86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



extra-ocular movement are inseparably embodied with ocular feelings 

 of movement in the eye's perception even of form elements, and the 

 former are at least equally valuable with the latter. For the rest, I 

 attach much value to the intellectual factor in the appreciation of 

 form that is, the coordination of numbers of these slightly pleasur- 

 able elements under agreeable relations of unity and proportion. 

 Taking the factors just named as the direct factor, and contrasting 

 them with the less directly associated elements as the indirect factor, I 

 should say that the former decidedly outweighs the latter in what we 

 call beauty of form. Every beautiful form will, I think, be found to 

 owe its charm in the main either to the specially pleasurable character 

 of its elements (ocular or tactual), or to the presence of a large num- 

 ber of distinct aspects of variety and unity. The former is the beauty 

 of simple forms, the latter that of intricate forms. 



-*- 



HYSTERIA AjSTD DEMONISM * 



A STUDY IN MORBID PSYCHOLOGY. 



By CHAELES EICHET. 



I. 



PROBABLY very few persons who have been in Paris have visited 

 the Salpetriere. A home for old age, an asylum for the insane, 

 are not tempting spectacles, and it pleases us rather than otherwise to 

 be unmindful of the fact that within the great city of Paris is included 

 another city- of aged women and mad people, which contains nearly 

 five thousand inhabitants. The Salpetriere is designed primarily as 

 an abode for infirm old women, and would afford materials for a very 

 curious study of psychology in the observation of the feelings and 

 passions of its inmates to any one desirous of analyzing the effects of 

 age on human intelligence. This study may be attempted some day, 

 but our present purpose is different. Among the insane who are con- 

 fined in the Salpetriere are patients who would formerly have been 

 burned, whose disease would have passed for a crime three centuries 

 ago. The study of the malady under which these unfortunates suffer, 

 in its present and past aspects, affords a new and instructive chapter in 

 the history of human thought. 



In pursuing the present inquiry, we shall endeavor first to describe 

 the psychological symptoms of hysteria. The knowledge of this dis- 

 ease has received a remarkable development under the careful investi- 

 gations of the physicians of the Salpetriere, and it may be that some 

 of the facts they have discovered will interest persons who are not ac- 

 * Translated from the " Revue dcs Deux Mondes " by W. II. Larrabee. 



