this subject, is enabled to devote its concentrated energies to the task. One mysterious question remains to be asked-What is the nature of the vision which the somnambulist appears to possess? seeing that frequently the eyes are quite closed; and even when not so, they are unadapted to the ordinary mode of receiving visual impressions. Is there a transference of special sensation? is some part of the surface endowed with something analogous to visual faculties? The records of the various forms of hypnotism, vouched for by men of no mean standing or credibility, would appear to favour such a hypothesis; but, in the present stage of our investigation, we feel unprepared to pass a judgment on so vexed a question. On the phenomena of double consciousness we offer no comments, feeling assured that, as yet, our opportunities of observation have been too few and limited to permit of any satisfactory or efficient generalization. Our subject would be incomplete without some brief notice of artificial somnambulism-called, by various authorities, Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Animal Magnetism, &c. &c. By certain manipulations, or demands upon the attention in various forms, or many other means practised upon individuals of very mobile, irritable, imaginative, or otherwise excitable temperaments, certain results are produced more or less analogous to the phenomena of somnambulism; but, if any credit be to be attached to the reports, with many of a more wonderful character superadded. The phenomena said to be produced by the magnetizers are as follow:: 1. "A sense of perflation" all over the system, increase of temperature, and what may be termed hyperconsciousness. 2. A state of drowsiness, and partial excitements of the senses. 3. Complete sleep, insensibility to all stimuli-the patient hears and sees nothing, feels no wound or injury to the personcatalepsy. 4. Somnambulism.-In this condition, it is averred the patient can barely distinguish by the sight light from darkness, but "the sense of feeling is metamorphosed into something equivalent to sight"-so that colours of objects, and positions of minute bodies are recognised-and reading is accomplished without aid from the eyes. The seat of this supplementary sense is in the epigastrium, the top of the head, and the fingerends. The patient can see through opaque media, and the sense of hearing becomes preternaturally acute. Of these phenomena, those included under the first three heads are doubtless to be produced on subjects properly adapted for such production; those of the fourth class, together with numerous others still more wonderful, asserted by the advocates of this system, are properly regarded as fables. The French commission appointed towards the close of the last century to investigate the claims of the mesmerists, which included the celebrated names of Franklin, Bailly, Lavoisier, Jussieu, and many others of equal eminence, reported strongly against them; admitting certain results, but denying the existence of any "magnetic fluid"-asserting that the phenomena were the result of the imagination powerfully influenced-and, finally, that the effects produced might be dangerous, but never useful. As this subject throws no new light upon the phenomena, or relations of natural somnambulism, it is unnecessary to pursue it further. ART. III. ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN MORBID PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA. No. 5 OF A SERIES. BY THE REV. J. F. DENHAM, M.A., F.R.S., ETC. THE present paper will contain an account of those co-existing morbid physical and religious phenomena which the writer considers to have come under his notice, belonging to the department of Remorse. His design renders it requisite,-(1) to ascertain what is to be understood by genuine remorse; (2) to describe the characteristics of spurious remorse; (3) to adduce reasons for assigning to them a merely morbid and physical origin; (4) to suggest means of prevention and cure. (1) By genuine remorse, according to the definition of it given by Clarendon, Bishop Hall, &c., and derived from the etymology of the word, is meant, "the keen pain or anguish excited by a sense of guilt; compunction for a vicious, or sinful act committed." Dr. Thomas Brown describes it as "the dreadful moral regret arising from the certainty that we have rendered ourselves unworthy of the love of man and of the approbation of our God" the salutary influence of conscience, which, though it cannot restore innocence itself, may at least, by the images which it awakes, soften the mind to that repentance which is almost innocence under another form,"-" that terrible voice which it is impossible to fly, because it is with us wherever we may fly, and which we can still only in one manner; by acting so as to merit, not its silence only, but its applause."* St. Paul defines it as the accusing testimony of conscience, involving both the existence of the moral "law written in the hearts of all men," and the painful consciousness of having transgressed that law :+ "Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind." Edinburgh. 1880, pp. 428, 233, 633. + Rom. ii. 14, 15. as "godly sorrow, working repentance unto salvation not to be repented of:*-literally, sorrow according to God, "a sorrow arising from causes out of which God would have it arise, and which have the effects he wishes them to have."+ According to these definitions, genuine remorse is not only painful, but is also intelligent, pious, and curative, or promotes moral improvement; "is operative, diligent, and instrumental to caution and strict walking-the mother of holy living." We must therefore (2) consign to the department of mere spurious remorse all those feelings, &c., which though in the latitude, or through the imperfection of language, commonly passing under the name of Remorse, have not these qualities nor tend to these results; but have only a distorted or inefficient semblance of them, amounting only to a mere rue (rudo), and consisting only of indefinable "low spirits," dread, anxiety, vexation, hypochondriacal grief and woe; and attended with a general torpor or debility of the judgment. The distinction between genuine and spurious remorse is intimated in the New Testament by the restriction of the term μɛTávola, or reform, to the former, and μɛraμéλeia, a mere sorrow, to the latter; "because every one who reforms, repents; but every one who repents, does not reform." The Romans also called the former conscientia, pietas; the latter furiæ, morsus, emorsus. Horace thus describes a good re pentance. "Scelerum si bene pœnitet, Eradenda cupidinis Pravi sunt elementa; et teneræ nimis Formande studiis."