FORMS OF MENTAL DEFECT AND DERANGEMENT. 59 



In its minor degree it is familiar in the form of skittishness. 



In all cases imagination is highly excited, and it exag- 

 gerates, while the reason misinterprets, all impressions on the 

 senses. Panphobia, in common with all other forms of morbid 

 fear, is easily induced by cruel, unjust, or injudicious usage, 

 especially if incessant or prolonged, and this usage may 

 have been applied to an ancestor, rather than to the in- 

 dividual, the mental tendency having been transmitted 

 hereditarily. Sometimes it is suddenly developed from un- 

 expected sounds or sights, by seeing or hearing without 

 premonition any unusual or novel, though perfectly harmless, 

 object or noise. In such cases the result may be the extreme 

 wildness of terror, which may pass at once into reckless 

 dangerous fury, which again may lead to suicide or self- 

 destruction. Among other possible terminations of pan- 

 phobia of such intensity is dementia, with or without 

 emaciation or convulsions, which latter may, or may not, be 

 fatal. 



In general terms it may be said that all the passions or 

 emotions may be so intensified, and so protracted or persis- 

 tent as to become, or to generate forms of what in man are 

 called monomania, moral insanity, mania and melancholia 

 (Pierquin) . Such passions or emotions are particularly grief 

 and joy, rivalry, jealousy and revenge. 



Certain authors speak, and with perfect propriety, of 

 impulsive insanity in the lower animals. That is to say, a 

 desire of a powerful, imperious or overmastering kind, one 

 that is uncontrollable, ungovernable, irresistible, suddenly 

 arises, and it is instantly followed by action. Both the 

 desire and the action may appear so unexpectedly, and 

 occupy so small a space of time, that they seem to be quite 

 momentary or transient. After the act, or action, the animal 

 subsides into its previous condition. Whether the desire or 

 mental action is associated with morbid idea or delusion we 

 know not. Both desire and action are, so far as we can see, 

 independent of, or uninfluenced by, external cause, or by pro- 

 vocation of any kind. 



The morbid impulse takes the direction usually, or fre- 

 quently, of destructiveness or ferocity, a thirst for the destruc- 



