“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”
“In his brain
He hath strange places cramm’d
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.”
AS YOU LIKE IT.
ASTR. I was dreaming last night, Evelyn, of your eccentric puppets; and
I cannot but wonder at the _contrasted_ influences of nitrous oxide on
the brain and marrow, as you say. In one, we see the wondrous phenomena
of somnambulism; in the other, a state of apathy, like the almost
senseless reverie of the idiot.
EV. You are shrewd, Astrophel, and have hit on these objective analogies
with the acuteness of a pathologist. Contrasts they truly are; and yet
there is a natural transition from one to the other.
Somnambulism is the most eccentric condition of sleep; and _Reverie_ is
that state which constitutes the nearest approximation to slumber. But
the French verb, _rêver_, is a comprehensive word, signifying all the
eccentricities of mind, from idiocy to divine philosophy; so that its
derivative, “Reverie,” may be construed into Dream, Delirium, Raving,
Thought, Fancy, Meditation, Abstraction.
You may wonder at this combination, but, however you may smile, the
existence of every one is marked by a certain degree of moral or
instinctive mania, modified by the peculiarity of habit, taste, or
sentiment; and, I may add, of intellectual _monomania_ (“monomanie
raisonnante”), in reference to some particular subject. There may indeed
be an _incubation_ of madness; and, if circumstances occur to _sit_ and
_hatch_, the germs will be developed. When these two, moral and
intellectual error (which may _separately_ pass current in the world for
eccentricity), unite, then the man is mad, and becomes an irresponsible
agent.
The term “Reverie,” then, will imply the varied conditions of that
faculty, which phrenology terms _concentrativeness_; the extremes of
which mark the idiot and the sage.
Idiocy is the most abject and imperfect condition of the waking mind,
resembling closely the first disposition to slumber, the sensation of
_doziness_. The creature will commit the most absurd acts, and utter the
most ridiculous or profane expressions, without the redeeming apology of
being engaged in abstract thought or abstruse calculation.
It is consolatory, however, to know that this weakness is usually
_connate_, or manifested at the very dawn of intellect; so that we have
not the painful study of contrasting, in one being, the light of mind
with its shadowy darkness.
The idiot, indeed, often appears so little more than a laughing or a
dancing vegetable, that pity yields to curiosity and mirth; and, instead
of mourning, we work into the plot and incidents of a novel or a stage
farce, either that strange mixture of weakness and cunning which is
delineated in Davie Gellatly, or the absolute imbecility of Audrey,
Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
But this melancholy being is not always a _solitary_ curiosity. In many
districts, especially in the stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia,
nature fails, by wholesale, in the development of that “paragon of
animals,” man.
Such are the _Capots_, or _Cretins_, of Chinese Tartary, as we learn
from Sir George Staunton; those of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys; the
_Coliberts_ of Rochelle; the _Cagneux_ of Brittany; the _Gaffos_ of
Navarre; the _Gavachos_ of Spain; and the _Gezitani_ of the Pyrenees.
The condition of the lowest class of these wretched beings is indeed
that of idiocy; their intellectual power being little more than the
mental blank which would mark the _acephalous_, or brainless monsters,
could such abortions attain the age of maturity. It is mere _animal
life_, with the very faintest stamp of intelligence.
The _Cretin_ is from four to five feet high, cadaverous, flabby, the
head immensely out of proportion, the skin studded with livid eruptions,
the eyes blear and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak and
crooked; and (like the _Stulbings_ of Swift) the senses are imperfect,
the hearing and speech often absolutely lost,—the expression being that
of a fool or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the frequent causes of
all this; for, in the skull of these beings, we often find a _bluish
jelly_, instead of healthy brain. This diseased _pulp_ is thus the
source of both animal and intellectual apathy. The idiot will often seem
insensible to pain, while his flesh is burning; and objects or subjects
do not cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to produce their
_image_, so that the being may almost live without a sense.
CAST. This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful picture, and shows us
one of those impressive contrasts which nature is fraught with. The
Cretin dwarf amidst the gigantic sublimity of the Alps; the lava stream
rolling over the chestnut groves of Valombrosa; the malaria that steams
up from the Pontine even to Albano; the murky sulphur cloud that floats
over Avernus, and the Solfaterra; and the poison-snake creeping among
the honied flowers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and
interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how intimately are blended
the lights and shadows of creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if
there are not many beautiful stories, which we may have deemed the
creation of poesy, proving that idiotism is not always _definite_ and
_permanent_. I ought to blush while I recite them. The romance of Cymon
and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have heard a story of a youth who
was an idiot to his 17th year. At this time he saw a beautiful girl, and
instantly felt deep and devoted love for her; and became, from this
almost divine influence, as acute in intellect as his playmates.
