of unhealthy thought, and abnormal phases of passion, which, occasionally, have been known to cast their withering influence, and death-like shadow over the mind, blighting, saddening, and often crushing the best, kindest, and noblest of human hearts.

"Who can tell," says a learned divine, "all the windings, turnings, depths, hollowness, and dark corners of the mind of man? He who enters He who enters upon this scrutiny, enters into a labyrinth or a wilderness, where he has no guide but chance or industry to direct his inquiries, or to put an end to his search, It is a wilderness in which a man may wander more than forty years, and through which few have passed to the promised land."*

Among the obscure, and, as yet, inexplicable phenomena of disordered intellect, stands prominently forward a condition, incipient phase, or pre-existing abnormal state, in which the patient (long before he becomes, or is considered actually insane) is fully sensible, painfully, keenly, and exquisitely conscious of the predominance of certain morbid, and unnatural states of emotion, idea, and impulse.

For a considerable period before the mind has lost its equilibrium, or is appreciably disordered, the patient admits that he is under the influence of certain vague apprehensions, undefinable misgivings, and anxious suspicions, as to the sane character of his emotions, healthy condition of his ideas, and normal state of his instincts. He detects himself, when unobserved, occasionally asking, can my impressions be healthy? Is there any good reason for my entertaining these strange and singular feelings? Why am I adverse to this person's presence, and why do I feel a repugnance to, and shun the society of that individual? Am I in a sound state of mind? Are unnatural ideas, and strange impulses like

* Dr. South.

those suggesting themselves to and influencing my mind, consistent with a healthy condition of thought, and a sane state of the intellect? Am I in possession of my senses? Is this state of feeling, this condition of weakened volition, these strange inclinations that appear, blindly, and irresistibly, to drive me to the commission of overt acts, so adverse to my natural character, so antagonistic to my sense and knowledge of what is right and wrong;—are these flittings of sombre melancholy, these scintillations of perverted thought, so contrary to my nature, and opposed to every principle of my being, the dawnings-obscure, faint tints, shadowy outlines-of approaching insanity? Am I mad or becoming so? emphatically and frantically interrogates the unhappy person subject to this incipient manifestation of disordered and disturbed thought.* Such sad doubts, fearful apprehensions, mysterious, inexplicable forebodings, and distressing misgivings as to the healthy condition of the mind, often induce the heartbroken sufferer, convulsed with pain, and choking with anguish, prayerfully, and in accents of wild and frenzied despair, to ejaculate with King Lear,

"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet Heaven!
Keep me in temper, I would not be mad!"

This agonizing consciousness of the presence of mor

* In a conversation between the stoic Damasippus and Horace (Sat. iii. lib. ii.), the poet asks the former, "in what kind of folly do you think my madness consists ?"

and adds,

Quid ?" responds the Stoic,

Caput abscissum demens cum portat Agave
Gnati infelicis,"

(and then immediately asks),

"Sibi tum furiosa videtur ?"

It would thus appear, that this illustrious poet had a clear conception of the phase of conscious insanity of which I am now speaking.

bid and insane ideas, painful recognition of the first approaches, and foreshadowings of insanity, are occasionally so acute, and the mental misery induced so crushing, and overwhelming, that relief from the terrible sufferings they occasion is occasionally sought for in self-immolation.

In the incipient stage of insanity, I repeat, the patient is fully sensible of entertaining exaggerated, and unnatural impressions; is acutely conscious of the mind dwelling morbidly, and sometimes irresistibly, upon certain trains of absurd, unhealthy, and it may be, alas! very unholy and impure thought; he painfully recognises the fact, that insane conceptions are struggling to master his reason, obtain an ascendancy over his judgment, an abnormal influence and control over his passions, and the subjugation of his instincts. In some cases (and this is a distressing and dangerous type of insanity), he is impelled, (why and wherefore he knows not,) to commit suicide, and even to sacrifice the lives of those related to him by the closest ties of relationship, as well as to give utterance to blasphemous, revolting, and impure expressions! He finds it, occasionally, extremely difficult, and almost impossible, to dismiss from the mind, and keep in subjection, these morbid impulses to acts of homicidal and suicidal violence, or to conquer the insane desire to clothe in grossly obscene language, conceptions, from the contemplation of which his delicate and sensitive nature would, when unclouded by disease, have instinctively shrunk with horror, loathing, and disgust!

