AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 239 



or they would judge more correctly as to those circumstances about 

 which the Imagination employs them. When I say, awake, per- 

 haps I may be misunderstood : they are awake, as far as regards 

 their customary actions — those actions which they perform indepen- 

 dent of the governing or directing power of the judgment ; but dor- 

 mant as far as relates to their detection of the qualities of bodies. 

 They resemble, very much, the state of the senses in insanity, ex- 

 emplified by the case of a poor gentleman, in Edinburgh, who, in 

 a state of mental derangement, was limited, in his diet, to simple 

 milk-porridge. He was curious in his selection of dainties, (he ob- 

 served to a visitor), careful in his choice of cooks, had every day a 

 dinner of three regular courses and a desert, but, somehow or other, 

 all he ate smelt and tasted of porridge. The state of this poor gen- 

 tleman's senses resemble precisely those of the sleep-walker. Ne- 

 gretti had prepared himself a bowl of salad, for which seasoned cab- 

 bage was substituted, but he did not detect the deception. Others 

 have taken coffee for snufF, water for wine ; imagined when they 

 were struck with a stick that they were bitten by a dog, and resolved 

 all objects, with which they came in contact, into the tenants of their 

 own wandering and distempered fancy. It is not, perhaps, by exa- 

 mining, in an isolated and simple manner, the mental condition in 

 any morbid or erratic state, that we are enabled satisfactorily to ex- 

 plain the phenomena which, under these states, are exhibited to us ; 

 but, on comparing one with another, — as insanity with sleep-walk- 

 ing — we arrive at a clear and satisfactory elucidation of what before 

 appeared to us a mystery. Thus, in insanity, we find the senses 

 correct in their action ; whilst the Imagination throws the hue of 

 its own peculiar colour over the scenes which they present to it ; or 

 we find, as in the case I have just alluded to of the Scotch gentle- 

 gentleman, one sense bearing direct testimony to the false action of 

 another. In somnambulism, the Imagination is the predominant 

 faculty in activity, and the senses are strictly subordinate to it. 



We must admit, with the phrenologists, the appropriation of cer- 

 tain parts of the brain to the fulfilment of certain actions ; and^ 

 reasoning from this disposition, we may conclude that, when the 

 senses of the sleep-walker correctly judge of what is presented to 

 them, the judgment is, also, awake, at least to a small extent. 

 Thus, Devaud detected wine, in which there w^as wormwood, by the 

 smell ; and the servant girl, at Chelmsford, could not be imposed 

 upon in the colour of the different cottons. In the insane person,, 

 all the organs — ^both of the senses and the intellectual faculties — 

 are awake: but, in somnambulism, parts of these only are watching. 