ASTR. And what writeth the quaint Anatomist of Melancholy?—“We read in
the lives of the Fathers a story of a child that was brought up in the
wilderness from his infancy by an old hermite. Now come to man’s estate,
he saw by chance two comely women wandering in the woods. He asked the
old man what creatures they were. He told him fayries. After a while
talking _obiter_, the hermite demanded of him which was the pleasantest
sight that he ever saw in his life? He readily replied, the two fayries
he espied in the wilderness. So that without doubt there is some secret
loadstone in a beautiful woman, a magnetique power.”
IDA. We do not hold your gallantry lightly, Astrophel; there is some
hope of your conversion.
EV. That mind is termed _weak_, where there is a want of the power of
fixing the attention to one object, a _wandering of the imaginative
faculty_. A train of ideas arises, between the links of which there is
some remote relation; but its beginning and end may appear _so
dissonant_, that the absent person will fail to recognize the connexion,
until, by an effort to retrace the steps of thought, the mystery is
developed.
IDA. The subjects of this form of reverie are, I presume, the
_wool-gatherers_ of society, being “every thing by turns, and nothing
long;” and often, like the dog in the fable, losing the substance while
they grasp at the shadow; others employ their time by sitting
“Musing all alone,
Building castles in the air,”
forming plans and projecting schemes which shall fill men’s minds with
wonder, and their own pockets with gold.
But these castle-builders are, alas! but the dupes of their own mad
fancy. The card-house is nearly finished, and one imprudent touch of the
child topples it down headlong. One of the most salutary lessons on this
foible is the fable of the Persian visionary, the glassman Alnaschar,
who, by rehearsing one kick of the foot, that was to indicate his
despotic will, broke into ten thousand pieces the basket of merchandize,
which, by its accumulating profits, was to raise him to the highest
dignities. Such are the results of self-glamourie or castle-building.
EV. It is a moral lesson of great worth, dear Ida. But these wanderings
are often assimilating the true delirium of fever, of which the dreams
of Piranesi are examples. In his sketches of these illusions he figures
himself as ascending by steps so high that he at length vanishes into
the clouds.
Now there are many curious instances of forgetfulness, as there may be a
confusion of ideas from this deficiency of concentration, memory being,
as it were, deranged. From study, or intense thought, a jumble of
strange ideas will sometimes force themselves involuntarily on the mind,
displacing or confusing the subject of meditation.
Thus a German, of the name of Spalding, of high attainments, informs us,
that after great mental labour, he was intending to write this receipt:
“fifty dollars, being one half-year’s rate,” but quite unconsciously
concluded it thus: “fifty dollars through the salvation of Bra.” And the
author of the “Spiritual Treasury,” Mason, during his devotion to its
composition, had, as he believed, taken the address of a visitor on whom
he was to wait; but on referring to his note, he read, not the address,
but—“Acts ii. verse 8.”
Children have _naturally_ a want of power of concentration. I have told
you that if a new or more attractive object strikes their sight, they
will drop that which they were holding; and Foote would often, while
taking a pinch, let his snuff-box fall from his hand, if for a moment
his attention was diverted.
ASTR. The reverse of wandering, then, you term _concentrativeness_. You
would not stigmatize the passive or involuntary form of abstraction, as
the reverie of a _monomaniac_.
EV. No. As attention is concentration of a sense, abstraction is the
concentration or attention of the mind; therefore the power of fixing
the senses and forgetting the mind, is attention, that of fixing the
mind and forgetting the senses, is abstraction—philosophy, if you will.
The active form, the power of fixing the attention on one subject, or of
separating ideas and bringing them into association on one point, is the
great characteristic of the philosopher and the mathematician. That
inattention to _minutiæ_ during this abstraction, has, I grant, caused
the shafts of satire to be profusely flung at many a “learned pundit;”
for the jokes of Rabelais are eclipsed by the eccentricities of our
sages: Dominie Sampson is no caricature.
As I trace these forms of reverie from monomania to its curious
contrast, the _folie raisonnante_ of men of one idea, (in which there is
an aberration of intellect, or want of consciousness on _all subjects
but one_,) and so on to philosophical abstraction, we shall learn, not
without some humility, how close an alliance does really exist between
great wits and madness.
