DREAMS AND DELUSIONS. 10? 



to which imagination is developed in the animal. A highly 

 imaginative animal, especially if imagination be associated 

 with the tendency to fear, and with physical and mental 

 excitability, is always liable to regard omne ignotum pro 

 tri'i-ifico, to 'make a mountain of a molehill,' to ascribe 

 to simple, harmless, inanimate objects fantastic forms and 

 formidable characters, to transform the bush, tree, fence, 

 post, or stone, that is quite familiar and undreaded in day- 

 light, into some hideous spectre in the defective night-light. 

 Hence it takes fright readily at imaginary peril ; hence the 

 singular effects so frequently and so suddenly produced in 

 certain excitable animals simply by objects that are for the 

 moment unfamiliar, with which the idea of possible or pro- 

 bable danger is almost sure to be associated. 



Many nervous animals, especially horses, are frightened 

 inordinately simply by darkness, which imagination peoples 

 apparently with the same kind of hobgoblins as it does in 

 the case of the nervous child. It is probable that such 

 horses are quite as imaginative as many high-bred children 

 and women, or as the uncultured peasantry of such countries 

 as Ireland, or even as certain men of the highest culture 

 and refinement. The imagination in other animals than 

 man may not embrace the same kind or variety of subjects 

 or ideals ; it may not run riot quite in the same directions ; 

 but it certainly appears to operate in the same way, and 

 its disorders produce similar effects for weal or for woe 

 generally for woe. 



There is the same kind of difficulty that exists in man in 

 determining when fear, fancy, or suspicion becomes morbid. 

 But there can be no doubt as to the character of the extreme 

 forms or degrees of morbid fancy, fear, or suspicion, either 

 in other animals or in man.' In the former they constitute 

 or amount to what in man are variously known as monomania 

 of fear or suspicion, and panphobia a morbid dread of every- 

 thing, every other animal, every man. This condition, as 

 well as the minor stages which lead up to it, are discussed 

 in the chapters on ' Mental Derangement,' it being suitable 

 here only to consider the morbid ideas the delusions proper 

 that are involved. 



