"So keenly susceptible of both conditions, that they pass their whole lives in an alternation between cheerfulness and depression, the former state being favoured by freedom from anxiety, by the healthy activity of all the organic functions, by a bright sun, and a dry bracing atmosphere, whilst the latter is immediately induced by mental disquietude, by a slight disorder of digestion or excretion, or by a dull, oppressive day. In such individuals, favourable conditions may even exalt the canæsthesis into exhilaration or absolute joy, whilst the combined influence of opposite conditions may produce gloom, which may be exaggerated almost to despair. The condition of the spirits' most to be desired is that of tranquil comfort, for this is far more favourable than the alternation of extremes to healthful activity, and to sustained energy both of body and mind." (To be continued.) ART. VI.-ON MORAL AND CRIMINAL EPIDEMICS. WHILST the science of teratology was still young and unrecognised, Geoffroy St. Hilaire was one day told by a friend of a wonderful foetal monstrosity which had just been shown him. "Did you see at the same time," asked Geoffroy, "the abortive placenta and umbilical cord of the second fœtus?" "Then you have seen it?" asked his friend. "No; but these are the necessary and inevitable conditions of an abnormal development such as you describe." The philosopher recognises no accident. To him, there is no phenomenon without a cause, an antecedent adequate to its production; no cause but such as is reducible to law. He sees alike in the normal progress, and in the apparently exceptional conditions of the physical and moral world, only illustrations of law and order. The law may appear to be broken, nay, controverted by irregularities; the order may seem to be disturbed by disorders; anomalies may present themselves;-yet in all this he sees but evidence of wider grasp and adaptability; of general principles illustrated under conditions not yet investigated, yet susceptible of being so: the anomaly he knows to be only such in reference to his own finite powers and intelligence; he even retains his conviction, a conviction which affords the only stable foundation for all science, that similar elements, reacting under similar conditions, will produce similar results; and his confidence, that the same power which regulates the succession of day and * Dr. Carpenter's "Human Physiology." Sir Henry Holland has published some admirable papers-On the Effects of Mental Attention on Bodily Organs, in his "Medical Notes and Reflections,' and in his chapters on Mental Philosophy, well worthy of the attention of the medical philosopher and observant practitioner. night, of seed time and harvest, is in operation to "guide the whirlwind and direct the storm.'" دو Does an earthquake spread ruin and devastation over a district -does famine or pestilence exhale its baleful influence over a continent does a comet glare threateningly upon the earth for a time, and pass away into illimitable space-does the sea swallow up the dry land, or the land encroach upon the sea,-in all this he sees, not the evidence of any new and unknown, but the manifestations of the universal law, acting under conditions as yet imperfectly known to him. Lastly, does war decimate whole kingdoms, or a moral blight pass over and corrupt a community or a nation; he knows that the passions, impulses, appetites, instincts, prejudices, and weaknesses of man are, as they ever were, the source of all moral disturbances. The elements are constant, though their combinations may be variable. Hence the history of yesterday is the interpretation of to-day, the prophecy of to-morrow. With this conviction of the constancy of the relation between cause and effect ineradicably fixed in the mind, he boldly, yet cautiously, sets about the investigation of these apparently irregular phenomena, and the conditions under which they occur. He collects and compares numbers of similar and analogous facts, he considers carefully the powers which are proximately operative in their production, he separates the casual from the universal, the essential from the adventitious, and analyses the whole on strictly inductive principles. And great is his reward! Not only are the irregularities themselves reduced to system and order, but, in their turn, they are made to contribute their quota to the knowledge and definition of the very laws themselves from which they seemed to err. It was by observation on such principles as these of the abnormal developments of animal structure, that Geoffroy not only constructed the science of teratology, but also laid the foundation for the discovery and definition of the true archetype of the osseous skeleton; it was by analysis of the irregularities of the pendulum that the figure of the earth was determined; it was by the observance of what were at first deemed to be casualties, that polarized light was discovered, and all the laws of optics defined and advanced. But perhaps the most striking illustration of this principle that the world has ever witnessed has been presented during the last few years, in the discovery of the planet Neptune. Certain irregularities in the motions of Saturn and Herschel had long been observed, which were of so peculiar a nature that it even began to be conjectured that at the confines of our system law was not so certain in its operations as near the centre. It was evident, however, that this view, if received, would tend to sap the founda tion of all science; and men like Leverrier and Adams, who were content to recognise no effect without a definite and sufficient cause which would inevitably and invariably produce the phenomenon, boldly hypothecated the existence of such a cause; and by pursuing a chain of inductive and mathematical reasoning and analysis, which appears almost superhuman, they were enabled ultimately to point their telescope to that part of the heavens where the disturbing body ought to exist-where it did actually exist, and so to extend the knowledge of our planetary system twice as far into space as before. The aspect of the present times leads us anxiously and earnestly to inquire, whether some similar system of investigation may not be applied with advantage to the solution of the startling problems which are everywhere presented to us. The science of Sociology is new and imperfect; yet we are sure that it will afford no exception to the general rule which obtains in all; that, if perfected, it must be through a careful observation of its abnormal, or exceptional, as well as its normal phenomena. Nothing is stronger than the contrast between mind and matter, as to their essential nature; but, on the other hand, nothing is more striking than the correspondence in their mode of development, and in the laws which they mutually obey-such correspondence perhaps arising in some measure from the fact, that mind is only manifested through its connexion with matter, and also in many cases from the overpowering influence which each in turn exerts upon the other. As the body has its