pro-
portion of mental diseases amongst them. Eeliable statistical
data respecting the prevalence of insanity in different countries
are not yet to be had ; even the question whether it has
increased with the progress of civilization has not been posi-
tively settled. Travellers are certainly agreed that it is a rare

L] on the causes OF INSANITY. 229

disease amongst barbarous people, while, in the different civi-
lized nations of the world, there is, so far as can be ascertained,
an average of about one insane person in five hundred inha-
bitants. Theoretical considerations would lead to the expectation
of an increased liability to mental disorder with an increase in
the complexity of the mental organization : as there are a greater
liability to disease, and the possibility of many more diseases, in
a complex organism like the human body, where there are many
kinds of tissues and an orderly subordination of parts, than in a
simple organism with less differentiation of tissue and less com-
plexity of structure ; so in the complex mental organization,
with its manifold, special, and complex relations with the ex-
ternal, which a state of civilization implies, there is plainly the
favourable occasion of many derangements. The feverish activity
of life, the eager interests, the numerous passions, and the great
strain of mental work incident to the multiplied industries and
eager competition of an active civilization, can scarcely fail, one
may suppose, to augment the liability to mental disease. On
the other hand, it may be presumed that mental sufferings will
be as rare in an infant state of society as they are in the infancy
of the individual. That degenerate nervous function in young
children is displayed, not in mental disorder, but in convulsions ;
that animals very seldom suffer from insanity ; that insanity is
of comparatively rare occurrence among savages ; all these are
circumstances that arise from one and the same fact — a want of
development of the mental organization. There seems, there-
fore, good reason to believe that, with the progress of mental
development through the ages, there is, as is the case with other
forms of organic development, a correlative degeneration going
on, and that an increase of insanity is a penalty which an increase
of our present civilization necessarily pays.

So far as facts are available for the determination of this
question, they confirm the foregoing theoretical considerations.
The sort of insanity most common amongst savages is imbe-
cility, or idiocy, for the same reason that idiocy is the most
common form of insanity in children : where the mind is not
developed, varied degeneration of it cannot take place, though
it may obviously remain morbidly arrested. It is plainly im-
possible, for example, that the most typical moral insanity

230 ON TEE CAUSES OF INSANITT. [chap.

should occur where no moral development has taken place ;
before the native Australian savage — who has not in his
language any words for vice or justice, nor in his mind any-
such ideas as these words convey to an intelligent European —
could become morally insane, he must first be humanized and
then civilized ; development must precede retrograde meta-
morphosis, mental organization precede mental disorganization.
Another fact which deserves serious consideration is, that there
has undoubtedly been a very large increase of late years in the
number of the insane who have come under care and observa-
tion. The reports of the Lunacy Commissioners show that, on
the 1st of January, 1849, there were 14,560 patients in the
hospitals, asylums, and licensed houses of England and "Wales ;
that six years afterwards, on the 1st of January, 1855, there were
20,493 insane ; that ten years afterwards, on the 1st of January,
1865, there were 29,425 insane under certificates ; and that on
the 1st of January, 1866, the number had risen to 30,869. Now
it is certain that only a small proportion of this large increase is
to be attributed to an increase of insanity in the population ; it
is undoubtedly mainly owing (1) to the large number of cases,
formerly unreported, which more stringent legislation has
brought under observation ; (2) to the larger number of insane,
especially of paupers, who are now sent to asylums ; and (3) to
the prolongation of life in those who have been brought under
proper care. In fact, it might be said roughly, that the greater
part of this large increase in the insane population of England
and Wales is due to the facts that nowadays more people are
thought and declared mad than would formerly have been
thought so ; that more persons are admitted into asylums,
where they live longer ; and that fewer persons are discharged,
either by death or by being thought to have recovered, than
formerly. But, when all due allowance has been made for these
causes, it must be admitted that a steady increase of about
1,000 a year in the insane population of England and Wales
for the last seventeen years, does seem to point to an actual
increase in the production of insanity, and even to an increase
more than proportionate to an increasing sane population.

If we admit such an increase of insanity with our present
civilization, we shall be at no loss to indicate causes for it.

t^e*~7^

l.l ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 231

Some would no doubt easily find in over-population the prolific
parent of this as of numerous other ills to mankind. In the
fierce and active struggle for existence which there necessarily /
is where the claimants are many and the supplies are limited,
and where the competition therefore is severe, the weakest must
suffer, and some of them, breaking down into madness, fall by
the wayside. As it is the distinctly manifested aim of mental
development to bring man into more intimate, special, and
complex relations with the rest of nature by means of patient
investigations of physical laws, and a corresponding internal
adaptation to external relations, it is no marvel, it appears
indeed inevitable, that those who, either from inherited weak-
ness or some other debilitating causes, have been rendered un-
equal to the struggle of life, should be ruthlessly crushed out as
abortive beings in nature. They are the waste thrown up by
the silent but strong current of progress ; they are the weak
crushed out by the strong in the mortal struggle for develop-
ment ; they are examples of decaying reason thrown off by
vigorous mental growth, the energy of which they testify.
Everywhere and always " to be weak is to be miserable."

If we want a striking illustration of the operation of this
hard law, we may see it in the appropriation by man, the
stronger sex, of all the means of subsistence by labour, to the
almost entire exclusion of women, the feebler sex. Because,
however, women are necessary to * the gratification of man's
passions, indispensable to the comfort of his life, they are not
crushed out of existence, they are only kept in a state of sub-
jection and dependence. The woman who can find no opening
for her honourable energies in the present social system, is yet
willingly permitted to gain a precarious livelihood by selling
the charms of her person to gratify the lusts of her lord and
master. Under the institution of marriage she has the position
of a subordinate, herself debarred from the noble aims and
activities of life, but ministering, in a silent manner, to the
comfort and greatness of him who appropriates the labour and
enjoys the rewards. Practically, then, woman has no honour-
able outlook but marriage in our present social system : if that
aim is missed, all else is missed. Through generations her
character has been formed with that chief aim ; it has been

232 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

made feeble by long habit of dependence ; by the circumstances
of her position the sexual life has been undesignedly developed
at the expense of the intellectual. Now, therefore, when the
luxuries thought necessary in social life are so many and costly
that marriage is much avoided by men, there is a cruel stress
laid upon many a gentle nature. In this disappointment of
their life-aim, and the long train of consequences, physical and
moral, which it unconsciously draws after it, there is, I believe,
a fertile source of insanity among women. It is not only that
women of the better classes, not married, have no aim in life to
work for, no opening for the employment of their energies in
outward action, and are driven to a morbid self-brooding, or to
an excessive religious devotion or a religious enthusiasm which
is too often the unwitting cloak of an exaggerated and un-
healthy self-feeling ; but, through the character produced by
the position which they have so long held in the social system,
their organic life is little able to withstand the consequences of
an unsatisfied sexual instinct. Disturbances of all sorts ensue,
and social customs debar them from the means of relief which
men have both in active employment and in illicit sexual indul-
gence. Masturbation is undoubtedly sometimes provoked, and
aggravates the evil for which it was sought as a relief. Let it
not be supposed, however, that all these things take place con-
sciously in the woman's thoughts, feelings, and actions : the
sexual passion is one of the strongest passions in nature, and
as soon as it ^omes into activity, it declares its influence on
every pulse of the organic life, revolutionizing the entire nature,
conscious and unconscious ; when, therefore, the means of its
gratification entirely fail, and when there is no vicarious outlet
for its energy, the whole system feels the ill effects, and exhibits
them in restlessness and irritability, in a morbid self-feeling
taking a variety of forms, and sometimes in an act of self-abuse
which, on the first occasion, may be a sort of instinctive frenzy,
of the aim of which there is only the vaguest and most dim
notion.

Another way in which over-population leads to deterioration
of the health of a community is by the overcrowding and the
insanitary condition of dwelling-houses which it occasions in
towns. Not fevers only, but scrofula, perhaps phthisis, and

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 233

certainly general deterioration of nutrition, are thus generated
and transmitted as evil heritages to future generations : the
acquired ill of the parent becomes the inborn infirmity of the
offspring. It is not that the child necessarily inherits the parti- V
cular disease of the parent, for diseases unquestionably undergo
transformation through generations ; but it does often inherit
a constitution in which there is a certain inherent aptitude to
some kind of morbid degeneration, or a constitution destitute of
that reserve power necessary to meet the trying occasions of
life. Lugol found insanity to be by no means rare amongst
the parents of the scrofulous and tuberculous ; and in one
chapter of his work on Scrofula treats of hereditary scrofula
from paralytic, epileptic, and insane parents. Schroeder van
der Kolk was also of opinion that a hereditary predisposition to
phthisis might develop into or predispose to insanity ; and, on
the other hand, that insanity predisposed to phthisis. It is
certain that there are very intimate relations between phthisis
and insanity : one-fourth of the deaths in asylums are caused
by phthisis ; and Dr. Clouston, who found that there is here-
ditary predisposition in 7 per cent, more of the cases of insanity
with tubercle than of the insane generally, has described a
certain form of insanity as phthisical insanity. Watching the
decay of a family, it is often seen that phthisis and insanity are
of frequent occurrence amongst its members ; and when ex-
tinction of it occurs, when the last of the family dies, he not
seldom dies insane or phthisical or both. When we reflect that
a disease is not a specific morbid entity that, like some evil
spirit, has taken mischievous possession of the body, or of a
particular part of it, but a condition of more or less degenera-
tion from healthy life in an organism whose different parts con-
stitute one harmonious whole, it will be sufficiently evident that
a disease of one part of the organism will not only affect the
whole sympathetically at the time, but may lead to a more
general infirmity in the next generation — to an organic infirmity
which shall be determined in its special morbid manifestations
according to the external conditions of life.

Perhaps one, and certainly not the least, of the ill effects
which spring from some of the conditions of our present civili-
zation, is seen in the general dread and disdain of poverty, in

234 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

the eager passion to become rich. The practical gospel of the
age, testified everywhere by faith and works, is that of money-
getting ; men are estimated mainly by the amount of their
wealth, take social rank accordingly, and consequently bend all
their energies to acquire that which gains them esteem and
influence. The result is that in the higher departments of trade
and commerce speculations of all sorts are eagerly entered on,
and that many people are kept in a continued state of excite-
ment and anxiety by the fluctuations of the money market In
the lower branches of trade there is the same eager desire for
petty gains ; and the continued absorption of the mind in these
small acquisitions generates a littleness of mind and meanness
of spirit, where it does not lead to actual dishonesty, which
are nowhere displayed in a more pitiable form than by certain
petty tradesmen. The occupation which a man is entirely en-
gaged in does not fail to modify his character, and the reaction
upon the individual's nature of a life which is being spent with
the sole aim of becoming rich, is most baneful. It is not that
the fluctuations of excitement unhinge the merchant's mind and
lead to maniacal outbreaks, although that does sometimes
happen ; it is not that failure in the paroxysm of some crisis
prostrates his energies and makes him melancholic, although
that also is occasionally witnessed ; but it is that the exclu-
siveness of his life-aim and occupation too often saps the moral
or altruistic element in his nature, makes him become egoistic,
formal, and unsympathetic, and in his person deteriorates the
nature of humanity. "What is the consequence ? If one con-
viction has been fixed in my mind more distinctly than another
by observation of instances, it is that it is extremely unlikely
such a man will beget healthy children ; on the contrary, it is
extremely likely that the deterioration of nature which he has
acquired will be transmitted as an evil heritage to his children.
In several instances in which the father has toiled upwards from
poverty to vast wealth, with the aim and hope of founding a
family, I have witnessed the results in a degeneracy, mental and
physical, of his offspring, which has sometimes gone as far as
extinction of the family in the third or fourth generation. When
the evil is not so extreme as madness or ruinous vice, the savour
of a mother's influence having been present, it may still be

Lj ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 235

manifest in an instinctive cunning and duplicity, and an
extreme selfishness of nature — a nature not having the capacity
of a true moral conception or altruistic feeling. Whatever
opinion other more experienced observers may hold, I cannot
but think, after what I have seen, that the extreme passion for
getting rich, absorbing the whole energies of a life, does pre-
dispose to mental degeneration in the offspring — either to moral
defect, or to moral and intellectual deficiency, or to outbreaks of
positive insanity under the conditions of life.

Without going on to enumerate other causes which arise out
of our present civilization, and appear to favour the increase of
insanity, it will be sufficient to say that any condition that is
injurious to mental or bodily health, though it does not produce
insanity directly, may so far predispose to it in the next gene-
ration ; determining in the present what shall be predetermined
in the future. But while giving due weight to this consideration,
it is necessary to kbear in mind that an increase in the number
of insane persons in a country does not necessarily mean the
degeneracy of the people : the capability of development is the
capability of degeneration, and where the general progress is
going on actively the retrograde action in the elements must be
going on also : the particular is sacrificed to the general, " the
individual withers, and the race is more and more." If this be
so, may we not then say that an increase of insanity is after all
a testimony of development, that a great apparent evil is but a
phase in the working out of good ? may we not, indeed, ask with
the prophet, " Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath
not done it ? " *

Sex. — Esquirol and Haslam thought insanity to be of more
frequent occurrence among women than men, but authors are
now generally agreed that the converse is true. Esquirol omitted
in his calculations, as Dr. Thurnam has pointed out, to take into
account the preponderance of females in the population, and
moreover drew his conclusions from a comparison of existing
cases, instead of from cases occurring in the two sexes/f Female

* Amos iii. 6. Again, Isa. xlv. 7 : "I form the light, and create darkness : I
make peace, and create evil : I the Lord do all these things."

+ Of the excess of about 4 per cent of females in the population Esquirol was
aware ; " but he does not appear to have known that, from twenty to fifty years

236 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

patients accumulate iu asylums more than males ; for the pro-
portion of relapses is greater in them, and the probability of
death is less : general paralysis, which is particularly fatal, being
almost confined to men. Dr. Thurnam affirms men to be more
liable to mental disorder than women ; and Dr. Jarvis came to
the same conclusion from an examination of the statistics of
different countries. Recently it has been said that the female
sex is more liable to suffer from hereditary insanity. If my ex-
perience were large enough to be of any value, it would give the
preponderance to the women : of 106 persons whom I admitted
into a lunatic hospital, there were 50 men and 56 women. This
result agrees closely with the statistics of the number of people
confined in asylums in England and Wales : on the 1st of
January, 1855, there were in the hospitals, asylums, and licensed
houses 10,885 females and 9,608 males, and on the 1st of January,
1866, 15,437 females and 13,988 males — the numbers giving a
preponderance of from about five to six per cent, to women. On
whichever side, male or female, the uncertain difference lies, it
is probably inconsiderable. There is hardly sufficient ground to
maintain positively that there is by simple reason of sex any
inborn liability to insanity. The female sex is certainly the
weaker, and on this account will be more likely to suffer from the
adverse circumstances of life, especially in a complex social state
where it is precluded so much from active work, suffers from a
bad system of education, has so few resources, and is enfeebled
by dependence ; it has moreover conditions which in some regard
favour disturbance in the revolutions effected in the system at
puberty, during pregnancy, by the puerperal state, and at the
climacteric period. These conditions, in concurrence with the
circumstances of female life, may possibly become the cause of
more frequent insanity amongst women ; and one is the more
apt to think so when one calls to mind that causes which
undoubtedly act more frequently amongst men — intemperance
and other excess, for example— do not avail to notably increase

of age (when, in this country at least, insanity chiefly occurs for the first- time),
there is a still greater excess of females ; an excess which is higher from twenty
to thirty years of age than it is subsequently ; it being 12 per cent, from twenty
to thirty, 6 per cent, from thirty to forty, and 4 per cent, from forty to fifty,
years of age. Thus, assuming only a like liability of the two sexes to insanity,
we should expect to find a much greater number of cases amongst women." —
Thuhnam, Statistics of Insanity, p. 146.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 237

the proportion of insanity amongst them. On the whole I
should be disposed to hold that, while the number of men and
of women who become insane appears to differ but little, as the
causes actually operate, there is in woman, by virtue of her sex,
a slightly greater predisposition to insanity than in man.

Education. — Next to the inherited nature which every one
has, the acquired nature which he owes to the circumstances of
his education and training is most important in determining the
character. I mean, not the education which is called learning
alone, but that education of the nature of the individual, that
development of the character, which the circumstances of his
life have determined. There are in every nature its particular
tendencies or impulses of development which may be fostered or
checked by the conditions of life ; and which, therefore, according
to their good or evil nature, and the external influences which
they meet with, may minister to the future weal or woe of the
individual — may lead to a stability of character which prevents
the mental equilibrium ever being seriously disturbed, or to such
an instability of character that the smallest adversity may destroy
it for ever. How often one is condemned to see, with pain and
sorrow, an injudicious education sorely aggravate an inherent
mischief! The parent not only transmits a taint or vice of
nature to the child, but fosters its evil growth by the influence
of a bad example, and by a foolish training at the time when
the young mind is very susceptible, and when the direction given
to its development is sometimes decisive for life. Where there
is no innate taint, evil may still be wrought by enforcing an
unnatural precocity, wherein is often planted the germ of future
disease. Parents who labour to make their children prodigies
of learning or talent often prepare for them an early death or
an imbecile manhood — " In pueritia senex, in senectute puer."
Parental harshness and neglect — repressing the child's feelings,
stifling its need of love, and driving it to a morbid self-
brooding, or to take refuge in a world of vague fancies — is not
less pernicious than a foolish indulgence through which it never
learns the necessary lessons of renunciation and self-control.
The aim of a good education should be to develop the power /
and habit of what the events of life will not fail to rudely
enforce — renunciation and self-control, and to lead to the con-

238 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

tinned transference of thoughts and feelings into external actions
of a beneficial kind. By the habitual encouragement of self-
feeling, and by an egoistic development in all the relations of
life, a character may, by imperceptible degrees, be so framed
that insanity is the natural and consummate evolution of it,
while every step taken in such deterioration will so far pre-
dispose to insanity under adverse circumstances of life. It is by
the influence of a good education and a sound training that we
may expect, not only to neutralize a predisposition to insanity in
the individual, but to counteract that tendency to an increase
of mental disease in the community, which is attributable to
some of the concomitant evils of civilization. The external ad-
vantages of civilization should naturally lead to a better internal
culture, so that in its higher stages a remedy may be furnished
for some of the evils which it produces in its earlier stages.

It is hardly necessary to point out how ill adapted the present
system of female education is to store the mind with usefid
knowledge, and to train up a strong character. It is peculiarly
fitted for#he frivolous purposes of female life ; but that it is so
is its greatest condemnation. " Those who have seriously con-
templated," Feuchtersleben remarks, "the female education of
our times (undoubtedly the partie lionteuse of the moderns) will
find it, in this etiological respect, much more influential than
that of the other sex. It combines everything that can heighten
sensibility, weaken spontaneity, give a preponderance to the
sexual sphere, and sanction the feelings and impulses that relate
to it." As the education of women is widened, deepened, and
improved, other and better resources will be discovered and
earnestly used, and the reaction of a higher mode of life on
female education and female nature cannot fail to be most
beneficial.

