the least on announcing that I must get up, for they were to take me away. I firmly believed that I was dead, and likely about to be admitted into Heaven. Nothing, in my imagination, could be expected. On our way hither, I saw houses, trees, carriages, passengers, all as it is on earth; but I would have been averse to the idea that they did not belong to another world, a kind of medium between earth and heaven.

When we alighted here, I came to think that I was to be shut in for a limited space of time. This was the last expiation for my sinful life. I kept in sullen silence, because it was my belief that mutism was the condition, sine quá non, for my speedy ascent to heaven. The attendants and patients with whom I was placed, I considered as new temptators, whose attacks I should have to resist. Thus I fancied that my duty was to walk up and down the gallery with the least possible rest, and taking care always to tread on the same boards. I also considered it my duty to obey the attendants whenever they said, I will. In the yard the trial was of another kind. "I must not," said I, "let any one make his way on the same path as I do; I must drive him away by constantly walking around him, and surrounding him with invisible lines, as the spider weaves his nets around flies."

Once, I recollect, they retired to the shed. I took up my post right against them, and stood up for a long time there, moving three steps backward and forward. It seemed to me that I was ordered to do so some hundred times before allowing myself any rest. On the three or four first nights, you may remember, Monsieur le Docteur, that I was in an excited state. Indeed, you were so kind as to lend me a French book, which I did not dare to peruse, for fear it should be a snare set against my soul. In my room I used to pray and speak aloud, as I had done in the pauper-house, for I felt convinced this establishment (the purgatory) was swarming with invisible beings, some in need of my prayers, others of my exhortations. Any person coming at that time to invite me to be quiet, was sure to be taken for a temptator, at whom I threw the malediction, Vade retrò, Satanas. Fortunately, I soon was enabled to see things in their proper light. But to what causes shall I ascribe my quick recovery, if not to God's mercy first, and then to you, Monsieur le Docteur, to the Rev. Mr. Murray, and to the attendants of your choice. Had I been so roughly treated here as I was in the poor-house, my firm belief is that I should never have recovered. Your constant kind attentions to me, your willingness to grant me whatever I may desire, such as books, newspapers, extra diet, these are titles to my gratitude, which I shall never forget. In my present helplessness, I can only say what many others

will repeat after me: May you, Monsieur le Docteur, and your family, enjoy the happiness which you deserve so well!

I forgot, Monsieur le Docteur, to mention to you the fact that, during my stay in the poor-house, the state of my bowels was always that of costiveness, and that my water was of a red colour. Now I feel as well as I can possibly be, were it not for the itchings which I still feel now and then, and which disturb my sleep to some degree. I suppose that they will disappear in time.

I have given you many tedious details; you will find many inconsistencies, perhaps, in the course of my narrative; but you know that I had only to write down the ideas of a delirious brain. There can be no logique expected from such a source. My only endeavour has been to relate the truth, and nothing but the truth, a condition which my vivid recollections made quite easy. I sincerely wish, Monsieur le Docteur, that it should meet your approval.

L. D.

ART V.-PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.

BY ROBERT DUNN, F.R.C. S. ENG.

It is no longer a subject of dispute, that the doctrines of mind rest essentially on the basis of our physiological compositionthat they form a part of the physiology of man. For, however it may be attempted to separate intellectual and moral from animal and corporeal man, and however we may reason about our intellectual and moral nature apart from our bodily and animal constitution, it is never to be forgotten that they are united in this life, forming one and a composite system of mutual dependence and reciprocal action. From the first moment that the primitive cell-germ of an human organism comes into being, and is launched upon the ocean of time and space, it may literally be said, that the entire individual is present, that an organized entity exists, fitted for a human destiny; and that, from the same moment, matter and mind, body and soul, are never for an instant separated. Their union constitutes the essential mode of our present existence, and they are alike subject to the laws of development and growth; for the mind, like the body, passes through its phases of development. Not only is the framework and different organs of the human body evolved and perfected, one after the other, in accordance with all the subsequent wants of the future man; but, among the rest, and from the same primitive cell-germ, are gradually developed, the

nervous apparatus and the encephalic ganglia, upon the vesicular matter of which the mind is dependent for the manifestation of all its activities. And thus we see, that in the primitive cellgerm of the human organism are potentially contained the vital, nervous, and mental forces; and, than the attempt to investigate and trace the genesis and gradual development of these forces, and their correlations with each other, what subject, to the psychological inquirer, can be more interesting or more important?*

The phenomena of the vital force are first displayed. For in the cell-germ, duly supplied with the nutrient pabulum, inherent are the powers of self-development and life under which the human fabric is evolved and built up. But after birth, to the organic processes, the animal functions and their allied appetites and instincts are superadded; and with these, sensations, as subjective conditions, are inseparably connected. Man then enters upon a new state of being and an individuality—an independent existence is established. For as soon as embryonic life is passed, the nascent consciousness becomes awakened,roused into activity by stimuli from without, the senses coming into play from the moment of birth.

Now, consciousness is an ultimate fact in animal existence, beyond which we cannot go; it is the distinguishing attribute of animal life, the first of the phenomena of the mental force, and self-consciousness is the primary condition of intelligence: in a word, it is mental existence.

