72 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



ences with good and bad angels, and, according to the respective in- 

 fluences of these delusions, he was mild or furious — inclined to acts 

 of beneficence, or roused to deeds of ferocity. This feature of the 

 imagination of the maniac has not escaped the penetration of some 

 of the Greek poets, who were extremely partial to illustrations of 

 madness, and fond of peopling the diseased minds of the guilty ma- 

 niacs, and pursuing their footsteps with the furies. The finest 

 example of this, perhaps, in the whole range of Greek literature, is 

 that wonderful scene in the Orestes of Euripides, where the mad- 

 ness of Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, is re- 

 presented : 



" Ah ! mother, do not set thy furies on me ; 

 See how their fiery eyeballs glare in blood ! 

 And wreathing snakes hiss in their horrid hair ! 

 There, there they stand ready to leap upon me. 

 Oh ! Phoebus, they will kill me ; these dire forms, 

 These gorgon-visag'd ministers of hell ! 

 Oif ! let me go ! — I know thee, who thou art, 

 One of the furies, and thou grapplest with me 

 To whirl me into Tartarus. — A vaunt !" 



1 am, perhaps, a little anticipating the subject of my last lecture, 

 by mentioning the hallucinations produced by the Imagination ; but 

 they are so intimately connected with the fancies of the insane, that 

 they will hardly be considered out of place. 



I have endeavoured, in my former papers, to trace the general 

 phenomena of the Imagination ; but their limits would not permit 

 me to bring forward that vast body of facts, as yet scattered through 

 the whole domain of literature, which completely illustrate its 

 power. Our mental health altogether depends on the due regula- 

 tion of the Imagination. Most men, from natural tendency, from 

 peculiar turn of mind, at first determined by chance and confirmed 

 by education, are apt to take up some leading idea, and to foster it 

 to the prejudice of their judgment. When this is the child of pas- 

 sion, the case becomes of a more serious character, since our passions, 

 rather than our literary or scientific pursuits, enchain the subordi- 

 nate faculties of the mind, making the whole of these faculties sub- 

 servient to one governing and absorbing power. Ambition, desire 

 of fame, fear, love, and anger, are those from which we have, per- 

 haps, most to fear. It is, in many instances, the unlimited indul- 

 gence of one of these, which lays the foundation for that predisposi- 

 tion to insanity, without which it seldom occurs. The Imagination 

 itself, when continually bent towards one point, and limited to one 