Religion. — I have said that the practical religion of the day,
the real guiding gospel of life, is money-getting : the professed
religion is Christianity. Now, without asserting that riches are
not to be gotten by honest industry, it may be maintained that
the eager passion to get rich — honestly it may be, but if not,
still to get rich — is often inconsistent with the spirit of the
gospel professed. The too frequent consequence is, that life
becomes a systematic inconsistency, or an organized hypocrisy.

i ] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 239

With a profession of faith that angels might adopt, there is too
often a rule of practice which devils need not disdain. I do not
speak here of those whose religion is a mere social observance,
which it beseems a man of respectability willing to stand well
with his neighbours to conform to. Such persons will, in all pro-
bability, belong to the Church of England, which is eminently
the religion of success in life and of a respectable social position ;
it does not demand any exhibition of zealous earnestness from,
nor does it impose any galling yoke upon, its members ; it desires
to avoid anything that is extreme, and insists only on the main-
tenance of the social proprieties ; it is the established religion,
and, in close alliance with the governing classes, it aims at the
preservation of the established state of things. But it may be
questioned whether the Church of England really reaches the
poor and struggling, those who truly need a gospel of life. Those
of them who have any religion at all belong, for the most part,
to two religious bodies into which the two extreme parties in
the English Church insensibly merge — to Eoman Catholicism
and Methodism. When, therefore, we have to consider a religion
really influencing life, when we have to weigh its effect on cha-
racter as predisposing or not to insanity, we have practically to
deal with Roman Catholicism, actual or abortive, or with Dissent
in some of its forms. I do not hesitate to express a conviction
that the excitement of religious feelings, and the moroseness of
the religious life, favoured by some of the Dissenters, are
habitually injurious to the character, and sometimes a direct
cause of insanity. Young women who fail to get married are
apt to betake themselves fervently to religious exercises, and
thus to find an outlet for repressed feeling in an extreme devo-
tional life ; having of necessity much self-feeling, they naturally
fly to a system which expressly sanctions and encourages a habit
of attention to the feelings and thoughts — a self-brooding — and
which attracts to them the sympathy and interest of others.
This is not, nor can it come to, good : as the man whose every
organ is in perfect health scarcely knows that he has a body,
and only is made conscious that he has organs when something
morbid is going on, so a healthy mind, in the full exercise of its
functions, is not conscious that it has feelings, and is only
awakened to self-consciousness by something morbid in the

240 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

processes of its activity. To fly for refuge to the contemplation
of one's own feelings and thoughts is in direct frustration of
the purposes of one's being as an element in nature, and in the
direct way of predisposing to insanity. It is only in actions
that we truly live, and by our actions that we can truly know
ourselves. How mischievous, then, any encouragement of a
morbid self-feeling, religious or otherwise, is likely to be, it is
easy to perceive. Among the cases of mental disease that have
come under my care, there are some in which the cause of the
outbreak has been satisfactorily traceable to religious influence
injudiciously exerted. Xot amongst Dissenters only, but amongst
those members of the High Church party in the Church of
England who are so much addicted to playing at Eoman Catho-
licism, the most baneful effect is sometimes produced on women
through the ignorant influence and misapplied zeal of priests,
who mistake for deep religious feeling what is really at times a
morbid self-feeling, arising out of an unsatisfied sexual instinct,
and what is many times accompanied by hysterical excitement,
and sometimes even by habitual self-abuse. The fanatic religious
sects, which every now and then appear in a community and
disgust it by the offensive way in which they commingle religion
and love, are really inspired by an uncontrolled and disordered
sexual instinct. They are compounds of systematic knavery
and of vain folly verging on madness : on the one hand, the
cunning of a hypocritical rogue (who may, perhaps, have so
grown to the habit of his knavery as to deceive himself as well
as others) using the weaknesses of weak women to minister to
his vanity or his lust under a religious guise ; on the other
hand, an exaggerated self-feeling, rooted often in sexual passion,
which is fostered Tinder a spiritual cloak, and drives its victim
on to madness or to sin. The holy kiss of love owes all its
warmth to the sexual impulse which inspires it, consciously or
unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes
leads directly to a less spiritual union.

The Eoman Catholic religion cannot, I believe, be justly
charged with any such positive influence for evil on those who
have been born and bred up within its pale. On them its effect
is rather to arrest mental development by imposing the divine
authority of the Church, and thus keeping the mind in leading-

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 241

strings. The unquestioning faith demanded and accorded as the
habit of life is not calculated to predispose to insanity. But the
influence of Roman Catholicism, as represented by some of the
over-zealous perverts from the English Church, is in the highest
degree mischievous : it is a hotbed, fostering the weaknesses of
weak women, the morbid tendencies of those who are half insane,
and, too often, the evil impulses of the vicious. It becomes the
congenial refuge of those who are so afflicted with restless
passions, ill-regulated feelings, and selfish impulses, that they
are unable to conform long to their social duties and relations,
and are ever eager for change, excitement, and attention, at
whatever cost. "Without doubt a hot religious perversion, and
the earnest display of a feverish religious zeal, are, in some
instances, really a phase in the manifestations of a morbid
disposition, not unlikely to pass at some time into actual mental
derangement.

The question of religion generally, apart from any particular
form of religion, as an agency influencing in a powerful manner
for good or evil the minds of men, and therefore predisposing or
not to mental degeneracy, I must leave untouched, not only be-
cause of the difficulty and the delicacy of the subject, but because
of the impossibility of doing justice to a matter of such tran-
scendent importance in a brief and incidental manner. It would
be necessary to attempt soberly and faithfully to estimate the
influence of religious belief, not upon any particular mind nor
at any particular time, but upon the common mind of mankind,
upon its development through time. Three great questions
would naturally present themselves for discussion : — First, what
influence a belief in the supernatural, as commonly entertained,
has had upon the growth and progress of human thought ;
whether the tendency of it has been to strengthen or to enervate
the intellect? Secondly, what has been the practical effect
worked on the hearts of men by the fear of punishment and
the hope of reward after death ; whether their feelings and
desires have been beneficially affected, and how far affected, by
possibilities which always seem so far off; or whether, as some
argue, their feelings have thereby been deadened and their intel-
ligence blinded to the certain laws by which their sins, or errors,
or crimes, are always avenged in this world on themselves or on

K

242 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

others ? Thirdly, what has been the practical effect produced
on the character and conduct of the many by the belief that
through prayer they might obviate the effects of their own want
of foresight, or want of self-renunciation, and rely upon super-
natural aid where the will failed ? It would be necessary also,
in considering the vast influence which the moral code incul-
cated by all religions has exerted upon the conduct of mankind,
to weigh the actual effect upon character of the profession of
moral maxims and precepts which have sometimes been too
exalted to be reconciled with the exigencies of practical life.
But these are all questions which we must now pass over.

In weighing the effect on the mind of any form of religion, it
is necessary to bear in mind that a person's particular creed is
to some extent the result of his character and mode of develop-
ment. The egoist whose vanity and self-love have not other
outlets of display will manifest his disposition in his religious
views and practice. The victim of a morbid self-feeling, or an
extreme self-conceit, will find in a certain religious zeal the con-
venient gratification of an egoistic passion, of the real nature
of which he himself is ignorant. Those who make it their
business to get rich by over-reaching and deceiving others, in-
variably end by over-reaching and deceiving themselves in the
sincere assumption of religious observances entirely inconsistent
with the tenor of their daily lives. When such persons become
insane, we cannot truly say that religion has been the cause of
the disease, although it can admit of no question that the
mental degeneration, which has been the natural issue of the
mode of development of the character, has found circumstances
very favourable to its increase in the religious views and prac-
tices adopted.

Condition of Life. — The statistics hitherto collected with
reference to this point are of little or no value. Whether a
particular profession or trade favours the production of insanity,
is generally a question of the habits incidental to its pursuit,
— whether those who follow it live soberly and temperately, or
whether they are addicted to intemperance and riotous living.
On the whole, however, those who work with the head are more
liable to mental disease than those who work with the hand,
and they are less likely to recover when once attacked : the

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 243

more complex mental organization of the former, and the
greater activity of function, will render it conceivable how
this may be. The aristocratic or privileged classes of every
country have in their privileges the elements of corruption
and decay ; and degeneracy of one sort or another is sure,
sooner or later, to become rife in them. There is grave reason
to suspect that insanity is of disproportionate frequency amongst
the aristocracy of this country. Other things being equal, it is
certain that insanity is more frequent amongst the unmarried
than amongst the married.

Age and Period of Life. — Insanity is rare before puberty,
although it is certain that every form of it, except general
paralysis, may occur even so early in life. Idiocy is the most
common form of mental defect in the early years of life ; and
even the cases of mania met with occasionally in children
partake much of the character of idiocy, and might not im-
properly be described as examples of excited idiocy. The
mental organization has not been completely accomplished, and
the symptoms of its degeneration are therefore somewhat
uniform in character. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-
five, insanity is far more frequent ; but it is the most frequent
of all during the period of full mental and bodily development
— from twenty-five to forty-five — when the mental functions are
most active, and when there is the widest exposure to its causes.
The internal revolution which takes place in women at the
climacteric period leads to many outbreaks of a melancholic
insanity in them between forty and fifty. In the male there
appears to be a climacteric period between fifty and sixty, when
insanity sometimes supervenes. In old people symptoms of
mental derangement sometimes precede for a time softening of
the brain and dementia ; an old man may be found to be keep-
ing a mistress in secret, or to be making foolish proposals of
marriage, when sensual impulses only mock extinct sexual
fimctions.

Hereditary Predisposition. — The more exact and scrupulous
the researches made, the more distinctly is displayed the in-
fluence of hereditary taint in the production of insanity. It is
unfortunately impossible to get exact or accurate information
on this subject. So strong is the foolish feeling of disgrace

k2

244 ON THE CAUSES OF IXSAMTY. [chap.

attaching to the occurrence of insanity in a family, that people,
not apt usually to say what is not true, will disclaim or deny
most earnestly the existence of any hereditary taint, when all
the time the indications of it are most positive ; yes, when its
existence is well known, and they must know that it is well
known. To elicit an acknowledgment of the truth in some of
these cases would be as difficult a task as to elicit from an
erring woman a confession of her single frailty. Not even its
prevalence in royal families has sufficed to make insanity a
fashionable disease. The main value, indeed, of the many
doubtful statistics collected in reference to the question of the
frequency of hereditary taint is to prove that, with the increase
of opportunities of obtaining exact information, the greater is the
proportion of cases of insanity in which its presence is detect-
able. The proportion is put by some authors — as Moreau — as
high as nine-tenths, by others as low as one-tenth ; the most
careful researches agreeing to fix it as not lower than one-fourth,
if not so high as one-half. Of fifty insane persons, taken with-
out any selection, the family histories of whom I was able to
trace with considerable precision, there was strongly marked
hereditary predisposition — that is, there was the positive
evidence of an inherited predisposition to insanity — in fourteen
cases ; while in ten more there was sufficient evidence of an
inborn defect of nerve element, not due to actual insanity in
any of the immediate ancestors, but to an infirmity acquired by
them in consequence of degenerative influences at work. Two
important considerations in regard to this question should have
full weight given them : first, that the native infirmity or taint
may be of very different degrees of intensity, so as, on the one
hand, to conspire only with certain more or less powerful ex-
citing causes, or, on the other hand, to give rise to insanity even
amidst the most favourable external circumstances ; secondly,
that not insanity only in the parents, but any form of nervous
disease in them — epilepsy, hysteria, and even neuralgia — may
predispose to insanity in the offspring, as, conversely, insanity
in the parent may predispose to other kinds of nervous disease
in the offspring. Whatever, then, may be the exact number of
cases in which hereditary predisposition is positively ascertained,
it may, I think, be broadly asserted that, in the great majority

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 245

of cases, whether there has been observable madness or not in
father or mother, or some remoter relative, there has been some
constitutional instability or infirmity of nervous element in the
individual whereby he has been unable to rally against adver-
sity, and has broken down in insanity. Infinitely various as
the constitutional idiosyncrasies of men notably are, it is easy
to perceive how impossible it is that statistics should ever give
exact information concerning the causation of insanity ; here, as
in so many instances of their application, their value is that
they settle distinctly the existence of a certain tendency, so to
speak, which, once fixed, affords a good starting-point for further
and more rigorous researches : they indicate the direction of
future investigation.

Careful inquiries into the sundry and manifold causes of
nervous degeneration could not fail to attract attention to the
metamorphoses which diseases undergo in hereditary trans-
mission, as a matter demanding exact study. We certainly dis-
tinguish in our nomenclature the different nervous diseases, but,
as we actually meet with them in practice, the disorders of the
different nervous centres may occasionally blend, or combine, or
replace one another in a remarkable manner, so as to give rise
to varieties of disease intermediate between those which are
commonly regarded as typical. Now this circumstance, mani-
fest enough in individual life, is much more plainly displayed
when we trace the history and progress of nervous disease
through generations. If, instead of limiting attention to the
individual, we scan the organic evolution and decay of a family
— processes which, as in the organism, are sometimes going on
simultaneously — then it is made sufficiently evident how close
are the fundamental relations of nervous diseases, how artificial
the divisions between them sometimes appear. Epilepsy in the
parent may become insanity in the offspring, or insanity in the
parent epilepsy in the child ; and chorea or convulsions in the
child may be the consequence of great nervous excitability,
natural or accidental, in the mother. In families in which there
is a strong predisposition to insanity, it is not uncommon to find
one member afflicted with one form of nervous disease, and
another with another ; one suffers perhaps from epilepsy or
chorea, another from neuralgia or hysteria, a third may commit

246 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

suicide, and a fourth become maniacal or melancholic* General
paralysis is a disease which is usually the result of continued
excesses of one sort or another ; but it may unquestionably
occur without any marked excesses, and when it does so there
will mostly be discoverable a hereditary taint in the individual.
More than this : an innate taint or infirmity of nerve element
may modify in a striking manner the mode of manifestation of
other diseases ; where it exists, gout flying about the body may
produce obscure nervous symptoms, so as greatly to puzzle the
inexperienced practitioner; and the syphilitic poison is similarly
apt to seize upon the weak part, and to give rise to severe
nervous symptoms. On the other hand, it can admit of no
question that a parental disease which does not specialty affect
the nervous system, may, notwithstanding, be at the foundation
of a delicate nervous constitution in the offspring : phthisis,
scrofula, syphilis, probably also gout and diabetes, sometimes act
thus banefully. An interesting circumstance in connexion with
diabetes, which affords a certain argument in favour of its
nervous origin, is that it has been observed to occur in families
in which there existed a predisposition to nervous or mental
diseases. Again, it is a disease which appears to be sometimes
caused in man by mental anxiety, while it may be produced
artificially in animals by irritation of the floor of the fourth
ventricle and of other adjacent parts of the nervous system.

The interesting researches of Morel into the formation of
degenerate or morbid varieties of the human race have served to
furnish a philosophical view of the chain of events by which
causes that give rise to individual degeneracy continue their
morbid action through generations, and finally issue in the
extinction of the family. "When some of the evil influences

* " I saw very recently a boy, set 14, who was afflicted with extremely
severe tic, thvowing his head sideways with an excessively abrupt gyratory
motion, and uttering a short sharp cry. I had seen him before during the
summer of 1860, and he then used to utter fierce cries every moment, without
his mind seeming to be in the least impaired. His eldest brother had for several
years suffered from facial spasm, characterised by grimaces during which all the
muscles of his face were violently convulsed. His father has been affected with
locomotor ataxy for the last twenty years. His paternal grandfather committed
suicide in a fit of monomania, and several of his relatives on his mother's side
have been insane." — Trousseau, Clinical Lecture*.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF IN SAN IT V. 247

which notably give rise to disease — whether the poisoned atmo-
sphere of a marshy district, or the unknown endemic causes of
cretinism, or the overcrowding and starvation of our large towns,
or persistent intemperance of any kind, or frequent inter-
marriages in families, or any other of the sources of human
degeneracy — have engendered a morbid variety, the evil will,
unless counteracted by better influences brought to bear, increase
through generations, until the degeneration has gone so far that
the continuance of the species is impossible. Indeed, insanity
of what form soever, whether mania, melancholia, moral insanity,
or dementia, is but a stage in the descent towards sterile idiocy,
as may be experimentally proved by the intermarriage of men-
tally, unsound persons for a generation or two, and as is some-
times demonstrated by the disastrous consequences of frequent
intermarriages in foolish families. Morel relates the history of
one family, which may be adduced as a typical example of the
course of degeneration proceeding unchecked, and which may be
summed up thus : —

First generation. — Immorality. Alcoholic excess. Brutal
degradation.

Second generation. — Hereditary drunkenness. Maniacal at-
tacks. General paralysis.

Third generation. — Sobriety. Hypochondria. Lypemania.
Systematic mania. Homicidal tendencies.

Fourth generation. — Feeble intelligence. Stupidity. First
attack of mania at sixteen. Transition to complete idiocy, and
probable extinction of the family.

In this degeneration going on through generations we have a
retrograde movement which is the opposite of that progressive
specialization, and increasing complexity of relation with the
external, which have already been described as characteristic of
advancing development. In place of sound and proper elements,
which may take their due place and perform their function har-
moniously in the social organism, there are produced morbid
varieties fit only for .excretion. For, in truth, we may not im-
properly compare the social fabric to the bodily organism in this
regard : as in bodily disease there is a retrograde metamorphosis
of formative action, and morbid elements are produced, so in the
appearance of insanity in individuals we have examples of the

248 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

formation of morbid varieties in the social organism, and the

evidence of a degeneration of the human kind. And as in the

body morbid elements cannot minister to healthy action, but, if

not got rid of, give rise to disorder, and even death ; so in the

social fabric morbid varieties are themselves on the way of

' death, and if not sequestrated in the social system, or extruded

from it, inevitably engender disorder incompatible with its

J stability. But, however much man may degenerate from his

high estate, he never really reverts to the exact type of the

animal, though he may sink lower than it : the so-called tJicroid

degeneration, spoken of by some writers, signifies no more than

a resemblance to the animals. As it is among plants, where

degeneration of species notably gives rise to a new morbid kind,

so it is in man : lunatics and idiots represent new morbid kinds :

the mighty are fallen, but the might is manifest even in the

wrecks.

Baillarger has confirmed what Esquirol had observed, that
insanity descends more often from the mother than the father,
and from the mother to the daughters more often than to the
sons. From a Report presented to the French Government by
M. Behic, it appears that of 1,000 admissions of each sex into
French asylums, 264 males and 266 females had suffered from
hereditary predisposition to insanity; of the 264 males 128
inherited the disease from their father, 110 from the mother,
and 26 from both parents; of the 266 females, 100 inherited
from the father, 130 from the mother, and 36 from both parents.
Children born before the outbreak of an attack are less likely to
suffer than those born after an outbreak.

Thus much concerning the remote or predisposing causes of
insanity ; it remains now to set forth the direct or proximate
causes of defect or derangement of the supreme centres of intel-
ligence. In doing this it will be most convenient, and in the
end most philosophical, to describe them under similar divisions
to those under which have already been grouped the causes of
disorder of the sensori-motor and spinal centres — in other words,
to treat of the causation of insanity from a pathological point
of view.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 249

THE PROXIMATE CAUSES OF DISORDER OF THE IDEATIONAL NER-
VOUS CENTRES, THE SUPREME GANGLIONIC CELLS OF THE
CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES, THE INTELLECTORIUM COMMUNE.

1. Original Differences in the Constitution of the Supreme Ner-
vous Centres. — It is most certain that there exist great natural
differences between different people in respect of the develop-
ment of their cerebral convolutions. In the lower races of men
these are visibly less complex and more symmetrical than in
the higher races ; the anatomical differences corresponding with
differences in intellectual capacity. Place a Bushman, with his
inferior type of brain, in the complex circumstances of civilized
life ; and though he may represent a high grade of development
of his lower type, he is to all intents and purposes, as Gratiolet
allows, an idiot, and must, unless otherwise cared for, inevitably
perish in the severe competition for existence. And if a person,
from some arrest of the natural development, is born amongst
civilized people with a brain of no higher order than the natural
brain of the Bushman, it is plain that he will be more or less of
an idiot ; a higher type of brain, arrested by morbid causes at
a low grade of development, is brought to the level of a lower
type of brain which has arrived at its full development. As Von
Baer long ago pointed out, the actual position of a particular
animal in the scale of life is determined, not by the type alone,
nor by the grade of development alone, but by the product of
the type and the grade of development.

The principal varieties of defective brain met with may be
briefly indicated here as falling under one of the following
divisions : —

(a) There are idiots of the microcephalic type, in whom an
arrest of cerebral development has taken place, and a palpably
defective brain is met with in consequence. Malacarne was at
the pains carefully to count the laminae of the cerebellum in
idiots and in men of intelligence, and he found them to be less
numerous hi the former than in the latter. Now, these laminae
are less numerous in the chimpanzee and the orang than in man,
and still less numerous in other monkeys ; so far, therefore, there
is an approximation in some idiots to the simian type of brain.