condition of health, including many gradations of energy and power, so the mind has its normal state, extending from the verge of imbecility to the intelligence almost godlike; as the body is affected by diseases of excitement or depression, so the mind has its passions, its mania, its melancholy; as plague and pestilence attack and hurry off their thousands and tens of thousands at one time, so to an equal extent does a more terrific blight than this pass over a country or a continent, at variable and uncertain periods in the history of man, changing the whole aspect of his moral nature, and converting what was once the image and likeness of God into the semblance of a fiend. At one time the spirit of (falsely so called) religious controversy will arouse the most ferocious passions of which human nature is susceptible, provoking mutual persecutions, bloodshed, and wars; at another, an epidemic of resistance to constituted authority will spread over half a world (as in the year 1848) rapid and simultaneous as the most virulent bodily disorder. Again is the collective character of mental phenomena illustrated by an anomalous psychological condition invading and dominating over thousands upon thousands, depriving them of everything but automatic action, and giving rise to the popular opinion of demoniacal possession-an opinion in some sense justified by the satanic passions, emotions, and acts which accompany the state. At one period, the aggregate tendency is to retirement and contemplation; hence the countless votaries of monachism and anachoretism; at another the mania is directed towards action, having for its proposed end some Utopian scheme, equally impracticable and useless; hence the myriads who have forsaken their kindred, their homes, and their country, to seek a land whose stones were gold, or to wage exterminating war for the possession of worthless cities and trackless deserts. Less disastrous than these, in their influence numerically upon the mass of mankind, perhaps much more so in their demoralizing results, are those cases in which, in the absence of proper moral culture, the seeds of vice and crime appear to be sown under the surface of society, and to spring up and bring forth fruit with appalling rapidity and paralysing succession. Here it is a forgery, bringing ruin upon thousands; there a suicide, the consequence and self-imposed penalty for other crimes. Now a brother's hand is raised against his brother, a son's against his father; now it is the mother who forgets even her natural instincts, and lifts a murderous hand upon her child; and again, the nearest and dearest relation of life-that of husband and wife-is violently severed by the administration of secret poison. A panic seizes upon society; man is afraid "for the terror by night," and for the "arrow that flieth by day," for "the pestilence that walketh in darkness," and for the "sickness that destroyeth in the noonday." He knows not whence the next stroke may come, so unexpected, so unnatural is the source of these crimes; the foundations of all social and domestic confidence are sapped by suspicion, and we think we hear again, as of old, the pathetic lament, "It is not an open enemy that hath done this thing, for then I could have borne it; neither was it mine adversary that did rise up against me, for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him; but it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took sweet counsel together, and walked together as friends." It is fearful to think how forcible an illustration of this kind of epidemic is afforded us by the history of the last few months. Crime succeeds crime with unparalleled rapidity, like the monotonous strokes of a moral knell. The editor of the Tablet bitterly observes that "England is fast becoming a hell upon earth. Pernicious teachings are followed by pernicious practices. Thus the world is horrified within one short month by the harvest of crime which mantles Great Britain with its disastrous and funereal shadow." More temperately, yet not less forcibly, others set forth the state of society which we have imperfectly depicted. In the English Churchman of February 28th, there occurs the following passage, the commencement of a feeling and judicious appeal to the church itself: "It is very difficult to refrain from the conclusion that we are, just now, living in the presence of an increased accumulation of greater crimes than has been before witnessed by the present generation. We do not forget the notorious criminals of the first portion of the present half century the Thurtells and Fauntleroys of that day; but there was not that fearful constellation of crime, as we may term it, which we witness in these days, and which almost every week increases, by some deed which either in the depth of the sin, or the rank of the sinner, shocks and distresses the whole nation. Murders, forgeries, suicides suicides, forgeries, murders-to say nothing of other sins-have come upon us alternately, with fearful frequency, and in high places as well as low. No sooner had one case spread over the whole kingdom than another occurs to eclipse it, or to dispute a place with it in the public mind. The legislature, commerce, the race-course, the private family, alike contribute to swell the list the single apartment of the working classes and the stately halls of the aristocracy are equally the scene of lamentation, mourning, and woe.'" The following passage from the Christian Times of January 25th enters a little more into the causes of the same phenomena, particularly as to imitation: "An epidemic of murders seems to be raging just now. We can hardly take up a daily paper without reading of some fresh murder of more than usual atrocity, while the details of the great Rugeley case, dragged slowly to light by the untiring and unerring ministry of science, fill us with horror and amazement that such a series of such crimes should be possible in the broad daylight of our nineteenth century of civilization. . . . But the Rugeley case is far from being the only one which painfully occupies the attention of the public. During the last weeks, great crimes-especially murders-have succeeded each other with a rapidity which suggests and explains the title of our article. Crime propagates itself by infection, like fever and small-pox, and at times it seems as if the infection came abroad into the atmosphere, and exacted its tribute from every class and every district of the country. The laws of moral infection, and the propagation of moral disorders, are among the most recondite and difficult subjects of contemplation; there is something fearful in the very thought that man may so abdicate his moral freedom as to bring his will and moral nature under the sway of laws as imperious and resistless as those which sustain and balance the orbits of the stars. But we cannot be blind to the fact. There is a large class of minds over which great crimes exert a kind of fascination; and those who have never trained themselves to exercise the responsibilities of moral freedom, are |