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CHAPTER I.

MENTAL MALFORMITIES.

To run a distinct line of division between sound and unsound mental functions, however desirable in theory, is impossible in fact, since there are intermediate states, of many different degrees and sorts of development and disorder, which make a slope of imperceptible gradation from the sanest to the most insane thought and feeling. Mental pathologists have hardly taken sufficient account of this truth in their studies of the facts of morbid psychology, although they have not entirely overlooked it. Their business being to treat insanity of mind as disease or madness, they naturally do not occupy themselves much with the many instances in which it is not disease in the proper sense of the word, but irregular and defective mental development-malformation rather than actual derangement of intellect; not organic machinery in disorder, but organic machinery of bad order of construction and function.

It is certainly not from want of obtrusive proclamation of themselves that such instances are ignored; for while malformities of body simply incapacitate for the most part, and thus are fitted to stir compassion in others, malformities of mind are often occasions of active trouble and annoyance in the world, and thus provoke anger, aversion, or contempt. A person lame bodily knows his infirmity or, at least, knows it not to be a superiority; but a person of lame mind is so far from knowing his infirmity that he commonly deems himself superior to those who are well formed mentally. He can see himself reflected bodily in a glass, and so project his body mentally; he cannot by any ingenuity of introspective skill see his mind and project it into an object of external apprehension -cannot contemplate his own contemplating faculty, appreciate his own appreciating power. It would be a bad thing for the sane world were the intuition of individual self-consciousness in such case, or perhaps in any case, appraised by common judgment at the value which it puts upon itself.

There is a large class of peculiar persons, much differing from one another, who, agreeing in being unlike the majority of people of their age and country in their modes of thought, feeling, and action, have their several tendencies to deviation from the common nature described as eccentricity; instead of moving

in the common orbit of human thought and feeling, they manifest impulses to start from it-are eccentric. All insane persons are necessarily eccentric, but not all eccentric persons are insane. From a practical point of view, any one may be permitted to be as eccentric as he pleases, to go as much as he likes off the customary track of thinking, feeling, and doing, so long as his deviations or vagaries do not compromise social order; but there is a point of nonconformity at which the body social must interfere to protect itself, if it is to continue in well-being. Unlimited licence for the erratic individual to do as he likes would be incompatible with the holding together of the framework of society. From another point of view, eccentricities of thought and conduct have a special philosophic interest, inasmuch as from time to time they turn out to be valuable mental variations that initiate new and useful developments; rarely and exceptionally, no doubt, but still here and there, and now and then.

It is a matter of curious observation that remarkable special sensibilities and brilliant ability of thought or performance in particular departments of knowledge or art go along sometimes with signal eccentricity; an extraordinary development of one part of the mind being by no means incompatible with an irregular and unstable condition of other parts

of it, however the fact may conflict with metaphysical notions of mind as something that, having spiritual unity, has not extension or parts and cannot be divided. Moreover, a narrow intensity of temperament, whereby a notion of a particular kind is cherished with exclusive fervour, without regard to limitations and qualifications, and pushed with eager energy, without regard to occasions and hindrances, is sometimes a very useful practical force in the world, as I have already pointed out. To see an aim clearly and distinctly from a special standpoint, not to feel any distrust of it because it is a deviation from received opinion, nor to be in the least disheartened because it encounters ridicule and opposition on all hands, is an excellent thing when the notion has truth and life in it. It is a redeeming exception to the cowardice which custom makes the habit of the multitude's mind.

But it ought to be well weighed in regard to a person of such quality of thinking and acting that he is constitutionally incapable of weighing evidence, and commits habitually almost all the faults of bad observation and reasoning which it is possible to commit, and that the quality, in extreme degree, is the characteristic note of madness. If he is right, it is not his merit, since it is not by virtue of right observation and reasoning on his part; it is

the effect of a happy chance, the fortunate accident of his nature and circumstances. Owing to his

exclusive intensity of thought and feeling, such a one is especially liable to positive hallucinations and illusions; his fervour not only transfiguring real impressions into the shapes of his imagination, but projecting the images of his mind into objective forms. People easily see then that he is wrong who do not see that the habit of mind which thus, in extreme degree, begets hallucination does not fail, in less degree, to vitiate constantly his ordinary observation and thought. In no case is he to be thoroughly relied on to see and think the truth; although he be a useful instrument of nature for his purpose, it is a strictly limited and special purpose; for if he is placed where the circumstances are unsuited to the exercise of his predominant quality of character, where accurate observation, coherent thinking, and sound judgment are required, he is impotent and useless, if not troublesome and dangerous.

In the great majority of cases a person of that quality of temperament is not right but wrong, or, at any rate, more wrong than right. Leaving positively insane persons out of account, the people who run into the exaggerated development of one idea, or are affected with a passionate twisted-mindedness of one sort or another, or go off in eccentric impulses

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