250 ON THE C J USES OF INSANITY. [chap.

Mr. Paget mentions an idiot's brain in which there had been
a complete arrest of development at the fifth month of fetal life :
there were no posterior lobes, the cerebellum being only half-
covered by the cerebral hemispheres. Gratiolet found in the
brain of a microcephalic idiot, aged seven, the under surface of
the anterior lobes much hollowed, with great convexity of the
orbital arches, as is the rule in the monkey* Mr. Marshall has
carefully examined, and described in an elaborate paper, the
brains of two idiots of European descent : the convolutions were
fewer in number than in the apes, individually less complex,
broader, and smoother — " In this respect," he observes, " the
idiots' brains are even more simple than the brain of the gibbon,
and approach that of the baboon (Cynocephalus) and sapajou
(Ateles)."f Though he agrees with other observers that the con-
dition of the cerebra in the idiots ti neither the result of atrophy,
nor of a mere arrest of growth, but consists essentially in an
imperfect evolution of the cerebral hemispheres or their parts,
dependent on an arrest of development, he points out the strong
grounds there are for inferring that, after the cessation of evolu-
tional changes, the cerebra experience an increase of size gene-
rally, or a mere growth of their several parts. Consequently the
cerebra are much larger than fcetal cerebra in which the convo-
lutional development is at a similar stage ; whilst the individual
convolutions themselves, though the same in number, are neces-
sarily broader and deeper. Not only is the brain-weight in
microcephalous idiocy very low absolutely, as the instructive
tables of Dr. Thurnam show, but the relative amount of brain
to body is "extraordinarily" diminished. Thus in the two idiots
described by Mr. Marshall, the proportion of brain to body was
only as 1 to 140 in the female, and as 1 to 67 in the male, the
normal proportions being as 1 to 33 and as 1 to 14 respectively.
It is not necessary that I quote more authorities to prove that
small-headed idiots have small brains, and sometimes even fewer
and more simple convolutions than the chimpanzee and the
orang; that man, thus made a morbid kind, by an arrest of
development, is brought to a lower level than that of his nearest

* Aiiatomie comparee du Syst^me Nerveux.
t Philosophical Transactions, toe. nt.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 251

related fellow animal.* A strict examination of the stories of
wild men, as of Peter the Wild Boy, and the young savage of
Aveyron, has proved that these were really cases of defective
organization — pathological specimens.f

(b) In idiots or imbeciles of the Cretin type, where the morbid
condition is endemic, the defect seems to depend on certain
morbid changes which primarily affect the skull rather than the
brain. Injurious influences, affecting the general processes of
the bodily nutrition, prevent the normal growth of the bones,
and lead to a premature ossification of the sutures, and a con-
sequent narrowing of the skull at the part where this happens.
Secondary wide interference with the development of other parts
of the skull and compensating enlargements in other directions
follow the primary evil, and give rise to cranial deformities of
various kinds. Of necessity the natural growth of the brain is
hindered by those morbid changes ; and it is no wonder that
the deformed head of the Cretin is accompanied with a torpid
apathetic character and with great mental deficiency. As the
evil changes are commonly not manifest until a year or more
after birth, an objection might well be made to the description
of them as original defects ; but whatever the nature of the
unknown morbid influence which is the cause of cretinism,
whether malarious or not, it can admit of no question that it
acts upon the mother perniciously, and predetermines the cre-
tinism of the child.

(c) It is obvious that an arrest of the development of the
brain occurring soon after birth may give rise to idiocy just as
certainly as an arrest occurring some time before birth. And
although an objection might here again be made to the de-
scription of such a defect as original, yet if we reflect that the
important development of the brain as the supreme organ of the
conscious life, as subserving the mental organization, does really

* Absence or defect of the corpus callosum has been sometimes met with after
death ; and in most of the cases of this sort, there was some degree of mental
weakness or idiocy during life. Dr. Julius Sander has collected ten cases, which
appear to be all the cases hitherto recorded of this defect, and described them in
Griesinger's Archiv. fiir Psychiatric und Nervenkrankheiten, b. i. 1868.

+ Observations on the deranged Manifestations of the Mind. By J. S. Spurz-
heim, M.D. Also, Lectures on Man. By W. Lawrence, F. R.S.

252 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

take place after birth, we may admit a defect rendering such
development impossible, to be, though not congenital, practically
original. There are many idiots in whom the brain and body
appear to be well formed, while the mental development remains
at the lowest stage. Accidental affections of the brain arresting
its development after birth, while the rest of the body goes
through its normal growth, have occurred in some of these cases ;
epilepsy is not uncommonly such a cause of idiocy ; but it is
impossible in some cases to assign any definite cause of the
arrest. Other idiotic creatures have the development of the
body as well as mind arrested : the extremest cases of this kind
are those in which there has been a complete cessation of growth
at an early period of childhood, without any observable deformity.
Dancel has recorded the case of a girl, aged twenty-four, who had
developed normally up to the age of three and a half years, after
which no further growth took place until she reached eighteen
and a half years, her bodily and mental condition being that of
a child of three and a half years old. At twenty-one she in-
creased a little more in size, and then remained unchanged for
the rest of life. Baillarger exhibited, in May 1857, to the French
Academy of Medicine, a young woman aged twenty-seven, who
only had the intelligence and inclinations of a child four years
old, and who was about three feet high. I have seen a some-
what similar instance in an idiot boy. These extreme and
singular cases are well calculated to excite surprise and curiosity ;
they are, however, only the manifest consequences of a deficiency
in developmental power which is not unfrequently met with in
less marked degree, and which is actually witnessed in every
sort of degree. In any large idiot asylum there are to be found
some who, without any particular deformity, without any ob-
servable disease of brain or defective development of it, are
generally sluggish both in bodily and mental development ; their
size is small ; their sexual development takes place late in life,
or perhaps does not take place at all ; they often exhibit some
peculiarity of countenance, perhaps a squint ; in mental capacity
they are in advance of the true idiots, for they can learn a little,
are capable of remembering, and, perhaps, imitate cleverly : some
of them constitute the "show-cases" of the idiot asylum when
they are in it ; and when they are not, they may become difficult

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 253

cases for medico-legal inquiry, in which the decision come to,
whatever it be, may be challenged not without reason. All the
concern that we have with them here is to draw from them the
certain conclusion that there may, by reason of unknown con-
ditions affecting nutrition, be every degree of imperfect develop-
ment of mind and body down to actual incapacity to develop
at all.

The causes of the defective cerebral development which is the
physical condition of idiocy are often traceable to parents.
Frequent intermarriage in families may undoubtedly lead to a de-
generation which manifests itself in individuals by deaf mutism,
albinonism, and idiocy.* Parental intemperance and excess, ac-
cording to Dr. Howe, hold high places as causes of convulsions,
idiocy, and imbecility in children ; out of 300 idiots in the State
of Massachusetts, whose histories were carefully investigated, as
many as 145 were the offspring of intemperate parents.f Here,
as elsewhere in nature, like produces like ; and the parent who
makes himself a temporary lunatic or idiot by his degrading vice,
propagates his kind in procreation, and entails on his children
the curse of the most hopeless fate. Again, the natural term of
insanity proceeding unchecked through generations is, as Morel
has shown, sterile idiocy. When men wilfully frustrate the
noble purposes of their being, and selfishly ignore the laws of
hereditary transmission, nature takes the matter out of their
hands, and puts a stop to the propagation of degeneracy.
During foetal life great fright or other mental agitation affect-
ing the mother, or irregularities and excesses on her part, and
during parturition injury to its head, may occasion a congenital
mental defect in the child. But many of the causes of idiocy
operate after birth up to the third or fourth year. They are
epilepsy, the acute exanthemata, perhaps syphilis, and certainly
starvation, dirt, and overcrowding.

When there are no such signs of degeneracy as to warrant
the mention of idiocy even in its mildest form, there is still
abundant room for physical causes of psychical defect, without
our being able to recognise them. The exceeding sensibility of

* On Consanguineous Marriages. By Arthur Mitchell, M.D. — Edinburgh
Medical Journal, 1865.

+ Report on the Causes of Idiocy in the State of Massachusetts.

254 OX THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITY. [chap.

nervous structure, whereby an impression made at one point is
almost instantaneously felt at any distance, is the sure testimony
of delicate, active, but occult movements of its molecules which,
like thermal oscillations or undulations of light, or the intimate
molecular conditions of colour, belong to that inner life of nature
that is still impenetrable to our most delicate means of investi-
gation, still inaccessible to our most subtile inquiries. "Who can
say what is the nature of those hidden molecular activities which
are the direct causes of our different tastes and smells ? Could
we but ascertain what these intimate operations essentially are,
we might perhaps attain to some knowledge of the intimate
constitution of bodies ; indeed it seems not improbable that in
the scientific cultivation and development of the senses of taste
and smell, as the eye, the ear, and the touch have been cultivated
and developed, we may ultimately gain some means of insight
into the inner recesses of nature.

A second reason why there may be numerous and serious
defects of nervous structure without its being possible to recog-
nise them, is based upon the infinitely complex and exquisitely
deHcate structure of the cortical layers of the hemispheres. It
would certainly be most unwarrantable to assume that the
physical paths of nervous function in the supreme centres may
not be actually obliterated without our being any the wiser, when
it was only yesterday, so to speak, that men succeeded, after
infinite patient research, in demonstrating a direct communication
between the different nerve-cells, and between nerve fibres and
cells. The obliteration of such a physical communication in the
supreme centres would simply render impossible a certain asso-
ciation of ideas, or the transference of the activity of the idea to
a nerve-fibre — the function and the expression of mind.

Thirdly, it must be admitted that, all question of defect of
physical structure put aside, the extremest derangement of
function might be due to chemical changes in nerve element
— changes which, in the present state of knowledge, are still
less discoverable in so complex a compound than physical
changes. Examine the cells of a man's brain at the end of a day
of great mental activity, and at the beginning of a day after a
good night's rest ; what difference would be detectable ? Xone
whatever ; yet the actual difference is between a decomposition

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 255

and a recomposition of nerve element — between a capacity and
an incapacity of function.

It is beyond question, then, that there may be modifications of
the polar molecules of nerve element, changes in its chemical
composition, and defects in the physical constitution of nervous
centres, entirely undetectable by us, all of which do nevertheless
gravely affect function, and are thus most surely testified.

To affirm, then, that all men are born equal, as is sometimes
heedlessly done, is to make about as palpably untrue a propo-
sition as it is possible to make in so many words. There is as
great a variety of minds as there observably is of faces or of
voices : as no two faces and no two voices are exactly alike, so
are no two minds exact counterparts of one another. Men differ
greatly both in original capacity and in quality of brain. In
some there is the potentiality of great and varied development,
whilst in others there is the innate incapacity of any develop-
ment ; and between the two extremes every gradation exists.
There are important differences also in the quality of the brain
in different people : in some the mental reaction to impressions
is sluggish and incomplete, and, without being idiots, they are
slow at perception and stupid; in others, the reaction, though
not quick, is very complete, and they retain ideas very firmly,
although they are slow at acquiring them ; in some, again, the
reaction is rapid and lively, but evanescent, so that, though
quick at perception, they retain ideas with difficulty ; while in
others, that just equilibrium between the internal and external
exists by which the reaction is exactly adequate to the impres-
sion, and the consequent assimilation is most complete. These
natural differences in the taking up of impressions plainly hold
good also of the further processes of digestion and combination
of idea, which in the progress of mental development follow
upon the concrete perception. It is easy surely to perceive that
we have, as original facts of nature, every kind of variation in
the quality of mind and in the degree of reasoning capacity.

So long as we are unable to discover any explanation of the
causation of a fact which yet seems to stand out very distinctly,
it is wonderful how difficult it is to accept it heartily, how easy
indeed it becomes to overlook it habitually ; but as soon as we
have attained to a knowledge of its cause and relations, then the

256 ON THE CAUSES OF IXSAXI1T. [chap.

recognition of it becomes a part of our habit of thought and per-
ception : it has entered into our mental organization. Because
it has been the fashion to look upon an individual as if he
were the product of an independent creative act, and a self-
sufficient being — because men commonly look not beyond a
single link in the chain of causation — therefore it has been
impossible hitherto to uproot the erroneous notion, explicitly
declared or implicitly held, that each one is endowed by nature
with a certain fixed mental potentiality of uniform character.
But now that observation reveals more and more clearly every
day how much the capacity and character, bodily and mental, of
the individual is dependent upon his ancestral antecedents, it is
impossible to deny that a man may suffer irremediable ill through
the misfortune of a bad descent. Each one is a link in the chain
of organic beings, a physical consequent of physical antecedents;
the idiot is not an accident, nor the irreclaimable criminal an
unaccountable casualty ; the laws of causality have sway here
as elsewhere in nature. It cannot, therefore, but be of the
utmost importance, when tracing the causation of insanity, to
weigh closely the elements of the individual character.

Viewed on its physical side, as it rightly should be viewed, a
predisposition to insanity means nothing less than an actual
defect or vice of some kind in the constitution or composition of
the nerve element of which the mental phenomena are functional
manifestations ; there is an instability of organic composition
which is the direct result of certain unfavourable physical ante-
cedents. The retrograde metamorphosis of mind, manifest in the
different kinds of insanity, and proceeding as far as actual ex-
tinction in extreme examples of dementia, is the further physical
consequence of the hidden defect of constitution or composition
of nerve element. It is easy enough, no doubt, to point on the
one hand, to the nervous substance of the infertile idiot's brain,
and on the other hand, to that of the philosopher's, and to main-
tain that the kind of organic element of which they are con-
stituted is the same, as it certainly appears to be ; but so long
as we have no exact knowledge of the constitution of nerve
element, such an assertion is an unwarrantable assumption ;
and, while the functional effects are so vastly different in the
two cases, there are the most valid reasons for contradicting it.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 257

The conclusion, then, at which we have arrived is, that when
an individual is, by reason of a bad descent, born with a pre-
disposition to insanity, he has a native constitution of nerve
element which, whatever name may be given to it, is unstable
or defective, rendering him unequal to bear the severe stress of
adverse events. In other words, the man has the insane tempera-
ment ; he is liable to whimsical caprices of thought and feeling ;
and, although he may act calmly and rationally for the most part,
yet now and then his unconscious nature, overpowering and sur-
prising him, instigates eccentric or extravagant actions ; while
an extraordinary and trying emergency may upset his stability
entirely. If it were thought desirable to give a name to this
temperament or diathesis, as in algebra we employ a letter to
represent an unknown quantity, it might properly be described
as the Diathesis spasmodica or the Neurosis spasmodica; such
names expressing very well an essential character of the tem-
perament,— that is, the tendency to independent and spasmodic
action on the part of the different nervous centres. There is, in
fact, some inherent instability of nervous element, whereby
the mutual reaction of the nerve-cells in the higher walks of
nervous function does not take place properly, and due consent
or co-ordination of function is replaced by irregular and purpose-
less independent reaction outwards : there is, as it were, a loss of
the power of self-control in the individual nerve-cell, an inability
of calm self-contained activity, subordinate or co-ordinate, and
its energy is dissipated in an explosive display, which, like
the impulsive action of the passionate man, surely denotes an
irritable weakness. Here, as elsewhere, co-ordination of function
signifies power, innate or acquired, and marks exaltation of
organic development. Assuredly the worst of all tyrannies is
the tyranny of a bad organization, the best of all inheritances
the inheritance of a good descent.

Is it not very plain, then, how impossible it is to do full justice
to any individual, sane or insane, by considering him as an
isolated fact ? Beneath his conscious activity and reflection
there lies the unconscious inborn nature which all unawares
mingles continually in the events of life— the spontaneity
whence spring the sources of desire and the impulses of action ;
for the conscious and the unconscious, like warp and woof,

s

258 OX THE CAUSES OF [XSAX1TY. - [char

together constitute the texture of life. Xo one, be he ever so
cunning in dissimulation or crafty in reticence, can conceal or
misrepresent himself; in spite of art his real nature reveals
itself in every movement of the part which he plays, in every
pulsation of his life. The inborn nature constitutes the founda-
tion upon which all the acquisitions of development must rest,
the substratum in which all conscious mental phenomena are
fundamentally rooted. When it is radically defective, no amount
of systematic labour will avail to counterbalance entirely the
defect: it were as hopeless to attempt to rear the massive struc-
ture of a royal palace upon foundations dug only for a cottage as
to impose the superstructure of a large, vigorous, and complete
culture upon the rotten foundations which an inherited taint of
nerve element implies: something will always be wanting, some
crack in the building will discover the instability of the founda-
tions, even when the whole structure does not fall " in ruin
hurled." Any mental philosophy which takes no notice of the
foundations of the character, but ignores the important individual
differences of nature, does not truly reflect the facts, and cannot
fail to be a provisional and transitory system. It is guilty, in
fact, of the same error as that into which an introspective
psychology falls, when, isolating the particular state of mind, and
neglecting the antecedent conditions upon which it has followed,
it pronounces the will to be free ; by isolating the individual,
and forgetting that he is but a link in the long chain of nature's
organic evolution, it transforms him into an abstract and im-
possible entit}-, and often judges his actions with a most unjust
judgment.

2. Quantity and Quality of the Blood. — The grey centres of
the brain, and especially the cortical layers of the hemispheres,
are well known to be richly supplied with blood-vessels, even
when comparison is made with the notably abundant supply of
the spinal centres. The ideational cells demand for the due
exercise of their functions a rapid renewal of arterial blood, and
there is obviously an active interchange of some kind con-
tinually going on between the blood and the nervous elements.
The quantity and quality of the blood, therefore, circulating
through the supreme centres, must affect their functions in an
important manner, especially as they are the most sensitive

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF IN SAN irr. 259

elements of the body in this regard. When the most skilful
chemist is unable to detect anything unusual in the atmosphere
of a room in which are many people, a delicate woman may get
a headache and actually faint away. Send through the brain of
any one blood charged with carbonic acid, and destiny could not
doom Mm not to die ; whilst a mixture of air and carbonic acid
in certain proportions, inspired like chloroform, will, like it, act
as an anaesthetic, paralysing consciousness.

When there is a rapid flow of healthy blood through the
supreme cerebral centres, a quick interchange goes on between
the nerve-cells and the blood, and the excitation and inter-
action of ideas proceed with great vivacity. The effect of active
thought is to produce such a determination of blood, which in
turn is the necessary condition of the continuance of the active
function. But when a natural determination of blood degene-
rates into a greater or less stasis or congestion, as it may easily
do when intellectual activity is too much prolonged, or when
congestion is otherwise produced, then there is an inability to
think ; confusion of thought, emotional depression and irrita-
bility, swimming in the head, disturbance of sight and of hearing,
testify to a morbid condition of things. It is striking how com-
pletely a slight congestion of the brain may incapacitate any one
for mental activity, and how entirely the strong man is prostrated
thereby : an afflicting stagnation of ideas accompanies the stagna-
tion of blood ; and he, heretofore so strong and confident, realizes
in vivid affright on how slight a thread hangs the whole fabric
of his intellect. If the morbid state should, instead of remaining
passive, or passing away altogether, become active, as it does
when actual inflammation occurs, then the functional activity of
the cerebral cells becomes most irregular and degenerate; the
co-ordination of function maintained in health is lost, as that of
the spinal cord is under like circumstances, and a wild and in-
coherent delirium witnesses to the independent and, if we might
so speak, convulsive action of the different cells : the delirious
ideas are the expression of a condition of things in the supreme
centres which is the counterpart of that which in the spinal
centres utters itself in spasmodic movements or convulsions.
With the destruction of that co-ordination of function which
volition implies the will is necessarily abolished ; and such

s2

2(30 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

purposeless or dangerous acts as the delirious being executes are
dictated by the morbid ideas that automatically arise. Some
with inconsiderate haste speak of this degenerate activity in its
earlier stages as increased mental activity, as they also speak of
active inflammation as increased vital action ; not otherwise
than as if convulsions were accounted the sure signs of strength,
or as if the tale of an idiot, because it is full of sound and fury,
though signifying nothing, were the safe index of a high mental
activity. Dr. Mason Cox pointed out long ago that in certain of
the insane the pulse in the radial and carotid arteries sometimes
differed, being soft and weak in the former when full and hard
in the latter. Of no small interest, in relation to the influence
of the supply of blood to the brain, are the vigour and renewal
of action sometimes imparted by an attack of fever to a brain
enfeebled by chronic insanity; patients in an advanced state of
insanity even becoming quite rational for a time during fever,
and relapsing after its subsidence ; or a demented patient, who
usually exhibits no spark of intelligence, then quickening into
a certain mental activity*

Since the time of Hippocrates it has been known that when
there is too little blood in the brain symptoms are exhibited
similar to those which are produced by a congestion of blood :
pains and swimming in the head, confusion and incapacity of
thought, affections of the senses and of movement, occur in

* Examples of such revival of cerebral functions during fever have been related
by various authors. The following may suffice here : — " The following case,
related to me by a medical friend, will serve to show that even in idiocy the mind
may be rather suppressed than destroyed. A young woman, who was employed
as a domestic servant by the father of the relater when he was a boy, became
insane, and at length sunk into a state of perfect idiocy (dementia). In this con-
dition she remained for many years, when she was attacked by a typhus fever ;
and my friend, having then practised some time, attended her. He was sur-
prised to observe, as the fever advanced, a development of the mental powers.
During that period of the fever when others are delirious, this patient was
entirely rational. She recognised, in the face of her medical attendant, the son
of her old master whom she had known so many years before ; and she related
many circumstances respecting the family, and others which had happened to
herself in her earlier days. But, alas ! it was only the gleam of reason ; as the
fever abated, clouds again enveloped the mind ; she sank into her former de-
plorable state, and remained in it until her death, which happened a few years
afterwards." — Description of the Retreat near York, p. 137. By Samuel Tuke.
1813.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 261

consequence of anaemia of the brain as certainly as they do in
consequence of congestion. In both cases the due nutrition of
the nerve-cell, which is the agent of cerebral function, is greatly
hindered ; and much of the ill effect is similar though the cause
appears to be so different. In reality, however, the causes are
not so different when we proceed to analyse the conditions
comprised under the terms anaemia and congestion. In that
continued relation between the organic element and the blood
by which the due reparative material is brought and waste
matter carried away, it amounts to much the same thing whether,
through stasis of the blood, the refuse is not carried off and
reparative material brought to the spot where it is wanted,
or whether the like result ensues by reason of a defective blood
and deficient circulation : it is little matter to the inhabitants
whether the street is almost blocked, or whether its entrance is
almost closed, so long as free circulation is prevented. If the
carotid arteries of a dog be tied, and pressure be then made on
its vertebral arteries, as was done by Sir A. Cooper, the functions
of the brain are entirely suspended — the animal falls into a deep
coma, its respiration ceases in a few moments, and it appears to
be dead ; but, if the pressure be removed from the vertebral
arteries, the manifestations of life reappear, and the animal regains
rapidly the integrity of its cerebral functions. Brown-Sequard
has made this experiment : he severed the head of a dog from
its body, and, at the expiration of about eight or ten minutes,
when all traces of excitability had disappeared in the medulla
oblongata and the rest of the encephalon, he made, by means
of a suitable apparatus, repeated injections of defibrinated and
oxygenated blood into the carotid and vertebral arteries. At the
end of two or three minutes, after some irregular movements, he
found the manifestations of life reappear; there were visible,
in the muscles of the eyes and of the face, movements which
appeared to indicate that the cerebral functions were re-estab-
lished in the head separated from the body.