|| The prophet Hosea describes the subjects of spurious remorse as "not crying unto God with their heart, when they howled on their beds as returning, but not to the Most High,"¶ the distinction being here made, as, in regard of the mere semblance of virtues, elsewhere, "not unto me,"** having neither pious motives, nor producing moral reformation. (3) The following reasons are offered for assigning to the phenomena of spurious remorse a merely morbid and physical origin : I. It may be observed, generally, that spurious, or unintelligent, irrational, and unimproving remorse in the abstract, or when arising from even innocent causes, is never unassociated with either positive indications of bodily disease, or with a morbid * 2 Cor. 7, 10, 11. +Rosenmüller, Schol. in loc. Bishop Jer. Taylor. Sermon 3, on Godly Fear. Part. i. § Campbell, "Diss." 6. Ch. vii. 14, 16. Carmen, Od. xxiv. lib. 3. ** Zech. vii. 5. diathesis of the body, loose fibre, sensitive and imaginative temperament, or at least, with a diminished state of physical power. The mildest form of it is the penitential regret experienced along with fatigue, arising, especially, from over-excitement, or from an unusual degree of innocent enjoyment; as in the evening or morning after "a day's pleasure," or during the homeward journey from a tour, or an excursion. It increases with the increase of disease; declines with convalescence: and, except in hypochondriacal temperaments, wholly ceases with the restoration of health and strength. In such temperaments it is liable to be revived by whatever excites the nervous system. Its exacerbations follow a full meal, are greatest at night and least in the morning; are mitigated by cathartic medicines and other means of alleviating hypochondriacal disorders. II. Paroxysms of spurious remorse peculiarly follow the grosser sins of the flesh; as when the transgressor awakes in the morning, "cana desurgat dubia," and becomes conscious of the excesses and irregularities of the preceding evening, and has, what in popular language are called, "the horrors," quin corpus onustum Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravat unà," is ashamed of himself; and vexed at the disability of mind, body, and estate, which he has incurred. His desponding or excited emotions are, however, all connected, either with the stomach, which Haller justly calls "the conscience of the body," or with the heart, or with the brain; and generally partake more or less of delirium tremens :-are alleviable, and, perhaps, for many successive occasions, by alcoholic stimulants, and by other means which indicate the merely physical origin and nature of such emotions. Spurious remorse, indeed, in any violent degree, rarely follows immediately upon any depravity wholly unconnected with debauchery. III. It is, also, seldom permanent until the physical powers have become, by such means, permanently impaired. Valetudinary sensualists have often remarked to me, that they experienced only temporary and trifling visitations of what they called remorse, until their health had become seriously damaged or completely undermined. IV. Spurious remorse, however intense, produces no lasting reformation of conduct, gathers no improvement from religious motives, or even from considerations of self-interest. Its tendency is rather to weaken the moral powers and the judgment, by occupying the mind's attention with the physical feelings. Thus, the sensualist who, under the actual endurance of his miserable "next morning" sensations, may make resolutions, vows, promises-utter profuse self-condemnation and impassioned prayers, may, nevertheless, too often, be found to incur, perhaps in the evening of the same day, or at no distant period, a renewal of all his sufferings and humiliations, and thus to exemplify the Proverb that "as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to (margin, iterateth,) his folly:"* and to illustrate St. Peter's comparison of him to "the sow that was washed and turneth to her wallowing in the mire."+ The following case of such fruitless remorse affords a specimen of an occurrence too frequent in the observation of all ministers of religion. "A man having upon his bed of sickness received in his own conceit the sentence of death in himself; and being pressed to humiliation and broken-heartedness, for he had formerly been a stranger and an enemy to purity and the power of godliness, answered thus: 'My heart is broken;' and so broke out into an earnest confession of particular sins; he named uncleanness, stubbornness, hypocrisy, &c. He compared himself to the thief upon the cross. "And if God," saith he, "restore me to health again, the world shall see what an altered man I will be." When he was pressed to sincerity and true-heartedness in what he said, he protested that he repented with all his heart and soul, and mind, and bowels, &c.; and desired a minister that stood by to be a witness of these things between the world and him. And yet this man upon his recovery became the very same, if not worse than he was before." V. Spurious remorse frequently evinces its morbid origin by its being excited by the most trifling, absurd, and even imaginary causes, and by its disproportion to the cause of it, and not unfrequently by its being attended with an insensibility to real and even heinous ill-conduct on the part of the subject of it. I have met with cases approximating to that of the shepherd in Italy, who in his confession in Lent expressed his concern, that in making cheese, some of the milk had spurted into his mouth, and desired absolution for it, but who, upon being questioned by the priest whether he was not a party in those robberies and murders which were committed in the neighbourhood on travellers, readily owned it, and added that this mode of enriching themselves was not looked upon as criminal among his neighbours.§ A female of declining age, feeble health, uncultivated mind, the subject of vivid religious emotions, strictly temperate, but guilty of ingenious cruelty towards a step-daughter, suffered intense remorse, at times, till the day of her death, from having, in haste, torn a leaf out of her Bible for the purpose of lighting + 2 Pet. ii. 22. * Prov. xxvi. 11. |