Heredity, Variation and Genius 13 



monstrously irrational except by occasional 

 chance — which notoriously herald the invasion 

 and accompany the progress of general paralysis 

 of the insane ; a condition of advancing cerebral 

 degeneration in which notwithstanding a persis- 

 tent exaltation of feeling, owing probably to a 

 toxic product of the degeneration, the nerve- 

 paths of normal intellectual associations are by 

 degrees visibly damaged and finally destroyed. 

 Are we then to think that the ecstatic expansion 

 of self into a sort of luminous tenuity of feeling 

 or melting into space with simultaneous contrac- 

 tion of the outer world signifies an actual trans- 

 lation into a higher life ? A consideration not 

 irrelevant is that a quite opposite feeling of 

 deepest dejection and desolate misery with ap- 

 palling loss of sense of realities — a vast, vague, 

 ineffable woe — notably overwhelms the victim of 

 profound melancholia and was once thought to 

 denote actual possession by the devil : notoriously 

 on that memorable occasion when the devil, 

 driven out of the demoniac, entered the Gadarene 

 swine and drove them headlong down a steep 

 place into the sea. 



Evidently the state of exaltation is much the 

 same whether it is stimulated by chemical agents 

 from without, such as alcohol and opium, or is 

 produced by some subtile toxin generated within 

 the body, as seems to be the case in general 

 paralysis, or is induced by the appropriate mental 

 excitement and exclusive exercise of a particular 