Temporary irregularities in the supply of blood to the supreme
nervous centres may, and often do, pass away without leaving
any ill consequences behind them ; but when they recur fre-
quently, and become more lasting, their disappearance is by
no means the disappearance of the entire evil : the effect has

262 ON THE CAUSES OF INSAXITT. [chap.

become a cause that continues in action after the original cause
has been removed ; and permanent mental disorder may be thus
established. Once the habit of morbid action is fixed in a part,
it continues as naturally as, under better auspices, the normal
physiological action. It is ever, therefore, of the first importance
to give timely heed to the earliest warning which morbid action
gives ; but it is of especial importance to do so in the case of
organic element so exceedingly susceptible and so exquisitely
delicate as is nerve element

A perverted condition of the blood quickly exercises a marked
effect upon the function of the supreme cerebral cells. The
influence of alcohol upon the mental function furnishes the sim-
plest instance in illustration of the action of a foreign matter
introduced into the blood from without : here, where each phase
of an artificially-produced insanity is successively passed through
in a brief space of time, we have the abstract and brief chronicle
of the history of insanity. The first effect of alcohol is to pro-
duce an agreeable excitement, a lively flow of ideas, and a general
activity of mind — a condition not unlike that which sometimes
precedes an attack of mania ; then there follows, as in insanity,
the automatic excitation of ideas which start up and follow one
another without order, so that more or less incoherence of thought
and speech is exhibited, while at the same time passion is easily
excited, which takes different forms, according to the individual
temperament ; after this stage has lasted for a time, in some
longer, in others shorter, it passes into one of depression and
maudlin melancholy, as convulsion passes into paralysis ; the
last scene of all being one of dementia and stupor. The different
stages of mental disorder are compressed into a short period of
time because the action of the poison is quick and transitory ;
we have only to spread the poisonous action over years, as the
regular drunkard does, and we may get a chronic and enduring
insanity in which the scenes above described are more slowly
acted. The chronic insanity so produced has been called the
insanity of alcoholization : its most constant symptoms are hal-
lucinations of hearing, and sometimes of touch, leading to the
belief in persecution by spies, mesmeric action, magnetic in-
fluence, and like evil agencies ; the memory is usually much
enfeebled, the intellect dull, and the higher sentiments are

i.J ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 263

blunted. Or, if death cuts short the career of the individual,
and puts a stop to the full development of the tragedy in his
life, we may still not be disappointed of seeing it played out in
the lives of his descendants ; for the drunkenness of the parent
sometimes observably becomes the insanity of the offspring,
which thereupon, if not interfered with, goes through the course
of degeneracy already described. It is worth while to take note
here how differently alcohol affects different people, according
to their temperaments, ever bringing forward the unconscious
real nature of the man : of one it makes a furious maniac for
the time being; another it makes maudlin and melancholic;
and a third under its influence is stupid and heavy from the
beginning. So it is with insanity otherwise caused : the par-
ticular constitution or temperament, rather than the exciting
cause of the disease, determines the form which the madness
takes. An exact differential pathology would involve the know-
ledge of what constitutes individual temperament.

Many other poisons besides alcohol, as opium, belladonna,
Indian hemp, stimulate and ultimately derange the function of
the supreme cerebral cells. It is deserving of remark that the dif-
ferent nervous centres of the body manifest elective affinities for
particular poisons : while the spinal centres have a special affinity
for strychnine, the cerebral centres seem to be unaffected by it ;
belladonna, on the other hand, seems rather to depress spinal
activity, but produces a great effect upon the centres of conscious-
ness, giving rise, at an early period of its action, to delirium
characterised by extreme delusions ; and Indian hemp concen-
trates its action mainly on the sensory centres, exciting remark-
able hallucinations. That medicinal substances do display these
elective affinities is a proof, at any rate, that there are important
though delicate differences in the constitution or composition of
the different nervous centres, notwithstanding that we are unable
to detect the nature of them. It may be also that there is shadowed
out in these different effects of poisons on the nervous system a
means which may ultimately be of use in the investigation of
the constitution of the latter. Though the rapid recovery from
the effects of these poisons proves that the combination which
they form with nerve element is temporary, it must be borne in
mind with regard to them, as with regard to alcohol, that the

264 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

nervous system, when repeatedly exposed to their poisonous
influence, acquires a disposition to irregular or morbid action,
even when they are not present ; so that more or less delirium,
hallucinations, and insanity are the results of their continued
abuse — they are efficient to initiate a degeneracy which then
proceeds of itself.

But the condition of the blood may be perverted by reason of
something bred in it, or by reason of the retention in it of some
substance which should rightly be excreted from it. Without
any change whatsoever having taken place in his external rela-
tions, the presence of bile in his blood may drive any one to
regard his surroundings and his future in the gloomiest light
imaginable ; he may know that a few hours ago things looked
quite differently, and may believe that in a few hours more they
will again have a different aspect, yet for the time being he is
the victim of a humour which he cannot withstand. Philosophy
is of no avail to him ; for philosophy cannot remove that con-
dition of nervous element which the impure blood has engendered,
and which is the occasion of his gloomy feelings and painful
conceptions. Carry this morbid state of nervous element to a
further stage of degeneration, there ensues the genuine melan-
cholia of insanity. In like manner the presence of some urinary
product in the blood of a gouty patient gives rise to an irritability
which no amount of mental control can remove, though it may
succeed sometimes in repressing its manifestations. The mental
tone being, as already set forth, the expression of a physical
condition of nervous element, is beyond conscious determination
just as the delirium and convulsions of the patient dying from
uremic poisoning are beyond control. All writers on gout are
agreed that a suppressed gout may produce severe mental dis-
order, and that the sudden disappearance of a gouty swelling is
sometimes followed by an outbreak of insanity. Lord Chatham,
who was so great a martyr to that disease, had an attack of dis-
tressing melancholy lasting for nearly two years, from which he
only recovered after an attack of the usual gouty paroxysm. I
have recently seen two cases of severe melancholia in elderly
persons of the gouty diathesis, in which the best results followed
the treatment suitable to gout ; and in one old lady, who Mas
deeply melancholic, rheumatism seemed finally to take the place

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 265

of the mental unsoundness. It can admit of no question that
every degree of mental disorder, from the mildest feeling of
melancholic depression to the extremest fury of delirium, may
be due to the non-evacuation from the blood of the waste
matters of the tissues ; but as we know very little at present
of the nature of those waste products of the retrograde meta-
morphosis, and of the different transformations which they
undergo before they are eliminated, we must rest content with
the general statement, and set ourselves in practice to prosecute
rigorous inquiries into the particular instances. The irregulari-
ties of menstruation, which are so common in insanity, are of
great importance in regard to this question : the return of the
menses at their due season not unfrequently heralds recovery ;
and, on the other hand, severe exacerbations of epilepsy and
insanity sometimes coincide with the menstrual period. In one
case of a demented epileptic under my care, the fits always came
on at the time of menstruation, and continued in severe form
during the progress of that function ; but there were commonly
no fits in the intervals : on the other hand, many cases are on
record, more or less like that well-known one related by Esquirol,
where an insane girl, whose menses had ceased for some time,
recovered her senses directly they began to flow.

When we reflect that the blood is itself a living, developing
fluid, — that, "burnished with a living splendour," it circulates
through the body, supplying the material for the nutrition of
the various tissues, receiving again their waste matter and
carrying it to those parts where it may either be appropriated
and removed by nutrition or eliminated by secretion, — it is plain
that multitudinous changes are continually taking place in its
constitution and composition ; that its existence is a continued
metastasis. There is the widest possibility, therefore, of abr
normal changes in some of the manifold processes of its complex
life and function, such as may generate products injurious or
fatal to the nutrition of the different tissues. The blood itself
may not reach its proper growth and development by reason of
some defect in the function of the glands that minister to its
formation, or, carrying the cause still further back, by reason of
wretched conditions of life ; there is in consequence a defective
nutrition generally, as in scrofulous persons, and the nervous

266 ON WE CAUSES OE 1XSAXITV. [chap.

system shares in the general delicacy of constitution, so that,
though quickly impressible and lively in reaction, it is irritable,
feeble, and easily exhausted. In the condition known as anae-
mia, we have an observable defect in the blood and palpable
nervous suffering in consequence ; headaches, giddiness, low
spirits, and susceptibility to emotional excitement reveal the
morbid effects. Poverty of blood, it can admit of no doubt,
plays the same weighty part in the production of insanity as it
does in the production of other nervous diseases, such as hysteria,
chorea, neuralgia, and even epilepsy. The exhaustion produced
by lactation is a well-recognised cause of mental derangement ;
and a great loss of blood during childbirth has sometimes been
the cause of an outbreak of insanity. But while we can thus
detect an evil so manifest as a great loss of blood or a deficiency
of iron in the blood, there are good reasons to think that other
graver defects in its constitution or development, of which we
can give no account, do exist and give rise to secondary nervous
degeneration. It is in this way probably that ill conditions of
existence, — as overcrowding, bad air, insufficient food, intem-
perance,— lead to defects of nervous development, or to actual
arrest thereof, and thus produce mental as well as physical
deterioration of the race.

There is no want of evidence that organic morbid poisons,
bred in the organism or in the blood itself, may act in the most
baneful manner upon the supreme nervous centres. That these
organic poisons do act in a definite manner on the organic
elements, and give rise to definite morbid actions, is proved by
the symptoms of such diseases as syphilis and small-pox. Xow,
tho general laws observable in the actions of morbid poisons
appear for the most part similar to those which govern the
action of medicinal substances ; and as the "NVoorara poison
completely paralyses the nerves and does not affect the muscles,
or as strychnia poisons the spinal centres, and leaves the cere-
bral centres unaffected, so it may be presumed that a particular
organic virus may have a predominant affinity for a particular
nervous centre, and work its mischievous work there. It is
certain that in some states of the constitution an organic virus
is generated in the blood, or elsewhere in the organism, which
almost instantaneously proves fatal to the life of nerve element.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 267

— which is, indeed, as surely, though not as quickly, fatal as
a poisonous dose of prussic acid. With what marvellous de-
structive force certain morbid materials bred in the blood, or
passing into it, may act, is shown, as Mr. Paget has pointed
out, in certain cases of so-called putrid infection in which the
patient dies after an injury or a surgical operation before there
has been time to feel the after- consequences, or in some cases
of malignant typhus where the virus is directly fatal to nerve
element before the fever has had time to develop itself. It is
easily conceivable that a virus which, when concentrated, pro-
duces fatal results, may, when acting with less intensity, give
rise to nervous derangement which stops short of death. The
syphilitic virus usually affects the nervous system more or less
severely at one period or other of its action ; but in some
instances it appears to select the nervous system specially for
its pernicious influence, or to concentrate its action upon it, so
as to produce a hopeless insanity. There are cases on record
again, in which mental derangement has appeared as the inter-
mittent symptoms of ague ; instead of the usual symptoms the
patient has had an intermittent insanity in regular tertian or
quartan attacks, and has been cured by the treatment for inter-
mittent fever.* Sydenham observed and describes a species of
mania supervening on an epidemic of intermittent fever ; con-
trary to all other kinds of madness, he says, it would not yield to
plentiful venesection and purging ; slight evacuations prodvicing
the relapse of a convalescent, and violent ones inevitably render-
ing the patients idiotic and incurable. Griesinger directs special

* A young man in an agueish district suffered from five brief attacks of mental
derangement, one occurring every other day. The attacks began with an in-
describable feeling of pain in the region of the heart, and with strong pulsations
of the heart. This was the starting point of the delirium, from which the patient

recovered after a deep sleep. He was cured by quinine. A strong peasant,

aged thirty, who had never had ague though he lived in an agueish district, was
suddenly attacked with insanity. He believed himself to be Jesus Christ, and
those near him to be witches, and acted with violence towards them. His head
was hot ; his eyes were red and wild ; his pulse was quick and his tongue white.
After cupping and the application of ice to the head, he recovered, and for two
days remained quite sound in mind. On the fourth day, however, exactly at the
same time, he had a similar attack, and again a third, after three days more.
He was ctired by quinine. — Die, Pathologic und Therapie der psychischen Krank-
heiten. Von Dr. W. Griesinger.

268 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

attention to cases in which mental disorder has occurred in the
course of acute rheumatism, the swelling of the joints mean-
while subsiding ; and Arnold has known cases of people subject
to frequent fits of gout who have had none while suffering from
an attack of insanity. The viruses of acute fevers, as typhus
and typhoid, may notably act in the most positive manner on
the supreme nervous cells, giving rise to an active delirium or
sometimes to a more or less enduring insanity ; and, where they
do not act directly at the height of the fever, they may still
predispose to an outbreak of insanity during the decline of the
acute disease. Not only may a morbid poison thus attack the
nervous system, or a part of it, but it should be borne in mind
that a particular virus will most likely produce its special effects,
not otherwise than as tea ana coffee commonly produce wake-
fulness while opium produces sleep.

The earliest and mildest mental effect by which a perverted
state of blood declares itself is not in the production of positive
delusion or of incoherence of thought, but in a modification of
the mental tone. Feelings of discomfort or depression, of irri-
tability or imeasiness, testify to some modification of the statical
condition of nervous element ; and a great disposition to emo-
tional subjectivity is the psychical manifestation of this state.
It may exist in different degrees of intensity, from the slight
irritability or gloom which attends upon a sluggish liver, or the
greater irritability which the urea in the blood of the gouty
subject produces, to that profound depression which we describe
as melancholia, or that active degeneration of function which we
designate mania. Though there may be no active delusion, the
emotional perversion existing by itself, yet the ideas which arise
under such circumstances do not fail to experience the influence
of the morbid feeling, but are strongly tinctured by it ; they are
obscure, or painful, or, at any rate, not faithfully representative
of external circumstances. The morbid character of the depres-
sion lies, not in the depression itself, which would be natural or
normal so long as there was an adequate external cause of it,
but in its existence "without any external cause, in the discord
between the individual and his circumstances. But as there is
an irresistible disposition in the mind to represent its feelings as
qualities of the external object, as in all Our mental life we con-

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 269

tinually make this projection outwards of our subjective states,
it commonly happens after a while that the victim of an in-
ternally caused emotional perversion seeks for an objective
cause of it, and, thinking to find one, gets a delusion : being
in discord with the external, he establishes an equilibrium be-
tween himself and it by creation of a surrounding in harmony
with his inner life. The form which the delusion takes may be
a natural crystallization or condensation, so to speak, of the par-
ticular morbid emotion which prevails, or it may be suggested,
as it often is, by some prominent external event. What we
have to bear in mind with regard to the organic nature of the
delusion is, that a series of ideational cells have now entered
upon the habit of a definite morbid action ; that the general
commotion of nerve element, which the emotional disturbance
implied, has now centred in a particular form of diseased action,
not otherwise than as general inflammatory disturbance of some
part of the organism issues in a definite morbid growth there.
For although a temporary emotional disturbance produced by
bad blood may completely pass away with the purification of
the blood, yet the prolonged continuance or frequent recurrence
of such morbid influence will inevitably end in the ideational
nerve-cell, as elsewhere, in chronic morbid action, which, once
established, is not easily got rid of. Thus, then, it appears that
the first effect of the chronic action of impure blood is to pro-
duce a general disturbance of the psychical tone or indefinite
morbid emotion ; and the further effect of its continued action
is to engender a chronic delusion of some kind — a systematiza-
tion of the morbid action. But a third effect of its more acute
action, as witnessed in the effects of acute fevers and of certain
poisons, is to produce more or less active delirium and general
incoherence of thought : the poison is distributed generally
through the supreme centres by the circulation, and, acting
directly upon the different cells, excites ideas rapidly and with-
out order or coherence : the delirium is not systematic, and
there is good hope of its passing away. The approaches of this
sort of delirium in fever illustrate many of the phenomena of
insanity. First, there are wandering images or thoughts, known
to be unreal, and often described by the patient, who recognises
their character, as nonsense ; then there follows vague rambling

270 ON' THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITY. [chap.

talk,, from which he may be aroused by talking to him, though
he falls back into it as soon as he has answered ; afterwards the
state of complete delirium comes on, when the mind is entirely
possessed by unreal images and false thoughts uncontrolled by
impressions from without. A general incoherence equally un-
systematized, but which never can pass^ away save with life
itself, is the natural issue of long-continued chronic morbid
action in the supreme centres : it is the chronic dementia fol-
lowing continued insanity, and marking mental disorganization.
I mention it here in order to render pathologically intelligible
the very different prognosis in acute dementia from that in
chronic dementia.

It is before all things necessary to keep stedfastly in view
that the relation between the supreme nervous centres and the
blood is fundamentally of the same kind as that between other
parts of the body and their blood supply, and that the dis-
ordered mental phenomena are the functional indications of
morbid organic action. Firmly grasping this just conception,
as we may do by calling to mind the mode of nutritive action
in other parts of the body, we get rid of the notion of a de-
lusion as some abstract, ideal, and incomprehensible entity,
and recognise it as the definite expression of a certain form of
morbid action in certain of the supreme centres, neither more
nor less wonderful than the persistence of a definite morbid
action in any other organ. If there is defective or disordered
nutrition of the brain, and some striking event or some powerful
shock produces a great impression on the mind, constraining it
into a particular form of activity — in other words, engrossing
its whole energy in a particular gloomy reflection — what more in
accordance with analogy than that this should take on a chronic
morbid action, and issue in the production of a delusion ? Any
great passion in the sound mind notably calls up kindred ideas,
which thereupon tend to keep it up; and it is plain that the
morbid exaggeration of this natural process must lead to the
production of delusion.

