——“Have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?”
MACBETH.
EV. The contrasts to these phantoms of blind superstition, are those of
the _overstrained_ condition of the mind. The Creator has ordained the
brain to be the soil in which the mind is implanted or developed. This
brain, like the corn-field, must have its fallow, or it is exhausted and
reduced in the degree of its high qualities. In our intellectual
government, therefore, we should ever adopt that happy medium, equally
remote from the bigotry of the untutored, and the ultra refinement of
the too highly cultivated mind.
It is not essential that I should now offer you more than a hint, that
the essence of the gloomy ghosts of deep study, like the melancholy
phantoms and oppressive demons of the night-mare, consists in the
accumulation of black blood about the brain and the heart; and a glance
at phrenology would explain to you how the influence of that blood on
the various divisions of the brain will call up in the mind these
“Hydras and Gorgons, and Chimeras dire.”
The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulph yawning at his side, but he
was _aware_ of his illusion. He was, however, always strapped in his
chair, lest he should fall into this gulph, especially while he was
working the celebrated problem of the cycloidal curve.
A distinguished nobleman, who but lately guided the helm of state in
England, was often annoyed by the spectre of a bloody head;—a strange
coincidence with the phantom of the Count Duke d’Olivarez, the minister
of Philip of Spain.
From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion of a student of anatomy,
who, during his ardent devotion to his study, confidently believed that
there was a town in his _deltoid_ muscle.
And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gentleman of high literary
attainments, who, when closely reading in his study, was repeatedly
annoyed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in a black bonnet
and mantle, with a basket on her arm. So _filmy_, however, was this
phantom, that the door-lock was seen through her. Supposing she had
mistaken her way, he politely showed her the door, and she instantly
vanished. It was the change of posture which effected this
disappearance, by altering the circulation of the brain-blood, then in a
state of partial stagnation.
My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentleman of great science, who
conceived that he was honoured by the frequent visits of spectres. They
were at first refined and elegant both in manners and in conversation,
which, on one occasion, assumed a witty turn, and quips, and puns, and
satire, were the order of the evening; so that he was charmed with his
ghostly visitors, and sought no relief. On a sudden, however, they
changed into demoniac fiends, uttering expressions of the most degraded
and unholy nature. He became alarmed, and depletion soon cured him of
his phantasy.
A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this kind of monomania, which at
length proved fatal. His physician had long seen that some secret grief
was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood of his patient, and he
at last extorted the confession, that a skeleton was ever watching him
from the foot of his bed. The physician tried various modes to dispel
the illusion, and once placed himself in the field of the vision, and
was not a little terrified when the patient exclaimed, that he saw the
skull peering at him over his left shoulder.
The “Martyr Philosopher,” too, in the “Diary of a Physician,” saw,
shortly preceding his death, a figure in black deliberately putting away
the books in his study, throwing his pens and ink into the fire, and
folding up his telescope, as if they were now useless. The truth is _he
himself_ had been engaged in that occupation, but it was his own
disordered imagination that raised the spectre.
You will believe from these illustrations, Astrophel, that Seneca is
right in his aphorism,—
“Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine misturâ dementiæ.”