DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 265 



abnormal excitement- Entification is now displayed in 

 its nude and native state, and serves to explain the 

 constant mental process, and the true nature of the 

 representations of the intellect. The transition is 

 easy from delirium to madness, for although an 

 insane person is not always delirious, but sometimes 

 calm and composed, yet there is a fundamental re- 

 semblance to delirium in the change in his states of 

 consciousness and its relative organs, which imply a 

 constant hallucination. The most famous and acute 

 physicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a 

 hundred insane persons are subject to hallucinations. 

 The morbid condition which generates them is also 

 produced by debility, by anaemia, and the senile decay 

 of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, 

 idiocy, and old age, and the physiological and mental 

 causes are the same ; the power of fixing the attention 

 and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing to 

 the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the ex- 

 ternal world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent 

 organs. In these cases the recollections which are not 

 altogether lost sometimes reappear as hallucinations. 

 The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms 

 of dementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from 

 their morbid and organic conditions, derived from the 

 same source which produces myths, dreams, and 

 normal hallucinations ; the objective entification of 

 images is due to the innate faculty of the perception, 

 which leads to the immediate personification of any 