3. Sympathy or Reflex Irritation. — Like every other nervous
centre, or like any other part of the organism, the supreme
cells of the ideational centres may be deranged by reason of
a morbid cause of irritation in some other part of the body.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 271

Why such morbid effect should be produced at one time and
not at another, or in one person and not in another, it is im-
possible to say, just as it is impossible to explain how it is
that a wound in the hand or elsewhere at one time gives rise
to tetanus and at another time to no such desperate conse-
quence, or why epilepsy should be caused by an eccentric irri-
tation in one case and not in another. " A fever, delirium, and
violent convulsions," says Dr. Whytt, " have been produced by a
pin sticking in the coats of the stomach ; and worms affecting
either this part or the intestines occasion a surprising variety
of symptoms."* These effects were of old attributed to a
sympathy or consent of parts, — terms which were, though
equally void of any real explanation, quite as expressive as
the modern reflex irritation.

Amongst many other instances which might be quoted in
illustration of this manner of pathological action, a case recorded
by Baron Larrey is a striking example. A soldier, who had
been shot in the abdomen, had a fistulous opening on the
right side, which passed inwards and towards the left. When a
sound was introduced into this opening and made to touch the
deeper parts, immediately singular attacks supervened : first
there was a feeling of coldness and oppressive pain, then a con-
vulsive contraction of the abdomen and spasm of the limbs ;
after which the man fell into a sort of somnambulism, and
talked incoherently, this stage ending after about thirty minutes
in a melancholy depression which from the time of the wound
had been habitual. Larrey attributed the hypochondria and
other nervous symptoms to the injury which the caeliac axis
had suffered from the ball. The direct effect of the sympa-
thetic system upon the brain, which this case so strikingly
illustrates, Schroeder van der Kolk once verified in his own
experience, f After great mental exertion and an unaccustomed
constipation of a few days, he was attacked with a fever, for
which his physician, deeming it nervous, would not sanction
any purging. After a continuance of the fever for two days,

* Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of Nervous, Hypochondriacal,
or Hysteric Orders. By Robert Why tt, M. D. 1765.

t Die Pathologie und Therapie der Geisteskrankheiten auf Anatomisch-Physi-
ologischer Grundlage. Von J. L. C. Schroeder van der Kolk. 1863.

272 ON THE C J USES OF INSANITY. I [chap.

hallucinations of vision occurred ; he saw a multitude of people
around him, although quite conscious that they were only phan-
tasms. These continued for three days and increased, until he
got a thorough evacuation of a quantity of hardened fneces from
his bowels, when all the morbid phenomena vanished in a
moment. A man who came under my observation, having
suffered for more than a year with profound melancholia, and
who had become greatly emaciated, passing at intervals pieces
of tape-worm, recovered almost immediately after the expulsion
of the whole of the worm by means of a dose of the oil of male
fern.* Many like cases are on record in medical books ; but it
is not necessary to multiply instances in order to prove that
morbid action in some part or organ of the body may be the
cause of secondary functional and organic disorder of the
supreme nervous centres. It may be well to add, however,
that affections of the uterus and its appendages afford notable
examples of a powerful sympathetic action upon the brain, and
not unfrequently play an important part in the production of
insanity, especially of melancholia. M. Azam investigated the
histories of seven cases of lypemania with suicidal tendencies,
of one case of simple lypemania with dangerous tendencies,
and of one case of hysteromania. There were granulations of
the neck of the uterus in five cases ; there was anteversion of
the uterus, with congestion of its neck and ulceration of the
inferior lip, in one case ; in three cases there were fungous and
fibrous growths of the uterus ; and in one case there was painful
engorgement of it with leucorrhcea. Schroeder van der Kolk
relates the case of a woman profoundly melancholic, who suf-
fered at the same time from prolapsus uteri, and in whom the
melancholia used to disappear directly the uterus was restored
to its proper place ; Flemming relates two similar cases in which

* Griesinger has seen deep melancholia arise in an hysterical woman after
accidental wound of the eye hy a splinter. Herzog relates an instance of insanity
after the operation for strabismus. Jbrdens tells of a boy who was attacked
with furious insanity in consequence of a splinter of glass in the sole of his foot,
which disappeared directly it was removed. — Op. cit., p. 183.

" In two instances," says Dr. Burrows, in his Commeivtaries on Insanity, " I
have known sudden mania originate from the irritation of cutting the deatt$
sapientice." . . . "Violent nausea also from sea-sickness, continued for a few
hours, has produced mania in three instances within my knowledge."

i.l ON THE CAUSES OF INSANI1T. 273

the melancholia was cured by the use of a pessary, in one of
them regularly returning whenever the pessary was removed ;
and I have in one instance seen severe melancholia of two
years' duration disappear after the cure of a prolapsus uteri.
Instances are on record in which a woman has regularly become
insane during each pregnancy ; and, on the other hand, Guislain
and Griesinger mention a case respectively in which insanity
disappeared during pregnancy, the patient at that time only
being rational * These are striking examples of a- mode of reflex
action which is a continual function of the organic life both in
health and in disease. Perhaps the best opportunity of studying
the early stages in the genesis of melancholia is afforded by the
mental depression that commonly accompanies certain uterine
diseases. On the other hand, there is equally striking evidence
of this intimate sympathy of parts in the fact that morbid
states of organs favouring a certain mental disposition may
unquestionably be in turn caused by the latter when it is
primary and of long standing.

Perhaps the most instructive example of the intimate organic
sympathy of parts is afforded by the great mental revolution
which accompanies the development of the sexual system at
puberty — when there occurs, as Goethe aptly expresses it, " an
awakening of sensual impulses which clothe themselves in
mental forms, of mental necessities which clothe themselves in
sensual images." The great moral commotion produced at this
period is the cause of an unstable equilibrium of mind, which,
if hereditary predisposition exist, may, without further auxiliary
cause, issue in insanity. In any case it constitutes a frame of
mind favourable to the action of other causes of mental de-
rangement. Dr. Skae is of opinion that a natural group or
family might be formed of the cases of insanity occurring at
the period of pubescence, and dependent apparently upon the
changes affecting the circulation and nervous system by the

* Shenck relates the history of a pregnant female, in whom the sight of the
bare arm of a baker excited so great a desire to bite and devour it, that she
compelled her husband to offer money to the baker to allow her only a bite or
two from his arm. He mentions another pregnant female, who had such an
urgent desire to eat the flesh of her husband, that she killed him and pickled the
flesh, that it might serve for several banquets. (Prochaska on the Nervous
System, Syd. Soc. translation.)

274 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

development of puberty. He believes that the insanity then
occurring presents certain characteristic features, most com-
monly manifesting itself in the form of mania, sometimes
accompanied by epileptic fits.

It is uncertain whether the puerperal state acts as the occa-
sional cause of a maniacal outbreak by this kind of sympathetic
action, or whether it acts in some other way ; but there can be
no doubt of the fact that a woman is sometimes attacked with
mental alienation during delivery, and that her child may fall a
victim to her frenzy. This form of puerperal insanity is different
from the insanity of pregnancy ; different again in regard of
causation from that which occurs a few days after delivery, and
which is then probably due to blood-poisoning; and more
different still from that mental disorder occurring some weeks or
months after, and due seemingly to the exhaustion produced by
lactation, together with depressing moral influences. Under the
name of Puerperal Insanity have sometimes been confounded
the Insanity of Pregnancy, Puerperal Insanity, and Insanity of
Lactation. Of 155 cases of so-called Puerperal Insanity ad-
mitted into the Edinburgh Asylum, 28 or 18-06 per cent, were
cases of the Insanity of Pregnancy; 73 or 47 09 per cent, were
cases of Puerperal Insanity proper ; 54 or 34-8 per cent, were
cases of Insanity of Lactation. !N"ow these varieties, differently
caused, present some differences of features*

However it be that disorders of menstruation act, certain it is
that they may exercise great influence on the causation and the
course of insanity. Most women are susceptible, irritable, and
capricious at that period, any cause of vexation then affecting
them much more seriously than usual; some exhibit a dis-
turbance of character which almost amounts to disease ; and, in
the insane, exacerbations of the disease frequently occur at the
menstrual periods. In a few rare cases, a sudden suppression of
the menses has been followed by an outbreak of acute madness ;
but more frequently the suppression has occurred some time
before the insanity, and acted as one link in the chain of
causes. It should not be forgotten that suppression of the menses

* See a very careful paper in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1865, on the
Insanity of Pregnancy, Puerperal Insanity, and Insanity of Lactation, by Dr. J.
B. Tuke.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 275

may in some cases be an effect of the mental derangement.
When menstruation ceases entirely at the change of life, a revo-
lution takes place in the system, favouring the production of
insanity in those predisposed to it, and sometimes sufficing to
produce it. Most women suffer some change of moral character
by the revolution which the whole economy of the constitution
undergoes at the change of life. The age of pleasing is past,
but not always the desire ; and it is now that jealousy, extreme
religious sentiments, and a propensity to stimulants are apt
to appear.

The earliest and mildest effect of sympathetic morbid action
will be, as it is with the effect of vitiated blood, to produce
a modification of the tone of nerve element, which is functionally
manifest in disordered emotion. But the continued operation of
the morbid cause will be apt to lead to a systematized disorder
in the supreme cerebral centres : in other words, to the produc-
tion of a delusion or of a definite derangement of thought, which
then is not always without discoverable relation to the primary
morbid cause. When, for example, a woman with morbid irrita-
tion of the sexual organs has salacious delusions, or with uterine
or ovarian disease believes herself with child by the Holy Ghost
or other supernatural means, the secondary derangement of the
cerebral centres testifies to the special effect of the particular
diseased organ ; and when the disordered action forces itself into
consciousness, the interpretation given of it in the delusion wit-
nesses to the nature of the primary morbid cause. Dr. Skae has
proposed to make a special group of the cases of insanity asso-
ciated with ovarian and uterine disease ; one of the most common
symptoms presented by them being sexual hallucination. There
is the most perfect harmony, the most intimate connexion or
sympathy, between the different organs of the body as the ex-
pression of its organic life — a unity of the organism beneath con-
sciousness ; and the brain is quite aware that the body has a
liver or a stomach, and feels the effects of disorder in any one of
the organs, without declaring it directly in consciousness. This
unconscious, but not unimportant, cerebral activity, which is
the expression of the organic sympathies of the brain, cannot
fail, when rightly appreciated, to teach the lesson, already much
insisted on, that every organic motion, visible or invisible,

T 2

276 OX THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITY. [chap.

sensible or insensible, ministrant to the noblest purposes or to
the humblest aims, does not pass away issueless, but has its due
effect upon the whole, and thrills throughout the most complex
recesses of the mental life.*

Though the morbid sympathetic action of a diseased organ
upon the brain may be very considerable without any definite
affection of consciousness, yet when it reaches a certain intensity,
or when it is long continued, the effect thrusts itself into con-
sciousness, just as physiologically the idea does when its energy
reaches a certain tension ; declaring itself in the sensational
centres by pain or some more special anomalous feeling, and in
the cognitional centres by emotional perversion or actual delu-
sion. It often happens that no information is given until the
primary and secondary mischief are far advanced, and it is then
only given indirectly ; for while there is entire unconsciousness
of the primary disease in the distant organ, and an entire un-
consciousness of the secondary morbid action in the brain, the
effect may nevertheless be positively attested by melancholia,
delusion, or some other form of mental disorder. Esquirol gra-
phically tells the story of a woman who thought she had in her
belly the whole tribe of apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and
who, when her pains were more than usual, railed at them for
their greater activity. After death, her intestines were found
glued together by a chronic peritonitis. I have recently seen a
patient suffering from chronic insanity, who fancies that he has
got a man in his inside, and who, when his bowels get much
constipated, as they are apt to do, makes the most desperate
attempts, by vomiting and otherwise, to get rid of him. After a
purgative, however, he is quite comfortable for a time, and his
delusion subsides into the background. In the insanity attended
with phthisis there are often delusions of suspicion which appear
to have their foundation in the anomalous feelings incident to

* " Man is all symmetrie,

Full of proportion one limb to another,

And all to all the world besides,

Each part calls the furthest brother.

For head with foot hath private amity,

And both with moon and tides." — George Herbert.

'* ' There is," says John Hunter, " a connexion of the living principle in the powers
of one part with those of another, which might be called a species of intelligence."

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 277

the advance of the tubercle : one such patient under my care
fancied that he was maliciously played upon by secret fire, inter-
preting in this way the actual increase of bodily temperature
which occurs during the progress of phthisis ; he also imagined
that a filthy disease had been produced in his mouth, the delu-
sion probably having its origin in the perversion of smell or
taste resulting from the disease. Not only is the remote patho-
logical effect of a diseased organ thus evinced by the occurrence
of some form of insanity, but, as already pointed out, a special
effect of the particular morbid organ may be revealed in the
character of the delusion engendered. It is by virtue of this
sympathetic action that dreams sometimes have a truly prophetic
character in regard of certain bodily affections, the early and ob-
scure indications of which have not been sufficiently marked to
awaken any attention during the mental activity of the day, or
at any rate to do more than produce a vague and formless feel-
ing of discomfort ; nevertheless they declare themselves in the
mental action of dreaming, when other impressions are shut out.
When the disease ultimately declares itself distinctly in our
waking consciousness, then the prophetic dream, the forewarning,
is recalled to mind with wonder. The return of a certain mood
of mind before an outbreak of recurrent insanity or of epileptic
fits, such as has been displayed before former attacks, and enables
an experienced person to predict with certainty what is coming,
and the recurrence of particular morbid ideas, feelings, and de-
sires during the insane outbreak, may be, and probably often
are, owing to a periodical revival of the morbid irritation in the
distant organ. There is abundant reason to believe that the brain
retains a memory of the impressions received from the organic
life, even when the impressions are morbid. In those women
whose mental dispositions are much affected sympathetically at
the menstrual periods, the same sort of feelings, susceptibilities,
caprices, and fancies recur. In this physiological and patho-
logical action may lie also the explanation of the fact before
stated, that the thoughts and feelings of dreams, not remembered
in the waking state, may still appear in and influence the course
of subsequent dreams. After all, however, the most striking
examples of this kind of action in its physiological form are met
with in the marvellous creations of dreams originating in states

278 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

of the sexual organs* — "tensio phalli visa muliere nuda etiam
in insomnio" — these illustrating admirably the close sympathy
which prevails ; while numerous examples of this kind of action
in its pathological form are furnished by the salacious delusions
of certain of the insane in whom there is derangement of the
sexual system. In every large asylum are to be met with women
who believe themselves to be visited every night by their lovers,
or violently ravished in their sleep ; and in some of these, as in
St. Catherine de Sienne and St. Theresa, a religious ecstasy is
united with their salacious delusions. Indeed, a religious fana-
ticism carried to a morbid degree is not seldom accompanied by a
corresponding morbid lasciviousness ; while religious feeling of a
less extreme kind in some women, especially certain unmarried
and childless women, is very mru-h a uterine affection.

Between the organic feelings just considered — the vital senses,
as they are sometimes called — and the lower special senses, there
exist the closest relations; in truth, they run insensibly into
one another. Thus the digestive organs have the closest sym-
pathy with the sense of taste, as we observe in the bad taste
accompanying indigestion, and especially perhaps in the avoid-
ance of poisonous matters by animals ; the respiratory" organs
and the sense of smell are in bike manner intimately associated ;
and the sense of touch has close relations with the ccenaesthesis.
In insanity we find these physiological relations become some-
times the occasions of delusions : derangement of the digestive
organs, perverting the taste, gives rise to the delusion that the
food is poisoned ; disease in the respiratory organs is sometimes
the cause of disagreeable subjective smells, which are thereupon
attributed to an objective cause, such as the presence of a dead
body in the room ; and more or less loss or perversion of sensi-
bility in the skin, which is not uncommon amongst the insane,
is frequently the occasion of extravagant delusions. A woman
whose case Esquirol relates, had complete anaesthesia of the sur-
face of the skin : she believed that the devil had carried off her
body. A soldier who was severely wounded at the battle of
Austerlitz considered himself dead from that time : if he were

* "And as love and beauty stir up heat in other organs, so heat in the same
organs, from whatever it proceeds, often causeth desire and the image of an
unresisting beauty. " — Hobbes.

i.] OX THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 279

asked how he was, he invariably replied, that " Lambert no
longer lives ; a cannon-ball carried him away at Austerlitz.
AVhat you see here is not Lambert, but a badly imitated
machine," — which he failed not to speak of as it. The sensi-
bility of his skin was lost. A striking instance of delusion in
connexion with defective sensibility occurred in an amiable and
amusing patient who was under my care suffering from general
paralysis. As the disease approached its end, the end of life, he
had severe epileptiform convulsions, which latterly affected the
left side only, and finally resulted in paralysis of that side.
But, though the power of movement and feeling were entirely
gone, there were frequent spasmodic twitchings of the muscles
and convulsive contractions so strong as to raise the arm and
leg of the paralysed side from the bed. The poor man had the
most singular delusions respecting these movements : he thought
that another patient, who was perfectly demented and harmless,
had got hold of him and was tormenting him, and accordingly,
without real anger, but with an energy of language that was
habitual to him, he thus soliloquized aloud : — " What a power
that damned fellow has over me ! " Then after a severe convul-
sion,— " He has got me round the neck, and you dare not touch
him, not one of you. Oh ! but it is a burning shame to let a
poor fellow be murdered in this way in a public institution.
It's that boy does this to me." Told that he was mistaken, he
replied, — " You may as well call me a liar at once : he has got
me round the neck and he has me tight. Oh ! it is a damned
shame to treat me in this way — the quietest man in the house."
Then after a while, — " It's a strange power these lunatics have
over one. That boy is playing the devil with me : he stinks
worse than a polecat : he'll take my life, sure enough." And so
on continually, until the stupor of death overpowered him.

Laudably anxious to give due weight to the perversions of
sensibility which are met with in insanity, Griesinger has made
five groups of mental disorder connected with different anomalies
of sensibility, and more frequently than not actually dependent
upon them. The first of these is the precordial form, where
there are morbid sensation, sense of pressure, or pain about the
epigastrium, from which follow fear and mental anguish, with
corresponding ideas and habits of thought. The second is the

280 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

vertiginous form, in which some anomaly of muscular sensibility
exists. In the third, which he calls the parccsthctical form,
there are anomalous sensations in different parts of the body,
attributed by the patients commonly to external machinations.
The fourth is the anxcsthctic form, in which absence of sensibility
is often the cause of self-mutilation. Lastly, there is the halluci-
natory form, which obviously needs no further explanation here.
It is undoubtedly of great importance to bestow scrupulous
attention upon all the disorders of sensibility, as well as those of
nutrition and movement, which occur in the different sorts of
insanity ; to do so is an essential part of the physician's duty in
studying the natural history of the disease ; but it is quite im-
possible to make perversions of sensibility alone the basis of a
system of classification. Such a classification could not fail to
have an extremely artificial character, and an entirely theoretical
foundation. All that it seems important to say here is, that
these pathological phenomena confirm in a striking manner the
observations made in the First Part of this work concerning the
comprehension in the mental life of the whole bodily life.

The centre of morbid irritation which is so apt at times to
give rise to secondary disorder by reflex or sympathetic action
need not be in some distant organ ; it may be in the brain
itself. A tumour, abscess, or local softening in the brain, may
nowise interfere with the mental operations at one time, while
at another time it produces the gravest disorder of them ; and
it is not uncommon in abscess of the brain for the symptoms of
mental derangement, when there are any, to disappear entirely
for a time, and then to return suddenly in all their gravity.
"When the motor, sensory, and ideational centres are not directly
implicated in the disease, they may continue their functions in
spite of it, and it does accordingly happen that they sometimes
do so even when there is the most serious mischief going on
in the brain ; but they may at any moment be affected by a
sympathetic or reflex action, and a secondary abolition or de-
rangement of function may thus supervene without warning.
Instances now and then occur in which a sudden loss of con-
sciousness, or a sudden incoherence, or sudden mania, or even
sudden death, takes place where no premonitory symptoms have
indicated grave local disease of the brain.