The great and fundamental mystery of life, indeed, consists in the relations of consciousness and of that dynamical agency which we designate volition, or the will, to the functions of the special senses, and those of the encephalic ganglia, which connect man as a sentient, percipient, and intelligent being, with his own bodily organization and with the world without. For, while it is no longer a matter of dispute that the encephalon is the material organ of the mind, where the ultimate molecular changes precede mental states, and from whence the mandates of the will issue, it has been well observed, by an acute metaphysician, that,

"As to the nature of the relation which exists between the encephalon and the sentient and percipient mind, we never shall be able to understand more than is involved in the simple fact, that a certain

The subject has engaged the attention of one of the ablest physiologists and most profound thinkers amongst us-I mean Dr. Carpenter. See his valuable paper, in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society," On the Mutual Relations of the Physical and Vital Forces; and his chapters On the Correlations of Physiology and Psychology, in the last and fifth edition of his "Human Physiology."

affection of the nervous system precedes immediately a certain affection of the mind. And that a peculiar state of the particles of the brain should be followed by a change of the state of the sentient mind is truly wonderful; but, if we consider it strictly, we shall find it by no means more wonderful than that the arrival of the moon at a certain point in the heavens should render the state of a body on the surface of the earth different from what it otherwise naturally would be. We believe, and, indeed, with as much confidence, that one event will uniformly have for its consequent another event, which we have observed to follow it, as we believe the simple fact that it has preceded it in the particular case observed. But the knowledge of the present sequence, as a mere fact to be remembered, and the expectation of similar future sequences, as the result of an original law of our belief, are precisely of the same kind, whether the sequence of changes be in the mind or in matter, singly or reciprocally in both.”*

The essential nature of mind is a problem which belongs to the same category as the nature of life. We know nothing of life apart from organization; and we have no evidences of mind independent of a brain and nervous system. An organism is required for the display of vital phenomena, and an encephalon for the manifestations of mind. Life has accordingly been defined as "the collective expression for a series of phenomena which take place exclusively in bodies that are organized," and mind as "the functional power of the living brain.'

But be it remembered, in affirming that sensation, perception, emotion, thought, and volition are functions of the nervous system, it is only maintained that the vesicular matter of the encephalic ganglia furnishes the material conditions, the substratum through which these mental phenomena are manifested, and that at the same time it is fully admitted the essential phenomena of matter and mind are so completely antagonistic, it is in vain that we attempt to establish any relationship of analogy or identity between them. But we have more satisfaction in the consideration of mind, in the light of force, and in the contemplation of the correlations of the forces of the physical, vital, nervous, and mental, for we see that the nervous and mental forces are constantly interchanged and interchangeable. We note the perpetually-recurring metamorphosis of nerve-force into mind-force, and of mind-force into nerve-force, and the important physiological fact that the nervous matter of the cerebrum is the material substratum through which the metamorphosis is effected. Nay, more, we have actual proof of an increased disintegration of the nervous tissue in the redundant amount of the alkaline phosphates in the urine, when the centre of intel

* Dr. Brown's "Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind." Lecture XIX.

lectual action has been over-taxed. And in all our voluntary movements and volitional acts we see the dynamical agency of mind producing motion, and that of the will, through the instrumentality of the nerve-force, acting upon the muscular system.

Dr. Carpenter has well observed:

"We have evidence in what we know of the physiological conditions under which mind produces motion, that certain forms of the vital force constitute the connecting link between the two; and it is difficult to see that the dynamical agency which we term will is more removed from nerve-force on the one hand, than nerve force is removed from motor force on the other. Each, in giving origin to the next, is itself suspended, or ceases to exist as such, and each bears in its own intensity a precise relation to that of its antecedent and its consequent. But we have not only evidence of the excitement of nerve force by mental agency; the converse is equally true, mental activity being excited by nerve-force. For this is the case in every act in which our consciousness is excited through the instrumentality of the sensorium, whether its conditions be affected by impressions made upon the organs of sense, or by changes in the cerebrum itself, a certain condition of the nervous matter of the sensorium being (we have every reason to believe) the immediate antecedent of all consciousness, whether sensational or ideational. And thus we are led to perceive, that as the power of the will can develop nervous activity, and as nerve force can develop mental activity, there must be a correlation between these two modes of dynamical agency, which is not less intimate and complete than that which exists between the nerve-force on the one hand, and electricity and heat on the other. This idea of correlation of force will be found completely to harmonize with those phenomena which indicate the influence of physical conditions as the determination of mental states, whilst, on the other hand, it explains that relation between emotional excitement and bodily change which is manifested in the subsidence of the former, when it has expended itself in the production of the latter."*

Now, of consciousness as an ultimate fact in animal life-the first of the phenomena of the mind-force-we can best conceive in relation to time, as an incalculably rapid succession of acts or states, and as passing through a series of successive developments from the moment of birth. Purely sensational at first, it emerges gradually, step by step, from self-consciousness, through the perceptive and emotional to the higher phases of intellectual consciousness, until the mind reaches its dominant development in the perfect freedom of volition or the will.

But these progressive phases of mental development are dependent for their very existence upon the evolution and material

* "Human Physiology," pp. 553, 554. Fifth Edition.