188 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



among their classes ; the volumes which treat of them have passed 

 away ; they have been swept down the stream of time, and now and 

 then only is one to be found, which has been washed, by the force 

 of the current, upon the bank, as a relic of the labour and folly of 

 past ages, which that stream has hurried away to eternal oblivion. 

 It is, doubtless, owing to the nature of the studies of the present 

 day, that they affect the mind in so comparatively trifling a degree. 

 If we turn to the records of antiquity, we find numberless treatises 

 on the mental affections which result from the diseased imagination 

 of students. We are there told of peculiar hallucinations which 

 come from over-much study. Of the dotage and insanity of stu- 

 dents, the inevitable and almost certain consequence of their occu- 

 pation, which, in the language of Cicero, " is a continual and 

 earnest meditation, applied to something with great desire." The 

 account which Manfred gives of his studies well illustrates this kind 

 of application and its effects — 



»* I dived, 

 In my lone wanderings, to the caves of death, 

 Searching its cause in its effect ; and drew 

 From witber'd bones, and skulls, and heap'd-up dust, 

 Conclusions most forbidden. Thus I pass'd 

 The nights of years in sciences untaught. 

 Save in the old time ; and with time, and toil, 

 And terrible ordeal, and such penance 

 As in itself hath power upon the air. 

 And spirits that do compass air and earth, 

 Space, and the peopled infinite, I made 

 Mine eyes familiar with Eternity, 

 Such as, before me, did the Magi, and 

 He who, from out their fountain dwellings, raised 

 Eros and Anteros, at Gadara." 



Reason must draw all its materials from the facts which it witnesses 

 or from those which it knows to have taken place. .Imagination, on 

 the contrary, acts upon its own premises, themselves the production 

 of a perverted fancy. The sciences which are purely speculative, 

 are those which most endanger the reasoning faculties of the stu- 

 dent pursuing them ; such are those which relate to the nature of 