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 281

Furthermore, it would appear tliat a limited disorder of the
ideational cells, such as is functionally manifest in the fixed
delusions of the so-called monomaniac, will not usually remain
without some effect upon the other elements in the supreme
centres. So delicately sympathetic and sensitive as nerve
element is, it is hard to conceive it possible that a centre of
morbid action should fail to affect, by direct or by reflex action,
neighbouring parts not immediately involved in the disease. As
a matter of observation it is certain that a greater or less dis-
turbance of the tone of the whole mind does commonly accom-
pany the limited delusions of a partial insanity; in fact, the
condition of things is that which has already been described as
the first stage of the affection of mind by other causes of its
derangement, — namely, a modification of the mental tone. This
baneful effect of a limited local disorder is in strict accordance
with the analogy of what we observe elsewhere. Hereafter we
shall have occasion to describe instances of the sudden and
entire transference of active disorder of one nervous centre to
another ; for, as Dr. Darwin long ago observed, " in some con-
vulsive diseases a delirium or insanity supervenes and the con-
vulsions cease ; and, conversely, the convulsions shall supervene
and the delirium cease."*

It is necessary here, as in the spinal, sensory, and motor
centres, to distinguish between the degrees of secondary patho-
logical disturbance to which a morbid cause may give rise. The
sudden way in which extreme mental symptoms appear, and the
equally sudden way in which they sometimes disappear, as in
abscess of the brain, prove that extreme derangement may be
what is called functional ; for it is impossible to suppose that
serious organic change has existed in such cases. Although,
therefore, the functional disorder necessarily implies a molecular
change of some kind in the nervous element, the change may be
assumed to be one affecting the polar molecules, such as the
experiments of Du Bois lieymond and others have proved may

* In what is called metastasis of disease the primary disease disappears, whereas
in sympathy it remains in action. Old writers treat also of the conversion of
diseases — a very imperfectly cultivated department which is just beginning to
attract attention again. Heberden suggests that madness, like gout, absorbs
other distempers, and turns them perfectly to its own nature.

282 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

rapidly appear and rapidly disappear. The induction of recog-
nisable temporary changes in the physical constitution and
function by experiments certainly warrants the belief in similar
modifications by causes which are not artificially produced, but
which are just as abnormal as if they were artificial. This
probable modification of the polar relations of nervous element,
which disappears with the removal of the cause, will not fail, if
too great or too prolonged, to degenerate into actual nutritive
change and structural disease, just as au emotion which observ-
ably often alters a secretion temporarily may, when long en-
during, lead to actual nutritive change in the organ. The longer
a functional derangement is allowed to continue, the more
danger is there of structural disease ; and this serious change
once definitely established, the removal of the primary morbid
cause will not suffice to remove an effect which has now become
an independently acting cause.

4. Excessive Functional Activity. — As the manifestation of
function is the wTaste of matter, it is obvious that, if the due
intervals of periodical rest be not allowed for the restoration
of the statical equilibrium of nerve element, degeneration of it
must take place as surely as if it were directly injured by a
morbid poison or a mechanical or chemical irritant. It is sleep
which thus knits up the ravelled structure of nerve element ;
for, during sleep, organic assimilation is restoring as statical
force the power which has been expended in functional energy.
The strongest mind, if continually overworked, will inevitably
break down ; one of the first symptoms that foreshadows the
coming mischief being sleeplessness. That which should heal
the breach is rendered impossible by the extent of the breach.
Like Hamlet, according to Polonius's fruitful imagination, the
individual falls into a sadness, thence into a watch, thence into
a lightness, and, by this declension, into the madness wherein he
finally raves. To provoke repose in him is the first condition of
restoration ; the power of it often closing the " eye of anguish,"
and curing the "great breach in the abused nature" of nervous
element.

It is, however, when intellectual activity is accompanied with
great emotional agitation that it is most enervating — when the
mind is the theatre of great passions that- its energy is soonest

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 283

exhausted. What has already been said as to the instability of
nerve element which a great emotional susceptibility implies,
will enable us to understand how this destructive effect is worked
out. When an exceedingly painful event produces great sorrow,
or a critical and uncertain event great anxiety, the mind is
undergoing a passion or suffering ; there is not an equilibrium
between the internal life and the external circumstances ; and
until the mind is able duly to react, the passion must continue,
— in other words, the wear and tear of nervous element must go
on. Painful emotion is in reality psychical pain; and pain
here, as elsewhere, is the outcry of suffering organic element —
a prayer for deliverance and rest. The same objects or events
do notably produce very different impressions upon the mind
according to the condition of it at the time — according as some-
thing pleasant or something unpleasant has just happened. If
there exist a temporary depression of the psychical tone by
reason of some misfortune that has happened, then an event,
which under better auspices would have been indifferent, will
excite painful emotion, and, calling up congenial ideas of a
gloomy kind, continue and add to the mental suffering, just as
reflex action increased by a morbid cause will in turn sometimes
aggravate the original disorder. If there be a lasting depression
of the psychical tone by reason of some morbid cause, then every
event is apt to aggravate the suffering, and one particularly un-
favourable event, or a series of painful events, may lead to the
degeneration of insanity. After a piece of good news, or after
a man has just drunk a glass of sound wine, the psychical tone
is such that there is a direct and adequate reaction to an un-
favourable impression, and the individual will not suffer. Herein
the supreme centres of thought do not differ from the inferior
nervous centres; when the spinal centres are exhausted, ex-
citability is increased, and an impression which under better
auspices would have produced no effect gives rise to degenerate
activity that displays itself in spasmodic movements — an ex-
plosion not unlike that which in the higher centre is manifest
as emotion, or as an ebullition of passion. Excess is, however,
a relative term ; and a stress of function which would be
nothing more than normal to a powerful well-ordered mind, and
conducive to its health, might be fatal to the stability of a feeble

284 ON THE CAUSES OF INSJXITY. [chap.

and ill-regulated mind in which feeling habitually overswayed
reason, or even to that of a strong mind temporarily prostrate.
Thus it is that in examining into the causation of insanity in
any case it is not sufficient to investigate only the series of
influences to which the individual has been subjected, but it
is necessary also to ascertain what capacity at the time he had
of bearing them.

It is evident from the foregoing reflections that, from a patho-
/ logical point of view, the so-called moral causes of insanity may
properly fall under the head of excessive stimulation or excessive
functional action : the mind is subject to a stress beyond that
which it is able to bear. Of necessity the depressing passions are
the most efficient causes of exhaustion and consequent disease :
grief, religious anxiety, disappointed affection or ambition, the
wounds of an exaggerated self-love, and, above all perhaps, the
painful feeling of being unequal to responsibilities, or other like
conditions of mental agitation and suffering, are most apt to
reach a violence of action by which the equilibrium is lost.
Great intellectual activity, when unaccompanied by emotion, does
not often lead to insanity ; it is when the feelings are anxiously
engaged that the mind is most moved and its stability most
endangered : on the stage of mind as on the stage of the world
the great catastrophes are produced by passion. Moreover,
when an individual has by a long concentration of thought,
affection, and desire on a certain aim or object, grown into
definite relations with regard to it, and made it, as it were, a
part of the inner life, a sudden and entire change, shattering
long cherished hopes, is not unlikely to produce insanity ; for
what is more fraught with danger to the stability of the strongest
mind than a sudden great change in external circumstances,
without the inner life having been gradually adapted thereto?
Thence it comes that a great exaltation of fortune, as well as a
great affliction, rarely fails to affect for a time the strongest head,
and sometimes quite overturns a weak one; the strong mind
succeeding after a time in establishing an equilibrium between
itself and its new surroundings, which the feeble mind cannot
do. AVhen depressing passion does not act directly as the cause
of a sudden outbreak of insanity, it may still act mischievously
by its long-continued evil influence on the organic life, and thus

i.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 285

finally produce mental derangement. It is not often that men
become insane, though they sometimes die, from excess of joy ;
and when one of the expansive passions, as ambition, religious
exaltation, overweening vanity in any of its Protean forms, leads
to mental derangement, it does not, like a painful passion, act
directly as the cause of an outbreak, nor indirectly by producing
organic disorder and subsequent insanity ; but it produces its
effects by degrees as an exaggerated development of a certain
peculiarity or vice of character.

A fatal drain upon the vitality of the higher nervous centres
may in certain cases be produced by the excessive exercise of
a physical function — by an excessive sexual indulgence, or by
continued self-abuse. Nothing is more certain than that either
of these causes will produce an enervation of nerve element
which, if the exhausting vice be continued, passes by a further
declension into degeneration and actual destruction thereof. The
flying pains and heaviness in the limbs, and the startings of the
muscles, which follow an occasional sexual excess, are signs of
instability of nerve element in the spinal centres, which, if the
cause is in frequent operation, may end in inflammation and
softening of the cord, and consequent paralysis. Nor do the
supreme centres always escape : the habit of self-abuse notably
gives rise to a particular and disagreeable form of insanity, cha-
racterised by intense self-feeling and conceit, extreme perversion
of feeling, and corresponding derangement of thought, in the
earlier stages ; and, later, by failure of intelligence, nocturnal
hallucinations, and suicidal or homicidal propensities. The
mental symptoms of general paralysis — a disease notably pro-
duced sometimes by sexual excess — betray a degenerate con-
dition of nerve element in the higher centres, which is the
counterpart of that which in the lower centres is the cause of
the loss of co-ordination of movement and of more or less spasm
or paralysis. The great emotional excitability, the irritable fee-
bleness, of the general paralytic, no less than the extravagance
of his ideas, marks a degeneration of the ideational cells of the
supreme centres ; there is accordingly an inability to co-ordinate
and perform his ideas successfully, just as there is an inability
to perform movements successfully, because the spinal centres
are similarly affected. It is not usual, however, for sexual

286 ON THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITT. [chap.

excesses to produce insanity unless it be general paralysis ; they
rather tend to produce epilepsy or some kind of paralysis. Self-
abuse is a cause of insanity which would appear to be more
frequent and effective in men than in women. Apart from all
question whether the vice be so common among women, they
bear self-abuse, as they do sexual excesses, better than men.
On the other hand, privation of sexual function is more injurious
to women than on men.

5. Injuries and Diseases of the Brain and Nervous System not
necessarily, but occasionally, producing Insanity. — Injuries of the
head, when not followed by any immediate ill consequences,
may still lead to insanity through the degenerative changes
which they ultimately induce in the cortical layers of the hemi-
spheres.* Insolation notably acts perniciously on the supreme
cerebral centres, either by causing, as some imagine, acute hyper-
emia and cedema, or, as is more probable, over-stimulation and
consequent exhaustion of nerve element. Abscesses and tumours
of the brain, cysticerci and effusions of blood, do not directlj* or
commonly produce mental derangement ; when they do, it is
probably by a reflex or sympathetic action. Professor Gerhardt
mentions one case in which mental disorder was the first symptom
of an embolism, the paralytic phenomena following later ; and in
a case, related by Dr. L. Meyer, chronic tubercular meningitis
gave rise to mental disorder. It has been already said that there
are instances on record in which insanity, like tetanus, has been
caused by peripheric injury of nerve, obscure as the mannsr of
operation in such case undoubtedly is ; and Dr. Darwin long ago

* Professor Schlager, of Vienna (Zeitschrift der k. k. Gesellschaft der Aerzte zu
"Wien, xiii. 1857), has made some valuable researches regarding mental disorder
following injur}' of the brain. Out of 500 insane, he traced mental disorder to
injury of the brain in 49 (42 men and 7 women). In 21 cases there had been
complete unconsciousness after the accident ; in 16, some insensibility and con-
fusion of ideas ; in 12, simple dull headache. In 19 cases the mental disorder
came on in the course of a year after the injury, but not till much later in many
others, and in 4 cases after more than ten years. In most of the cases the
patients were disposed to congestion of the brain, excitement and great emotional
disturbance, from the time of the injury, on taking a moderate quantity of
spirituous liquor ; frequently there was singing in the ears, or difficulty of hearing,
or hallucination ; and very commonly the disposition was changed, and the
patient was prone to outbursts of anger or excesses. The prognosis was very un-
favourable ; the issue in 7 cases was dementia with paralysis, while 10 went on to
death.

].] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 287

made the observation that mental derangement sometimes occurs
as the transference of disorder from the spinal centres.

Hysteria in some instances undoubtedly produces or passes
into insanity. An acute attack of maniacal excitement, with great
restlessness, perverseness of conduct, loud and rapid conversation
— sometimes blasphemous or obscene, laughing, singing, or rhym-
ing, may follow the ordinary hysterical convulsions, or may occur
instead of these. Or the ordinary hysterical symptoms may
pass by degrees into a chronic insanity ; the patient losing more
and more self-control, becoming more fanciful about her health,
and more indifferent to what is going on around her; the body
becomes anremic and emaciated, and there are usually irregulari-
ties of menstruation. An erotic element is sometimes evinced in
the manner and thoughts ; and occasionally ecstatic states occur.
The symptoms are often worse at the menstrual periods.

Under this division of exciting causes of insanity must be
placed chorea and epilepsy, although what may be their exact
seats in the nervous system is yet uncertain. Chorea in the
adult is not unapt to terminate in insanity. It is necessary to
bear in mind that there are different sorts of insanity connected
with epilepsy. When the fits have recurred frequently, and the
disease has continued for a long time, it undoubtedly produces
loss of memory, failure of mental power, and ultimately com-
plete dementia. Again, a succession of severe fits may be fol-
lowed by a condition of acute dementia which lasts for a short
time, or by an acute, violent, and most dangerous mania which
usually passes away in a few days. Not only may acute mania
thus follow epilepsy, but an attack of acute transitory mania —
a true mania transitoria — may take the place of the epileptic
paroxysm, representing a masked epilepsy. Last]y, in some cases
a profound moral disturbance, an irritability, moroseness and per-
version of character, lasting for months, with periodical exacer-
bations in which vicious or criminal acts may be perpetrated,
precede the appearance of the regular epileptic fits, which then
throw light upon the hitherto unaccountable moral perversion ;
it is another form of masked or suppressed epilepsy.

The caries of the bones of the skull, which is an occasional
effect of tertiary syphilis, may lead to destructive consequences
by extension of morbid action to important parts beneath. There

288 OX THE CAUSES OF IXSAXITV. [chap.

are, however, other ways in which syphilis is now known to lead
to mental disorder : a syphilitic node formed on the internal
surface of the skull may occasion secondary mental disease of
a grave kind ; and, again, syphilis may give rise to inflamma-
tion of the membranes of the brain, followed sometimes by a low
diffuse exudation in or between the membranes, or by a more
or less defined tumour (syphiloma) ; the result being a hopeless
dementia, with gradually increasing paralysis. The syphilitic
exudation sometimes, though rarely, takes place in the substance
of the brain itself; its starting-point then being the nuclei of
the connective tissue which exists throughout the brain, and the
destruction of the nervous cells being secondary. But of this,
more hereafter.

CONCLUDING KFMABKS.

An important but obscure question, of which little thought is
ever taken now, is not so much what is the cause of the insanity
as what is the cause of the particular form which the insanity
takes. The inborn temperament of the individual has certainly
great influence in determining the kind of mental disorder, the
same external cause giving rise to different forms of disease
according to the constitutional idiosyncrasy : the melancholic
temperament will, it may be presumed, predispose to melancholic
insanity, the sanguine temperament to a more expansive de-
rangement. On the other hand, injury of the head will tend to
produce intellectual disorder rather than emotional depression,
while abdominal disease will favour the production of emotional
depression; for the organic conditions of the integrity of the
intellectual faculties are, as Miiller has observed, mainly in the
brain itself, but " the elements which maintain the emotions or
strivings of self, in all parts of the organism." Furthermore, it
is plain that the degree of development which the mind has
reached must determine in no slight measure the features of its
disorder; the more cultivated the mind the more various and
complex must be the symptoms of its derangement ; while it is
not possible that the undeveloped mind of the child immediately
after birth should exhibit ideational disorder of any kind. Con-
sider what an infinitely complex development the cultivated
mind has been shown to be, and what a long series of processes

/.J ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 289

and what a variety of interworkings of so-called faculties even
its simpler conceptions involve ; it will then be easily under-
stood how great and varied may be the confusion and disorder
of its morbid action. The different forms of insanity represent
different phases of mental degeneration ; and in the disorgani-
zation, degeneration, or retrograde metamorphosis of the mental
organization — call the retrograde change what we will— there
will be exhibited the wreck of culture. The morbid mental
phenomena of an insane Australian savage will of necessity be
different from the morbid mental phenomena of an insane
European, just as the ruins of a palace must be vaster and more
varied than the ruins of a log hut. For the same reason the
insanity of early life always has more or less of the character of
imbecility or idiocy about it : as is the height so is the depth, as
is the development so is the degeneration. The development
of the sexual system at puberty, and the great revolution which
is thereby effected in the mental life, must needs often give a
colour to the phenomena of insanity occurring after puberty.
During the energy of mental function in active manhood mania
is the form of degeneration which appears most frequently to
occur, while as age advances and energy declines melancholia
becomes more common. Future researches will probably dis-
cover the definite causes of the special features of many of the
different forms of insanity in the bodily disorders which cause
them, or which are constantly associated with them. Then,
instead of a vague psychological classification of insanity, we
may hope to attain to an exact medical history of the different
forms of the disease, and to a scientific classification of them.
At present we are only on the threshold of positive inquiry.

Because no two people are exactly alike in mental character
and development, therefore no two cases of mental degenera-
tion are exactly alike. The brain is different in the matter of
its development from other organs of the body ; for while the
development and function of other organs axe nearly alike in
different individuals, and the diseases of them accordingly have
a general resemblance, the real development of the brain as the
organ of mental life only takes place after birth, and, presenting
every variety of individual function in health, presents also
every variety of morbid function : consequently, two cases of

u

290 ON THE CAUSES OF IXSAMTY. [chap.

insanity may resemble one another in the general features of
exaltation or depression, or in the character of the delusion, but
will still have their special features. Insanity is not any fixed
morbid entity ; every instance of it is an example of individual
degeneration, and represents individual mental life under other
conditions than those which we agree to regard as normal or
typical. No more useful work could be undertaken in psychology
than an exact study of individual minds, sound and unsound.
Still, although different cases will present their special details,
there is a wonderful sameness about insanity, a great lack of
invention ; delusions repeat themselves in all lunatic asylums,
and any one who has studied well the patients in one large
asylum, knows the general features of the madness of all ages
and of all countries, under all conditions and among all classes
of men. Productive, in the sense of creative, activity is the
highest function of the highest and healthiest mind.

Weigh carefully the manner of its causation, and it will appear
that mental derangement must be a matter of degree. There
may be every variety (a) of deficient original capacity, (b) of
deficient development of the mental organization after birth, and
(c) of degree of degeneration. Between the lowest depths of
madness, therefore, and the highest reach of mental soundness,
there will be infinite varieties shading insensibly one into
another — a very gentle gradient ; so that no man will be able to
say positively where sanity ends and insanity begins, or to
determine with certainty in every case whether a particular
person is insane or not. The question of an individual's respon-
sibility must then plainly be a most difficult one : there are
insane persons who are certainly responsible for what they do,
and, on the other hand, there are sane people who under certain
circumstances are as plainly not responsible for their actions.
A madman is notably capable of great self-control when his
interest specially demands it ; in the majority of cases he knows
full well the difference between right and wrong ; but, knowing
the right, he is instigated by the impulses of his morbid nature
to do the wrong, and is not held in check by those motives
which suffice to restrain the sane portion of the community.

Again, the investigation made into the causation of mental
disease exhibits the necessity of taking wider views of its origin

i.J ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY'. 291

and import than is commonly done. Insanity marks a failure ^/
in organic adaptation to external nature : it is the result and
evidence of a discord between the man and his surroundings : he
cannot bend circumstances to himself nor accommodate himself
to circumstances. The lunatic has not learnt, nor can he learn,
how much more noble, more conformable to Nature's laws, it is
to merge his small individual discord in her harmonious unison,
than to spoil the latter by it. Now, whosoever, either from
inherited weakness of nature or from adverse circumstances, is
unequal to the predetermined impulse or nisus of evolution
which is immanent in mankind, as in every other form of organic
life, must fall by the wayside and be left stranded. For as in
the stupendous progression of the human race whole nations
drop away like dead branches from the living tree, so amongst
nations individuals decay and perish in crowds as the dead
leaves fall from the living branches. Nature indeed counts
individual life very cheaply: in the development of vegetable
and animal life she sacrifices numberless seeds and germs, of
fifty bringing but one to bear, and in the organic evolution of
mankind she sacrifices with like lavish profusion countless
thousands of individual lives :

" So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life."

