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the importance nor the nature ; and, as the greater part of our ideas are 

 derived from the analogies we are able to discern among the objects that 

 supply them, amidst these troubles of human passion and human reason, 

 we learn to conceive more profoundly of their nature, than if we had 

 been satisfied with observing them in the calm of their natural condition. 

 The observation of mania is yet too imperfect in the number, variety, 

 and precision of its facts, to fix the classification of the species of mental 

 alienation, according to the intellectual faculty that is disordered in each. 

 Professor Pinel has,' nevertheless, ventured to ground his distinctions of 

 the species of mania on the labours of modern psychologists, and shown 

 that all might be referred to five kinds, which he marks by the names of 

 melancholy, of mania without delirium, mania with delirium, dementia, 

 and idiotcy*. In the first four kinds, there is perversion of the mental fa- 

 culties, which are in languid or excessive action. We are not to look 

 for the cause of these derangements in vice of original conformation ; 

 for, melancholy, mania with or without delirium, and madness, scarcely 

 ever appear before puberty. It is agreed, among observers, that almost 

 all maniacs have become so, between twenty and forty years old : that 

 very few have lost their reason either before or after this stormy period 

 of life, wherein men, yielding, by turns, to the torments of love and of am- 

 bition, of fear and of hope, to the sweet illusions of happiness, and the 

 realities of suffering, consumed with passions for ever revivings often re- 

 pressed, and rarely satisfied, feel their intellectual powers impaired, an- 

 nihilated, or abused by that tempest of the moral nature, which has well 

 been compared to the storms which, in their violence, lay desolate the 

 flourishing earth. 



We are compellsd to grant, that our acquaintance with the structure 

 of the brain and of the nerves is too imperfect, thai dissections of the 

 bodies of maniacs have been too few, and those often by physiciansf too 

 little familiar with the minute structure of the sensitive organ, to war- 

 rant us in asserting or denying, that derangement of intellect depends 

 constantly on organic injury; though it is highly probable, many facts, at 

 least, collected by observers, who, like Morgagni, deserve the utmost 

 confidence, authorise the belief, that the consistence of the brain is in- 

 creased in some maniacs who are distinguished by the most obstinate and 

 unvarying adherence to their ruling ideas ; that it is, on the other hand, 

 soft, watery, and in a kind of incipient dissolution, in some others, whose 

 incoherent ideas after their aptitude for association, and for transforma- 

 tion into judgments is gone, succeed one another rapidly, and seem to 

 pass away without a trace, Etc. 



If, in the multitude of maniacs, the organ of the understanding suffer 

 only imperceptible injury, it is very remarkably changed in idiots. The 

 almost entire obliteration of the intellectual faculties, which constitutes 

 idiocty, when it is not brought on by some strong and sudden shock, some 

 unexpected and overwhelming emotion breaking down at once all the 

 springs of thought, when it is an original defect, always connected with 

 mal-conformatiori of the skull, with the constraint of the organs it en- 

 closes. These defects of organization lie, as M. Pinel observes, in the 



* For move ample explanation I must refer to the work. Traite medico-philosophique 

 tnir r Alienation mentals on la Manic, par. P. Pinel. Paris, 1800. Copland. 

 f This censure is especially applicable to the researches of Dr. Greding. Copland, 