The records of history and fiction teem with the illusions of the
monomaniacs from intense impression. The madness of Ophelia and of Lear,
are true and faithful illustrations of the effects of _brooding over
sorrow_. In the monarch, indeed, that one momentary glimpse of reason
when the word “_king_” like an electric shock falls on his ear, and, for
an instant, lights up his intellect, which as suddenly darkness again
overshadows, beautifully shows forth by contrast this madness of one
idea.
Dr. Gooch relates the case of a lady, who in consequence of an alarm of
fire, believed that she was the Virgin Mary, and that her head was
constantly encircled by a brilliant halo or glory.
A gentleman, on narrowly escaping from the earthquake at Lisbon, fell
into a state of delirium whenever the word “earthquake” was pronounced
in his hearing.
In “Pechlin” we read of a lady, who gazed with painless interest on the
comet of 1681 until she observed it _through a telescope_ of high power;
the terror was so intense, that she was frightened to death even in a
few days.
Dr. Morrison relates the case of an insane gentleman who had consulted a
gypsy, and was instantly in a state of high excitement, whenever a
subject associated with her prophecies was alluded to.
My friend, Dr. Uwins, informed me of an intellectual young gentleman,
who from some morbid association with the idea of an elephant, was
struck by an horrific spasm whenever the word was named, _or even
written_ before him; and to such a pitch was this infatuation carried,
that elephant _paper_, if he were sensible it were such, produced the
same effect.
The Reverend John Mason, of Water Stratford, evinced in every thing
sound judgment, except that he believed that he was Elias, and foretold
the advent of Christ, who was to commence the millennium at Stratford.
Dr. Abercrombie writes of a young botanist who had gained a prize: he
thought he was in a boat sailing to Greenwich on a botanical excursion,
and conversed rationally on all points but that of the prize, which he
asserted another student had gained.
Hear, too, another rhapsody of the “Opium-Eater.” After a close and
intense study of the works of Livy, the words Consul Romanus seemed to
haunt his mind. “At a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-rending
sounds of ‘Consul Romanus;’ and immediately came sweeping by in gorgeous
paludaments, Paulus Marius girt round by a company of centurions, with
the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of
the Roman legions.”
There is a story (written in the seventeenth century) of a youth, who in
a playful frolic put a ring on the marriage finger of a marble Venus;
and a strange illusion came upon him that she had thus become his wife,
and, in obedience to the injunctions of the ceremony, came to his bed
when the sable canopy of night was spread around them. So intense was
this illusion, and so cold and loveless was his heart withal, that, as
the story goes, an _exorcist was employed_ to dissolve the spell which
had so firmly bound him.
IDA. I believe it was Mrs. Barry, who (as we read in the “Last Essays of
Elia,”) averred that when playing the child of Isabella, she felt the
burning tears of Mrs. Porter fall on her neck, as she was breathing o’er
her some pathetic sentence. Even the study of Lady Macbeth, in midnight
solitude, so intensely excited the imagination of Mrs. Siddons, that
Campbell says, as she was disrobing herself in her chamber, she trembled
with affright, even at the rustling of her own silk attire.
EV. I could add many stories to yours, Ida. This sensibility, if
protracted or in excess, becomes the _Panophobia_ of Esquirol. He
attended once a lady whom the slightest noise alarmed, and who was wont
to scream with affright at the simple moving of herself in bed.
From the journal of Esquirol I will quote other fragments, in which we
see that every object was associated with _one_ image.
“During our promenade he (a gallant general) interrupted me several
times, in the midst of a very connected conversation, saying, “Do you
hear how they repeat the words ‘_coward_, _jealous_?’ &c.” This illusion
was produced by the noise of the leaves and the whistling of the wind
among the branches of the trees, which _appeared to him well-articulated
sounds_; and, although I had each time combated it with success, the
illusion returned whenever the wind agitated the trees anew.
“A young married man was in a state of fury whenever he saw a woman
leaning on a man’s arm, being convinced that it was _his own wife_. I
took him to the theatre at the commencement of his convalescence, but as
soon as a lady entered the saloon accompanied by a gentleman, he became
agitated, and called out eagerly several times, ‘That is she, that is
she.’ I could hardly help laughing, and we were obliged to retire.
“A lady, twenty-three years of age, afflicted with hysterical madness,
used to remain constantly at the windows of her apartment during the
summer. When she saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, she screamed out
‘Garnerin, Garnerin, come and take me!’ and repeated the same invitation
until the cloud disappeared. She mistook the clouds for balloons sent up
by Garnerin.”