It behoves us not to let these failures, these abortive minds,
pass away without learning the lesson which their history
conveys : they are instructive instances well fitted to teach the
causes of failure, and thus to indicate the method of a successful
adaptation to external nature. When he is thus brought into
harmony with nature, the development of the individual becomes
the consummate evolution of nature.

APPENDIX.

In order to illustrate more fully this chapter on the causation of
insanity, I append here the short notes of fifty cases, all of which were
under my care, and in which I laboured to satisfy myself of the con-
spiring causes of the mental disease : —

1 . A captain in the army, and the only surviving son of his mother,
who was a widow. She suffered very much from scrofulous disease,

U2

292 OX THE CAUSES OF IXSJXITY. [chai\

and he was wasting away with phthisis. Mental state, that of demented
melancholia, witli manifold delusions of suspicion. He was the last
of his family two brothers having died very much as he died. His
grandfather began life as a common porter, ultimately became partner
in a great manufacturing business, and, having amassed enormous
wealth, made a great display in London on the strength of it. His
high hopes of founding a family on the wealth which it was the sole
aim of his life to accpuire have thus issued.

2. There was direct hereditary predisposition, and the temperament
was notably excitable through life. There was no evidence of excesses
of any kind, but there had been many business anxieties. The mental
disease was general paralysis.

3. An amiable gentleman, on the death of his wife, formed a
connexion with a woman of loose character. Continual sexual ex-
cesses, with free indulgence in wine and other stimulants, ended in
general paralysis.

4. A conceited Cockney, the son of a successful London tailor and
money-lender, strongly imbued with the tradesman's spirit, and with
offensive dissenting zeal. Hopelessly addicted to masturbation, and
suffering from the disagreeable form of mental derangement following
such cause.

5. Two ladies of middle age, unmarried, and cousins. They both
suffered from extreme moral insanity, both revealing in their conduct
the tyranny of a bad organization. There was insanity in the family,
in one case the father being actually insane ; and in both cases the
parents being whimsical, capricious, and very injudicious as parents.
A bad organization, made worse by bad training.

6. An unmarried lady, aged 40, addicted to the wildest and coarsest
excesses, though of good social position and of independent means;
justifying in every respect her conduct, though it more than once
brought her to the gaol. Family history not ascertainable, but evidently
not good organization in her. No aim nor occupation in life, but
extreme egoistic development in all regards.

7. A publican, set. 31, had done little for some time but stupify
himself with brandy in his own bar-parlour. The consequence was
furious mania and extreme incoherence : acute mania from continued
intoxication, not delirium tremens. — Eecovery.

8. A woman, set. 47, of dark bilious temperament, who had endured
much from her husband's unkindness and domestic anxieties, under-
went " the change of life," and became extremely melancholic. —
Recovery.

I.] OAT THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 293

9. Hereditary predisposition marked. First atta-k, 83t. 38,'whcn
unmarried. Second attack, set. 58, she having a few years before
married an old gentleman in need of a nurse. She was given to
taking stimulants, fancied herself ill, and must always be having the
doctor ; in fact, hypochondriacal melancholia gradually grew into
positive insanity. — Recovery.

10. A married lady, set. 31, without children, and having great self-
feeling. She went on one occasion to a Methodist meeting, was much
excited by a violent sermon, and immediately went mad, fancying her
soul to be lost, and making attempts at suicide. — Recovery.

11. A young lady, aet. 25, who had some anxieties at home, suffered
a disappointment of her affections. Black depression running into
acute dementia. — Recovery.

12. A married woman, aet. 44, of dark bilious temperament, had
never had any children. At the " change of life " profound melan-
cholia came on.

13. A gentleman, aged 60, of fine sensitive temperament, whose
mother was said to have been flighty and peculiar, had himself been
noted for slight peculiarities. He became profoundly melancholic,
thinking himself ruined, and intensely suicidal. Refusal of food.
Everything taken, however, was vomited, and diagnosis of organic
abdominal disease, probably malignant, was made. — Death from ex-
haustion.

14. A bookseller, set. 41, temperate, of considerable intellectual
capacity, but of inordinate conceit ; advocated a general division of
property and other extreme notions. He ultimately got the notion
that there was a conspiracy against him on the part of the Govern-
ment, and tried to strangle his wife as a party to it. After two years
he died of phthisis, with many of the symptoms of general paralysis.
The bodily disease seemed to have conspired with a natural vice of
character, and thus to have made the mental derangement one of its
earliest symptoms.

15. A married man, set. 50, of anxious temperament. Profound
melancholia ; refusal of food. Second attack. -Apart from the pre-
disposition established by a former attack, the cause seemed to be
great self-feeling, assuming a religious garb. Very fervent always in
devotion, but intense egoistic feeling ; entire reference of everything to
self, and natural inability to form altruistic conceptions. — Recovery.

16. A single lady, set. 38, fancied herself under mesmeric influence,
in a state of clairvoyance,, and had a variety of anomalous sensations.
Rubbed her skin till it was sore in places, bit her nails to the quick,

294 OS THE CAUSES Of INSANITY, [chap.

scratched her face, &c. Quasi-hysterical maniacal exacerbations.
Irregularity of menstruation, and suspected self-abuse. — Recovery.

17. A lady, set. 45, but looking very much older, having had an
anxious life. Hereditary predisposition ; change of life ; melancholic
depression, passing into destructive dementia. Convulsions, paralysis,
death. Here softening of the brain was preceded for some weeks by
mental symptoms.

18. Hereditary predisposition. Great intemperance. General
paralysis.

19. Habitual alcoholic excesses ; pecuniary difficulties : mania.
After some years hemiplegia of right side, muscular power being
partially regained after a time. The patient lived for years thus.
Paralysis of long duration was the usual family disease and cause
of death.

20. Suicidal insanity in a married lady. Strong hereditary pre-
disposition to insanity. Exhaustion produced by lactation, and mental
depression, occasioned by the long absences of her husband from home.
- — Recovery.

21. Third or fourth attack of acute moaning melancholia in a
woman, aged 40. Intense self-conceit and selfishness natural to her.
Gastric derangement, and obstinately constipated bowels. Whenever
bodily derangement reaches a certain pitch, or adversity occurs, it
seems to upset the equilibrium of an ill-balanced mind, predisposed to
disorder by former attacks. — Recovery.

22. Gambling, betting, drinking, and sexual intemperance. General
paralysis.

23. A bad organization plainly — not due to insanity in family, but
to the absence of moral element. A life of great excitement, and
of much speculation in Australia, Alcoholic and sexual excesses (?).
General paralysis.

24. A widow, *et. 58, the daughter of one who had begun life as a
labourer at a coal wharf, but who made a great deal of money. He
was without education, so that his daughter, brought up as a rich
person, but without social cultivation, did not get opportunely married :
as it is expressed in the North, " she was too high for the stirrup, and
not high enough for the saddle." When 50 years old, she married an
old gentleman, whose former manner of life had made a nurse needful
to him. He died, and left her the income of a large property for her
life. She now got suspicious of his relatives, to whom the property
was to revert on her death ; was 'harassed with her money, which she
did not know what to do with, but fancied others had designs on ;

I.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 295

and finally went from bad to worse until, believing all the world was
conspiring against her, she got a revolver, and threatened to shoot her
fancied enemies.

25. The daughter of a common labourer, who had become very rich
in the colliery business, a^t. 32, single. Her father being dead she
was very wealthy ; she was without any real education, and very vulgar,
and spent the greater part of her time in drinking gin and reading
sensational novels. Great hereditary predisposition, not to insanity
only, but to suicidal insanity. Suicidal melancholia, with an in-
coherence approaching dementia.

26. A gentleman, aged 34. Steady, quiet drinking, on all pos-
sible occasions. The " ne'er-do-weel " of the family, having tumbled
about the world in Mexican wars and South American mines, and in
other places, as such persons do. Feebleness of mind and loss of
memory. An uncle had been very much the same sort of person, and
had died in an asylum.

27. A married woman, aged 49, gaunt, and seemingly of bilious
temperament. After a fever of five weeks' duration, called " gastric,"
probably typhoid, acute maniacal excitement, violence, incoherence,
&c. — Recovery within a fortnight.

28. Dementia after epilepsy, the fits occurring at the catamenial
pariod. Brother maniacal, and sister without the moral element in
her disposition.

29. The young lady before mentioned as Ko. 1 1 was removed by a
penurious father from medical care before recovery was thoroughly
established, and in opposition to advice. The return to home
anxieties brought on an attack of acute mania, with gabbling of
endless incoherent rhymes. — Permanent recovery this time.

30. A warehouseman, aged 35, a Primitive Methodist, grievously
addicted to preaching. He had accomplished some self-education,
but had a boundless conceitf, and infinite self-feeling. Indigestion,
pyrosis, frequent vomiting after meals. Melancholia, with delusion
that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and endless moaning.
Most remarkable is the evidence of self-feeling in such patients — self-
renunciation not being a word that enters into their vocabulary. This
man, for example, though well aware that vomiting followed eating,
and sufficiently afflicted thereby, could not be induced to regulate his
diet voluntarily, but ate gluttonously, unless prevented.

31. A married woman, set. 32, of stout habit of body, and
habitually locked secretions. The sudden death of a son brought
on severe moaning melancholia.

236 ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. [chap.

32. A single lady, aged 57, who had been insane for thirty years.
There was the strongest hereditary taint.

33. A young man, extremely delicate, aged 22, had acute dementia,
following acute rheumatism. There was valvular disease of the heart,
with loud mitral regurgitant murmur. — Issue of the case unknown.

34. Slight hereditary predisposition, much aggravated by injudi-
cious education. A tradesman's daughter, set. 24, brought up in idle-
ness. Domestic troubles and anxieties after marriage. Mania. —
Eecovery.

35. A woman, set. 30, Wesleyan, single. Suicidal melancholia
with the delusion that her soul is lost. Menstrual irregularity.
Extreme devotional excitement, with evidently active sexual feelings.
— Eecovery.

36. A young woman, set. 25, single, "Wesleyan. Mania. Cause,
same probably as in the last case. — Eecovery.

37. A respectable, temperate, and industrious tradesman, set. 40,
AYesleyan, a teetotaller, and much superior to a vulgar wife. Second
attack. His father committed suicide; his brother is very nighty.
General paralysis.

38. A sober, hardworking, respectable bookseller, not given to
excesses of any kind, so far as was ascertainable. Slight hereditary
predisposition. General paralysis.

In both these last cases there was general paralysis in men who had
never been intemperate. In both, however, there were large families
of children, and the struggle of life had plainly been very anxious
and severe.

39. A woman, set. 32. Acute mania came on two months after
childbirth.

40. A lady, set. 34, single, without other occupation or interest
than religious exercises. Suicidal melancholia, with the delusion that
she had sold herself to the devil. Amenorrhoea. — Eecovery.

41. A married woman, set. 40. Sudden outbreak of mania, after
going to a revival meeting. Amenorrhoea. — Eecovery.

42. A married man with a family, set. 52, a Dissenter, holding
an office of authority in his church, and most exact in his religious
duties. Secretly, he kept a mistress, however, and lived a rather dissi-
pated life. Outbreak of acute mania, with a threatening of general
paralysis. — Eecovery ; for a time at any rate.

43. Acute mental annihilation in a young man about a year and a
half after marriage. One or two intervals of a few hours of mental
restoration. — Death in epileptiform convulsions. Softening of the

I.] ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY. 297

brain in extreme degree, but limited in extent. Excessive sexual
indulgence.

44. A married woman, set. 44, who has had several children, and
who has become insane after each confinement. Maniacal incoherence
and excitement, with unconsciousness that she has had a child. —
Recovery.

45. Hereditary predisposition. A Dissenter of extreme views,
narrow-minded, and bigoted. He was married when thirty-six years
old, and became melancholic a short time after the birth of his first
child. — Recovery.

46. Complete loss of memory, and of all energy of character, and
failure of intelligence, in a man, set. 36, single, from continual
intemperance in drinking and smoking. Has previously had two
attacks of delirium tremens.

47. An extremely good-looking young widow, who had been a
singer at some public singing-rooms, and the mistress of the proprietor
of them. Sexual excesses. General paralysis.

48. Attack of acute violent mania in a young surgeon, aet. 27.
Afterwards three days' heavy stertorous sleep ; then seeming recovery
for twenty-four hours ; but on the next day recurrence of mania, fol-
lowed soon by severe epileptic fits. — Recovery.

49. Extreme moral perversion, with the most extravagant conceit
of self, and unruly conduct in a young man, a clerk. Alternations of
deep depression and suicidal tendency. Cause, self-abuse.

50. A single lady, aged 41, who, on her return from school when
fifteen years old, was queer, listless, and has always since been rather
peculiar. Hereditary predisposition. Acute melancholia, with the
delusion that she is lost because she has refused an offer of marriage
by a clergyman, such offer never having been thought of by him.

CHAPTER II.

INSANlfo OF EARLY LIFE.

IF the account previously given of the gradual evolution of the
so-called mental faculties be correct, the insanity met with
in children must of necessity be of the simplest kind ; where no
mental faculty has been organized no disorder of mind can well
be manifest. The kind of mental derangement displayed in
early life will in reality serve as a searching test of the value of
the principles already enunciated, and, if found to be in strict
accordance with them, will not fail to afford them strong sup-
port. While it is commonly thought sufficient to dismiss all
such instances as singular anomalies in nature, inexplicable, and
belonging to the regions of disorder — as though to call a thing
unnatural were to remove it from the domain of natural law —
any glimpse of law or order discernible in such confusion will
be so far a gain.

The first movements of the child are reflex to impressions
made upon it; but so quickly does sensorial perception with
motor reaction thereto follow upon these early movements, that
we are not able to fix a distinct line between the reflex and
sensori-motor actions. The aimless thrusting out of the infant's
limb brings it in contact with some external object, whereupon
it is probable that a sensation is excited. But it would appear
that the particular muscular exertion must be the condition of
a muscular feeling of the act; so that the muscular sense of
the movement and the sensation of the external object become
associated, and for the future unavoidably suggest one another ;
a muscular intuition of external nature is in fact thus organized,
and one of the first steps in the process of mental formation
accomplished. If we call to mind how, when discussing actua-

chap, ii.] INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. 2!) 9

tion, it was shown, in the case of the eye for example, that a
sensation was the direct cause of a certain accommodating move-
ment, and that the movement thereupon gave us the intuition of
distance, we may perceive how the organic association of a sen-
sation from without with a respondent or associated muscular
act, does by degrees impart definite intuitions of external objects
to the young mind. Suppose now that an infant becomes insane
immediately after birth, what sort of insanity must it exhibit ?
The extent of mental disorder possible is clearly limited by the
extent of existence of mental faculty : which, as we have seen,
is almost nothing. In this regard the observed facts agree
with theory; when a child is, by reason of a bad descent or of
baneful influences during uterine life, born with such an extreme
degree of instability of nerve element that, on the first play of
external circumstances, its nervous centres react in convulsive
form, it mostly dies in convulsions. The diseased action is a
diseased action of the nervous centres of reflex action — those
which alone have at this time power of functional action; the
convulsions express the morbid condition of them, — might,
indeed, be said to represent the insanity of them [as insanity;
on the other hand, truly represents sometimes a convulsive
action of the higher nervous centres.

It has been shown; however, that it is impossible, by reason
of the close connexion of sensorial action with reflex action in
the infant — the actual continuity of development which then
exists — to fix a distinct period during which its functions are
entirely reflex. It happens consequently that in the earliest
morbid phenomena of nervous centres there is commonly the
evidence of some sensori-motor disturbance. An impression
on the sense of sight, for example, is not quietly assimilated
so as to persist as an organized residuum in the proper nervous
centre, but immediately excites a reaction outwards of the un-
stable cells of the associate motor centres ; irregular and violent
actions prompted by sensations attest the disorder of the sen-
sorial and corresponding motor centres, as convulsions testify to
the disorder of the centres of reflex action. The phenomena of
a true sensorial insanity are intermixed with the morbid mani-
festations of the lower nervous centres ; to every impression
made upon the infant there is irregular and violent reaction,

300 INSAXITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

sensori-motor and reflex. Instances of such morbid action so
soon after birth are certainly rare ; nevertheless they do some-
times occur, and have been recorded. Crichton quotes from
Greding a well-known case of a child which, as he says, was
raving mad as soon as it was born. "A woman, about forty
years old, of a full and plethoric habit of body, who constantly
laughed and did the strangest things, but who, independently of
these circumstances, enjoyed the very best health, was, on the
20th January, 1763, brought to bed, without any assistance, of a
male child wdio was raving mad. When he was brought to our
workhouse, which was on the 24th, he possessed so much strength
in his legs and arms that four women could at times with diffi-
culty restrain him. These paroxysms either ended in an uncon-
trollable fit of laughter, for wThich no evident reason could be
observed, or else he tore in anger everything near him, — clothes,
linen, bed furniture, and even thread, when he could get hold of
it. We durst not allow him to be alone, otherwise he would
get on the benches and tables, and even attempt to climb up the
walls. Afterwards, however, when he began to have teeth he
died." It is certainly remarkable that a child so young should
have been able to do so much ; and those who advocate innate
mental faculties might well ask how it is possible under any
other supposition to account for such an extraordinary exhibition
of more or less co-ordinate power by so young a creature. Two
considerations should be borne in mind with regard to this case:
first, that the mother of the child was herself peculiar, so that
her infant inherited an unstable condition of nerve element, and
consequently a disposition to irregular and premature reaction on
the occasion of an external stimulus ; and secondly, that there
does, as previously set forth, exist in the constitution of the
nervous system the power of certain co-ordinate automatic acts,
such as correspond in man to the instinctive acts of animals.
Many young animals are born with the power of immediately
co-ordinating their muscles for a definite end, and the human
infant is not destitute of the germ of a like power over voluntary
muscles, while it has complete the power of certain co-ordinate
automatic acts ; it is conceivable, therefore, that, without will,
and even without consciousness, there may be displayed by it, in
answer to sensations, actions which, like those of this insane

ii.] ixsjxirr of early life. 301

infant, have more or less semblance of design in them * By-
reason of the morbid condition of nerve element we have a
convulsive manifestation of the innate co-ordinate faculty —
ii regular, violent, and destructive movements, and the premature
and extravagant exhibition of acts which would be natural in
a more restrained form at a later stage of normal development,
such, for example, as " uncontrollable fits of laughter without
any evident reason."-f-

As the earliest stages of the infant's mental development cor-
respond in a general way with the permanent condition of mind
of those animals all the actions of which are reflex and sensori-
motor, it is no wonder that the phenomena of infantile insanity
should be comparable with those of animal insanity. In both
cases the morbid phenomena are mainly referable to disorder of
the sensorial and associate motor nervous centres ; so that we
might almost describe the insanity as sensorial. The elephant,
usually a gentle enough creature, is subject at certain seasons to
attacks of furious madness, in which it rushes about in the most
dangerous way, roaring loudly, and destroying everything within
its reach ; and other animals are now and then affected with
similar paroxysms of what might almost be called an epileptic

* " That they do this by instinct, something implanted in the frame, the
mechanism of the body, before any marks of wit or reason are to be seen in them,
I am fully persuaded ; as I am likewise that nature teaches them the manner of
fighting peculiar to their species ; and children strike with their arms as naturally
as horses kick, dogs bite, and bulls push with their horns." — Mandeville's
Fable of the Bees, vol. ii. p. 352.

t " The youngest person whom I have seen labouring under mania," says Sir
A. Morison, " was a little girl of six years old, under my care in Bethlehem
Hospital. I have, however, frequently met with violent and unmanageable idiots
of a very tender age." Dr. Joseph Frank records having seen, on a visit to St.
Luke's Hospital, in 1802, a case of mania occurring at the age of two years. —
Lectures on Insanity, by Sir A. Morison, M.D. In the Appendix to one of the
Reports of the Scotch Lunacy Commissioners, mention is made of a girl aged six
years, who was said to be afflicted with congenital mania. She was illegitimate,
and her mother was a prostitute. She could not walk, paraplegia having come on
when she was a year old ; she was incoherent, and subject to paroxysms of violent
passion ; at all times very intractable ; slept little, and ate largely. Dr. Spurz-
heim (Observations on Derangement of Mind) views all such cases as partial idiots
from birth. The cerebral organization at so early an age is, he adds, so delicate
that it does not bear severe morbid affections without losing its fitness for mental
development, and endangering life. Indeed, it might fairly be said of the oases of
insanity in very young children, that some are examples of intellectual deficiency,
the rest examples of moral perversion or deficiency, with or without excitement.

