66 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



of quick and lively apprehension, and thus be witty without being 

 wise. But the faculty of wit is not dependent so much upon the 

 judgment as upon the imagination. " And hence/' says Mr. Locke, 

 " some reason may be perhaps given for that common observation 

 that men who have a great deal of wit have not always the clearest 

 judgment or the deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assem- 

 blage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and va- 

 riety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby 

 to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy. 

 Judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separat- 

 ing carefully one from the other ideas, wherein can be found the 

 least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and 

 by affinity to take one thing for another. And hence we may 

 easily account for that gaiety, and those ebullitions of a vivid fancy, 

 which so often assume the character of wit in persons whose minds 

 are deranged." How wonderfully has this property of the Imagi- 

 nation of the insane been analyzed by Shakspeare : 



" How pregnant sometimes his replies are ! 

 A happiness that often madness hits on, 

 Which sanity and reason could not be 

 So prosperously delivered of." 



How powerful a faculty of the human mind is the Imagination ! 

 and how necessary is it for persons in whom it is apt to reign para- 

 mount to the judgment, to acquire, by all artificial means, some 

 control over it, which nature has not given them. In the cases 

 which we have been considering, those of Hamlet and the French 

 watch-maker, an encouragement of its undue prevalence was the 

 principal cause of their insanity ; and though, with the exception 

 of some rare instances, the Imagination itself might not actually 

 become so tyrannical as to render the individual insane without 

 the application of some powerful moral affection, still this unequal 

 balance between it and the judgment render the mind less capable 

 of resisting any shock which, in the varied tenor of human occur- 

 rences, it is so likely to receive. When thus indulged, the mind 

 does not view the objects around it in their proper light and natural 

 relation ; it takes part of their properties only, and forms them into 

 combinations which are incongruous and unnatural. Acting upon 

 data thus constituted, the conclusions which it draws cannot possi- 

 bly be sound, since the premises upon which it acts are either 

 decked in borrowed beauty or distorted by ideal deformity. The mind 

 thus becomes like a bad mirror, which throws shades upon beauty, 