A gentleman of great accomplishments, of high order of intellect, of known literary reputation, and of admitted personal worth, had his mind for years tortured with morbid suggestions to utter obscene and blasphemous expressions. He eventually destroyed himself; and in a letter which he wrote to me a few days before committir g

suicide, and which did not reach me until after his death, he said his life was embittered and made wretched by these terrible suggestions; but he thanked God that he had never once yielded to them, and that, although he was a Christian in principle, he felt he was not sinning against God by committing self-destruction, with the object of effectually destroying all chance of his giving utterance to thoughts that might contaminate the minds and morals of others!

In the incipient, as well as in the fully-developed conditions of insanity, the instincts, the coarser parts of animal nature,-make, occasionally, a bold, determined, and vigorous effort to forcibly seize the sceptre, and exercise supreme authority and despotic dominion over man's sovereign reason." An awful, terrible, deadly, "hand to hand" struggle sometimes ensues between these antagonistic elements. "The reason may resist," says Coleridge, (when referring to this appalling contest,) "it does resist for a long time, but too often, alas! at length it yields, and the man is mad for ever!"

BISHOP BUTLER records that he was, all his life, struggling against the horrible morbid suggestions (he termed them "devilish,") which, he says, would have maddened him if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment!

A lady writes, "can I obtain no relief for my acute and horrible sufferings? Hell, with all its torments, cannot be equal to the tortures I endure! I feel all the misery of a lost soul, all the agony of the damned! With this heart-breaking misery, I know I cannot be in my right senses! Would that I could have administered to me some opiate to deaden the sensibility of my poor brain, or to make me mad, and thus destroy all consciousness of suffering! Dr. has given me a powerful medicine, but it is of no service. Night and

day is my mind bewildered by this intense feeling of being, or going mad! Do tell me frankly what your opinion is as to my state? Is this insanity, or am I becoming deranged ?* Have you known

any case similar to mine, and if so, did they recover or die in a madhouse? I am advised to separate myself, for a time, from my family. It breaks my heart to think of so cruel a severance. If I went abroad, could not Col. and my precious children go with me? If foreign travel is decided upon, where would you advise me to go? Paris never did agree with me. I spent, a few years ago, a miserable winter there, when I lost my poor H. I am sure the associations of the place would aggravate all my mental symptoms. Last night I never closed my eyes for five minutes in sleep. Would that I could cease to think of the horrible suggestions of my exquisitely sensitive nature and terribly diseased imagination. I cannot sustain this state of mind long. I have a nervous horror of death, and yet I sigh for destruction. I often wish I had never been born. Should I be committing a sin if I were to commit suicide in my present condition of intellect? Would I be held responsible for what I did whilst tortured and driven to despair by these dreadful thoughts ?"

Sir James Mackintosh alludes to this form of unhealthy and distempered mind in his celebrated letter to Robert Hall, addressed to this distinguished Minister of the Gospel, after his recovery from his first attack of insanity. Sir James Mackintosh writes:

"We are all accustomed to contemplate with pleasure the suspension of the ordinary operations of the understanding in sleep, and even to be amused by its nightly wanderings from its course in dreams. From the commanding eminence which you have gained, you will gradually familiarize your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep or dreams; and in process of time they will cease to appear to you much more horrible. You will thus be delivered from the constant dread which so often brings on the very evil dreaded; and which, as it clouds the whole of human life, is itself a greater calamity than any temporary disease. Some dread of this sort darkened the days of Johnson; and the fears of Rousseau seem to have constantly realized themselves."