302 IXSAXITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chaf.

fury. There is far more power in the insane elephant than in
the insane infant, and it is able to do a great deal more mischief;
but there is really no difference in the fundamental nature of
the madness ; the maddened acts are the reactions of morbid
motor centres to impressions made on morbid sensory centres ;
and the whole mind, whether of the infant or of the animal,
is absorbed in the convulsive reaction. The morbid phenomena
of mind strictly confirm in this regard the principles which are
established by an inductive study of the plan of development
of mind.

The moment we have recognised the existence of sensorial
insanity, we become sensible .of the value of the distinction.
Not only does it furnish an adequate interpretation of the violent
phenomena of the insanity of the animal and of the infant, but
it alone suffices to explain that desperate fury which sometimes
follows a succession of epileptic attacks. When the furious
epileptic maniac strikes and injures whatsoever and whomsoever
he meets, and, like some destructive tempest, storms through a
ward with convulsed energy, he has no notion, no consciousness,
of what he is doing ; to all intents and purposes he is an organic
machine, set in the most destructive motion ; friend or foe alike
perish before him ; all his energy is absorbed in the convulsive
explosion. And yet he does not rage quite aimlessly, but makes
more or less definite attacks upon objects : he sees what is before
him and destroys it ; there is some method in his madness ; his
convulsive fury is more or less co-ordinate. These desperate
deeds are respondent to morbid sensations ; there often exist
terrible hallucinations, such as blood-red flames before the eyes,
loud roaring noises or imperative voices in the ears, sulphurous
smells in the nostrils ; any real object which does present itself
before the eyes is seen with the strangest and most unreal
characters ; lifeless objects seem to threaten his life, and the
pitying face of a friend becomes the menacing face of a devil ;
his movements therefore do not answer to the realities around
him, but to the unreal surroundings which his disease has
created.* There exists for the time a true sensorial insanity,

* An epileptic, under my eare, usually a mild and gentle being, used to become
a most violent and dangerous maniac after a series of fits, and to commit terrible
destruction. He thought at these tiim's that he was fighting for his life against
a lion.

ii.] INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. 308

the higher nervous centres being in abeyance; and after the
frantic paroxysm is over there is complete forgetfulness of it as
there is forgetfulness of sensorial action in health. There are
necessarily points of difference between this epileptic fury and
infantile insanity, arising out of the residua, sensory and motor,
that have been acquired and organized through experience in
the nerve centres of the adult : the residua in the sensory ganglia
of the adult render possible those special hallucinations which
the infant cannot have ; while the residua in the motor centres,
which are the condition of the secondary automatic faculties,
render possible a degree and variety of violence which the infant,
possessing only such germs of co-ordinate automatic power as
are original, must needs fall short of.

No one who has observed himself attentively when suddenly
awaking out of sleep but must have noticed that he has had at
times hallucinations both visual and auditory. He has heard a
voice, which no one else could hear, distinctly say something,
and on reflection only is convinced that the words were subjec-
tive ; or he has waked up in the night and seen around him the
objects of his dream, and been positively unable for a time to
discriminate between the real and the unreal, — has perhaps laid
down and gone to sleep again without successfully doing so.
When the integrity of nerve element has been damaged, whether
by reason of continued intemperance or from some other cause,
these half-waking hallucinations acquire a vivid reality, and
leave behind them a painful feeling in the mind. If we could
imagine this temporary condition to last some time, and our
actions to be in accordance with our hallucinations, then we
should get a conception of what is the real state of things in
sensorial insanity.

After a child has lived a few years, the residua of its sen-
sations have been so far organized in their proper nervous centres
that on the recurrence of a sensation it has a definite character :
in other words, the child has acquired the power of definite
sensory perception. Suppose now that some morbid cause, such
as a deranged condition of the blood, excites to activity these
slumbering or quiescent residua, there will then be a subjective
sensation or hallucination, which may remain as such, or lead to
an answering motor reaction. In dealing with sensorial insanity

304 INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

it is necessary then to bear in mind, as was done when treating
of the physiology of sensation, both the receptive and the reactive
side. A violent and convulsive reaction may mask all other
features of the disease, and give it an epileptiform character ; or
the active sensory residua may persist in consciousness as hallu-
cinations, giving rise, if they give rise to any answering move-
ments, to such as are rather of a choreic character.

A variety of insanity in children, then, which we may next
consider, is that form of sensorial insanity in which hallucina-
tions occur, and in which the motor reactions are not epilepti-
form but choreic. There is some reason to think that temporary
or fugitive hallucinations are not uncommon in infancy, and
that the child stretching out its hand and appearing to grasp at
some imaginary object is deceived by a subjective sensation.
The excitation of the latent residua of sensation takes place
from some internal cause, and bodily states thus give rise to
temporary hallucinations in children, without there being any
positive disease. Experimental proof of this manner of origin is
not wanting : Dr. Thore describes the case of an infant, aged
fourteen months and a half, which had accidentally been poisoned
by the seeds of the Datura stramonium ; hallucinations of sight
occurred, as shown by the motions of the child, which seemed
to be constantly seeking for some imaginary objects in front of
it, stretching out its hands and clinging to the sides of the
cradle in order to reach them better.* The most remarkable
examples of such condition of hallucination is afforded, how-
ever, by that form of nightmare which some children suffer so
much from : they begin shrieking out in the greatest terror
without being awake, though their eyes are wide open ; they
tremble with fright, and do not recognise their parents or others
who attempt to calm them ; and it is some time before the
paroxysm passes, and they can be pacified. They are for the
time possessed with a vivid hallucination, which terrifies them
beyond measure, and which does not readily subside ; in the
morning, however, they know nothing of their fright, but have
forgotten it as the somnambulist forgets his midnight walk, or
as sensation is commonly forgotten. Strictly speaking, however,

* Annales Medieo-Psychologique, 1849.

".] INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. 30.)

it is not proper to say that they have forgotten their mental
state, because the activity was all the while sensorial ; and, as
there was no conscious perception, as the child did not perceive
that it perceived, there could be no conscious memory. The
undoubted and not uncommon existence of this state of vivid
hallucination in children, when the matter has certainly passed
beyond ordinary dreaming, will serve to prove how possible it
is that children may have, when awake, positive hallucinations.
Some who have written upon this subject have thought such a
thing entirely impossible or exceptional, having been misled by
the ill-grounded assumption that a hallucination must have
some necessary connexion with a delusion. Certainly it must
be, and it is, rare to meet with positive delusion in young chil-
dren, inasmuch as at that time idea has not been fashioned in
the mind ; but the moment a child has acquired a definite sen-
sation, it is possible for it to have a hallucination.

It is in strict conformity, then, with physiological principles,
as well as with pathological observation, to affirm the existence in
children of a variety of sensorial insanity, which is characterised
by hallucinations, most frequently of vision, and sometimes by
answering irregular movements. Fits of involuntary laughter
are often notable in such cases : the laugh, or rather smile, of
the infant is an involuntary sensori-motor movement before it
has any notion of the meaning of the smile, or any consciousness
that it is smiling ; consequently we meet with the irregular and
convulsive manifestation of this function as one of the expres-
sions of a morbid state of things. Dr. Whytt relates the instance
of a boy, aged 10, who, in consequence of a fall, had violent
paroxysmal headaches for many days. After a time there
occurred " fits of involuntary laughter, between which he com-
plained of a strange smell and of pins pricking his nose ; he
talked incoherently, stared in an odd manner," and immediately
afterwards fell into convulsions. He recovered on this occasion,
but two years afterwards was similarly attacked : he had severe
headache, saw objects double, and suffered from a severe pain in
the left side of his belly, confined to a spot not larger than a
shilling; "sometimes it shifted, and then he was seized with
fatiguing fits of involuntary laughter." Ultimately he reco-
vered partially, but never completely* It is always desirable,

* Op. cit. p. 144.
X

306 INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

in cases of hallucination in children, to make a close examina-
tion of the state of the general sensibility ; for perversions or
defects of it will frequently be found both where there are
corresponding perversions of a choreic character on the motor
side and where there is no evidence of motor disorder. Because
this form of sensorial insanity is often found associated with
more or less evidence of chorea, and because, as compared with
the previously illustrated epileptiform variety, it has relations
not unlike those which chorea has to epilepsy, it may be de-
scribed as the choreic variety of sensorial insanity.

Perhaps no more fitting opportunity than the present will
present itself for reference to the singular state of somnambulism,
the phenomena of which illustrate in a striking manner that
independent action of the sensorial and corresponding motor
centres which plays so important a part in the early mental
life of the child, and so large a part in the daily life of the
adult. An individual appears to be fast asleep, and yet executes
complicated acts of some kind which he could hardly do, and
certainly could not do better, if he were awake; his highest
nervous centres are in partial abeyance, and yet his movements
are as skilful as if they were under the cognizance and control
of these supreme centres. But the man's senses are not entirely
asleep, and the organized motor reactions to impressions on these
senses are not asleep : he is a sensori-motor being, and very much
in the position of one of those lower animals that are destitute
of cerebral hemispheres, and which notwithstanding are exceed-
ingly active in their movements ; or very much in the position
of a child before the higher centres of idea have come into action.
Eecently there has come under my observation a striking instance
of somnambulism in a young woman suffering from consumption,
who has on many occasions risen from her bed in the night, gone
through a sustained series of rather difficult acts, and returned
to bed without ever knowing what she had been doing ; in the
morning after such feats, however, she feels general aching in
the limbs, exhaustion, and prostration, such as from her descrip-
tion of her suffering would appear to be very like that which
follows an epileptic fit in the night. One example of what she
did iu her sleep may be adduced here: she was engaged in
quilting a petticoat for a lady, and after a good day's work went

n.] INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. 307

to Led at night, intending in the morning to get up early and
finish it ; but, when the morning came, she was so weary and
prostrate that she felt quite unable to rise; she called her
mother, therefore, and told her to say, should the lady send for
her petticoat, that she was so ill that she had not been able to
finish it. The mother, wishing to see how much still remained
to be done, fetched the petticoat, when it was found to be
finished : the poor girl had been up in the night, and, seen of no
one, had completed her task. Soon the long day's task of life
will be over with her, and she will sleep well where no troubles
more can reach her, and no dreams of work or sorrow disturb
her slumbers.

If it were possible to induce artificially a temporary disorder
in the sensory and corresponding motor centres of the somnam-
bulist, such as would give rise to hallucinations and answering
motor reactions, while his higher centres remained in abeyance,
he would in reality be put, according to the degree of disorder,
either in the condition of the child suffering from what has been
described as the choreic variety of sensorial insanity, or in the
condition of the man who, after a succession of epileptic fits, is
attacked with furious sensorial insanity. Suppose, however,
that after a moderate disorder had been artificially excited in the
somnambulist's sensorial centres, such as might engender hal-
lucinations, his higher centres of cognition were to awake to
activity, — what would be the result ? Either he would be im-
posed upon by the false sensations, and his thought thus share in
the disorder of his sense ; or his reflection would discover the
subjective nature of the hallucination, and he would then be
very much in the position of the well-known Nicolai, of Berlin,
and of others, who, like that bookseller, have suffered from hal-
lucinations of the nature of which they were quite conscious.
Every one who has observed himself with attention must have
been conscious of occasions when a suddenly occurring hallu-
cination has caused him to make a quick respondent movement,
which, recognising the hallucination, he has discovered to be un-
necessary. But it is different with a very young child, which, if
it is affected with hallucination, must believe in it; it cannot
correct sense by reflection, because the higher nervous centres
have not yet entered on their full function. Hallucinations

x 2

308 INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

may, therefore, exist temporarily in children without indicating
any serious disturbance ; the organic residua of sensation being
quickened into activity by an internal cause, before any distinct
perception of the cause of the sensation has been formed.

Thus far, then, it is certain that hallucination may occur
in a child before it has acquired a definite idea. With each
succeeding presentation of an object to the child, however, the
impressions made on the different senses become more and
more combined, so that an idea of the object is at last organized
in the higher ideational centres ; there is a consilience of the
sensory impressions into an idea, which henceforth makes it
possible for the child to think of the object when it is not present
before the senses, or to have a definite and adequate perception
of it when it is. As development proceeds, one idea after
another is thus added to the mind until many simple ideas have
been organized in it ; but for a long time these ideas remain
more or less isolated and imperfectly developed ; there are no
definite associations between them, and the child's discourse is
consequently incoherent ; there is not moreover a complete or-
ganization of residua, and its memory is consequently fallacious.
Children, like brutes, live in the present ; their happiness or
misery being dependent upon impressions made upon the senses :
their actions are direct reactions to impressions ; the idea or
emotion excited does not remain in consciousness and call up
other ideas and emotions, but it is directly uttered in outward
action. Such a condition of development, which is natural to
the child before the fabric of its mental organization has been
built up, and to the animal in which the state of the nervous
system renders further development impossible, would, were it
met with in an European adult, represent idiocy, or an arrest of
mental development from morbid causes.

So soon as a definite idea has been organized in the child's
mind a delusion is possible. But as ideas are at first com-
paratively few in number, and as they are very imperfectly
associated, a derangement of the function of their centres must
be characterized by a very incoherent delirium. Divers morbid
ideas will then spring up without coherence ; and the morbid
phenomena, wanting system, will correspond, not so much with
those which in the adult we describe as mania, as with those

ii.] tXSJNITT OF EARLY LIFE. 309

described as delirium. In the mania of the adult there is com-
monly a systematized derangement, some coherence between the
morbid ideas, some method in the madness ; wfereas in the
delirium from fever or other cause, ideas spontaneously arise in
consciousness in the most incoherent way : in the young child the
ideas are equally incoherent by reason of the absence of an
organic association between the residua. Let us proceed then to
test these principles by an examination of such facts as are
available.

As a morbid idea in the child's mind has, by the nature of
the case, but a small range of action upon other ideas, it will
tend to utter itself by its other paths of expression ; namely, by
a downward action upon the sensory ganglia or upon the move-
ments. When it acts downwards upon the sensory ganglia it
gives rise to a hallucination ; and in such cases, as may easily be
imagined, it will not always be possible to determine whether
the hallucination is really secondary or primary — whether it is
engendered indirectly through the agency of the morbid idea or
directly by the excitation of the sensory residua by some organic
cause. When a child of only a few years old sees figures of
some kind on the wall, which have no real existence, but dis-
appear with apparently as little reason as they came there, the
hallucination is most likely owing to some organic cause affect-
ing directly the sensory ganglia. But when a child of eight or
nine years old, whose head has been wickedly filled with foolish
and dangerous notions concerning the devil and hell, suddenly
sees the frightful face of a devil appear and threaten to eat him
up, and shrieks in terrified agony, then the hallucination is un-
doubtedly secondary to the wilfully implanted delusion. In a
few moments the phantasm disappears, and the child regains its
composure. This sort of idea-produced hallucination doubtless
occurs frequently enough in those nightmares of children already
mentioned.

This secondary generation of hallucinations again is strikingly
illustrated by the occurrence of phantasms before the eyes of
certain precocious children ; these appear to be visible represen-
tations of the thoughts that are passing through their minds :
what they think, that they actually see. Accordingly a sort
of drama is evolved before their eyes, and they live for the

310 INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

time in a scene which is purely visionary as though it were
quite real. " What nonsense are you talking, child ? " the
mother perhaps exclaims ; and thereupon the pageant vanishes.
In delicate and highly nervous children, affected with mesen-
teric tubercle — and, perhaps, also with meningeal tubercle —
it sometimes happens that great anxiety is caused to the
mother by the strange way in which, during the night, when
outer objects are shut out by the darkness, they will talk as
if they were surrounded by real events, or, as the mother
perhaps puts it, as if they were light-headed. They are dream-
ing while they are awake ; though the outer world is shut
out, the morbid deposit within acts as an irritating stimulus
to the ganglionic nervous centres, and thus gives rise to an
automatic activity of them. Such hallucinations may un-
doubtedly be fugitive events in the history of any child en-
dowed with a highly nervous temperament, as in William
Blake, the engraver, and may not denote any positive disease ;
but if the habit grows upon the child by indulgence, and the
phantasms are regularly marshalled into a definite drama, — as,
for example, was the case with Hartley Coleridge, — then a
condition of things is initiated which will in all likelihood
ultimately issue in the degeneration of some form of insanity.*
For it is not the natural course of mental development that
ideas, so soon as they are fashioned in the mind, should operate
directly downwards upon the sensory ganglia, and thus create a
visionary world; but, on the contrary, it is necessary in the
progress of mental development that ideas should be completely
organized within the centres of consciousness, and act upon one
another there ; that thus, by the integration of the like in per-
ceptions and the differentiation of the unlike, accurate con-
ceptions of nature should be formed and duly combined in the
mental fabric ; and that the reaction upon external nature should
be a definite, aim-working, volitional one. Men like Hartley
Coleridge cannot possibly have a will, because the energy of

* " Blake's first vision was said to be when he was eight or ten years old ; it
was a vision of a tree filled with angels. Mrs. Blake, however, used to say—
' You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old,
and He put His head to the window and set you screaming.'" — Gilchrist's
Life of Blake.

ii.] INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. 31 1

their supreme nervous centres is prematurely expended in the
construction of toy- works of the fancy; the state of things
corresponding in some sort with that which obtains in the
spinal centres when, by reason of an instability of nerve
element, direct reactions take place to impressions, so that
definite assimilation and acquired co-ordination are rendered
impossible. In both cases an arrest of development, commonly
the forerunner of more active disease, is indicated ; in both cases
there is the incapacity for a true education. The precocious
imagination of childhood should always be restrained as an
actual danger, not fostered as a wonderful evidence of talent ;
the child being solicited to regular intercourse with the realities
of nature, so that by continued internal adaptation to external
impressions there may be laid up in the mind stores of material,
and that, by an orderly training, this may be moulded into true
forms, according to which a rightly-developed imagination may
hereafter work in true and sober harmony with nature.

The difference between fancy and imagination, as Coleridge
has very aptly remarked, corresponds with the difference be-
tween delirium and mania. The fancy brings together images
which have no natural connexion, but are yoked together by
means of some accidental coincidence ; while the imagination
combines images seemingly unlike by their essential relations,
and gives unity to variety. Now the precocious imagination of
a child, which sometimes delights foolish parents, cannot pos-
sibly be anything more than lying fancy ; and this, for exactly
the same reason that the insanity of children must be a delirium,
and cannot be a mania — the incomplete formation of ideas and
the absence of definitely organized associations between them.
Those who like to speak of faculties of the mind may cer-
tainly maintain that fancy and imagination are fundamentally
the same faculty ; if so, they should bear in mind that fancy
indicates the faculty working wildly and often mischievously,
without adequate material and without due training, and that
imagination represents the working of the faculty when duly
supplied with proper material and justly developed by a proper
training. In like manner, those who consider closely and with-
out prepossession the fundamental meaning of the character
which the delirium of children has, will not fail to recognise in

312 INSANITY OF EARLY LIFE. [chap.

it the strongest evidence of the gradual organization of our
mental faculty ; the fancy of the sane, and the delirium of the
insane, child both testify to the same condition of things —
that which the habitual incoherence of a child's discourse also
evidences.

In order to exhibit clearly the manner of action of morbid
idea in children, and to educe therefrom a physiological lesson,
its operation has been somewhat artificially separated from other
morbid phenomena which usually accompany it. In young
children it is practically rare to meet with disorder confined to
the supreme nervous centres ; the other centres are almost
certain to participate more or less markedly in the morbid
action. In chorea, for example, besides the disordered move-
ments which are its common characteristic, there are often
hallucinations marking disorder of the sensorial centres, and
motiveless weeping or laughing, or acts of mischief and violence,
marking disorder of some of the higher motor centres ; there are
furthermore in some cases mental excitement and incoherence,
which may pass into maniacal delirium, and end fatally, or into
chronic delirium, and end in recovery. The different centres
sympathize with one another; and, according as they minister
to ideation, sensation, or movement, express their disorder in
delirium, hallucination, or spasmodic movements.

Let us now proceed, then, to arrange in groups the different
forms of insanity that are actually met with in children.

1. Monomania,