CAST. There is here as much romance, as when Ajax mistook a drove of
oxen for the armed Greeks, or Don Quixote the windmills for a band of
Spanish giants.
EV. Again, Dr. Beddoes relates the case of a scholar, who locked himself
up to study the Revelation. The confinement brought on _dyspeptic_ pains
and spasms, and he was persuaded that “the monster blasphemy, with ten
heads, was preying on his vitals.”
The Reverend Simon Brown died with the conviction that his _rational
soul_ was annihilated by a special fiat of the Divine will; and a
patient in the Friends’ “Retreat,” at York, thought he had no soul,
heart, or lungs.
From “Tulpius” we learn, that the wife of Salomon Galmus sank into a
state of extreme melancholy, from the deep conviction that she was a
visitant from the tomb, but sent back to the world _without her heart_,
for God had detained that in heaven.
Such illusions are sometimes excited by wounds of the brain. A soldier
of the field of Austerlitz was struck with a delirious conviction that
he was but an ill-made model of his former self. “You ask how Père
Lambert is,” (he would say;) “he is dead, killed at Austerlitz; _that_
you now see is a mere machine, made in his likeness.” He would then
often lapse into a state of catalepsy insensible to every stimulus.
Dr. Mead tells us of an Oxford student, who ordered the _passing bell_
to be rung for him, and _went himself_ to the belfry to instruct the
ringers. He returned to his bed only to die.
A Bourbon prince thought himself dead, and refused to eat until his
friends invited him to dine with Turenne and other French heroes long
since departed.
There was a tradesman who thought he was a seven-shilling piece, and
advertised himself thus: “If my wife presents me for payment, don’t
change me.” Accuse me not of transatlantic plagiarism.
Bishop Warburton tells us of a man who thought himself a _goose pie_;
and Dr. Ferriday, of Manchester, had a patient who thought he had
_swallowed the devil_.
So indeed thought Luther. As in Hudibras,
“Did not the devil appear to Martin
Luther in Germany for certain?”
In Paris there lived a man who thought he had with others been
guillotined, and when Napoleon was emperor, their heads were all
restored, but in _the scramble he got the wrong one_.
And there is the “Visitor of Phantaste” in the old play of “Lingua,” who
exclaims: “No marvel, for when I beheld my fingers, I saw they were as
transparent as glass.”
You perceive that the illusions of Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” are not all
fictions: the maids who fancied they were turned into bottles, were not
more in error than these philosophers with their _maladie imaginaire_.
CAST. Is there not wisdom, Evelyn, in nursing _some_ of these innocent
illusions? I remember Kotzebue, in his “Journey to Paris,” relates the
following anecdote of a young girl, romantically in love. Her lover had
often accompanied her on the harp: he died, and his harp had remained in
her room. After the first excess of her despair, she sunk into the
deepest melancholy, and much time elapsed ere she would sit down to her
instrument. At last she did so, gave some touches, and, hark! the harp,
_tuned alike_, resounded in echo. The good girl was at first seized with
a secret shuddering, but soon felt a kind of soft melancholy: she was
firmly persuaded that the spirit of her lover was softly sweeping the
strings of the instrument. The harpsichord, from this moment,
constituted her only pleasure, as it afforded her the certainty that her
lover was still hovering near her. One of those unfeeling men, who want
to know and clear up every thing, once entered her apartment. The girl
instantly begged him to be quiet, for at that very moment the dear harp
spoke most distinctly. Being _informed of the amiable illusion_ which
overcame her reason, he laughed, and, with a great display of learning,
proved to her by experimental physics, that all this was _very natural_.
From that instant the maiden grew melancholy, drooped, and soon after
died.
EV. Truth is not always to be spoken, nor too much energy exerted, in
our treatment; for many a _mad act_, as it will be called, is resorted
to, _as a relief_.
Tirouane de Mericourt was wont to _saturate her bedclothes with cold
water, then lie down on it_. Although an extreme _remedy_, it might
yield her relief from _burning_ pains. In the darker ages, she would
have been chained and scourged.
But from Marcus Donatus we read the following case of still more
melancholy interest; another illustration of your question, dear
Castaly:
“Vicentinus believed himself too large to pass one of his doorways. To
dispel this illusion, it was resolved by his physician that he should be
_dragged through this aperture by force_. This erroneous dictate was
obeyed; but, as he was forced along, Vicentinus screamed out in agony,
that his limbs were fractured, and the flesh torn from his bones. In
this dreadful delusion, with terrific imprecations against his
murderers, he died.”