71 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



volitional theory. "We are glad to observe, too, liow fully he has 

 adopted our own views of the emotional nature of insanity, and of 

 the genesis of intellectual delusions or perverted emotions. These 

 opinions, first advocated by us in the twelfth volume of the 3Iedico- 

 Chirurgical Review, in 1853, appear since that time to have been gen- 

 erally adopted by mental physicians, and it is now gratifying to obtain 

 the concurrence of a great physiologist and philosopher. 



The modes of disturbed emotion which tend to the production of 

 insanity are not, according to our observations, the various forms of 

 angry passion which are commonly called quick or bad temper, and 

 the author has probably accepted, in too serious a sense, the remark 

 made to him by Dr. Conolly on this point. 



" The writer well remembers, when going with Dr. Conolly through one of 

 the wards on the female side of the lunatic asylum at Hanwell, Dr. Conolly re- 

 marked to him, 'It is my belief that two-thirds of the women here have come 

 to require restraint through the habitual indulgence of an originally bad tem- 

 per ' '• (p. 663). 



Conversational remarks of this kind are often made with little in- 

 tention of their being taken accurately in support of scientific theories. 

 Probably the doctor had just then been vexed with some extraordinary 

 display of female temper, but we think that if questioned he would 

 have admitted that insane women as a class have scarcely worse tem- 

 pers than other women, and that angry feelings do not constitute the 

 modes of emotion which more frequently lead to the evolution of in- 

 sanity. Grief and pride, and that compound of hope and fear we call 

 anxiety, these are the modes of emotion which are the frequent ground- 

 work of mental disease. 



In conclusion, we can strongly recommend this interesting and 

 erudite work to our readers. If we think the automatism of the men- 

 tal functions which physiologists are compelled to recognize is op- 

 posed adversely to the methods of strict science, by the much-debated 

 and certainly unestablished doctrine of free-will, it must not be for- 

 gotten that the author, in his belief in the freedom of the will, has on 

 his side the support of widely-spread opinion, and that it is somewhat 

 unfortunate that his conscientious labors to prove and establish the 

 physiological importance of free-will have fallen in this instance for 

 review into the hands of one who, with Jonathan Edwards, believes 

 that there is no such thing. The scope of the work is far larger than 

 the comments which our space permits us to make would lead our 

 readers to expect. It is replete with information, and remarkable for 

 clearness of statement and of thought. Disagreeing, as we do, with its 

 main purpose, we cannot avoid the expectation and the hope that it will 

 provoke rivalry, and yet it richly deserves, and will no doubt occupy, 

 a place in medical literature, the vacancy of which has been much felt, 

 as a text-book on Mental Physiology. — Journal of Mental Science. 



