50 On Idiocy. [Jan., 



clouding the without ? Was there a curse which still could not 

 extinguish the celestial fire ? Bound with iron on the rock, torn 

 by the everlasting bird, ever living, never dying. Thus with the 

 type of organic life, was it thus in degree with the living example 

 of a mindless body ? There was no aberration evident to the 

 thinkers of old in the " iho$ ; " he was not chased by the Furies, 

 but he was bound with invisible chains. Psyche was hidden, but 

 the Satyr was free. The priesthood could but recognize some of 

 the psychical conditions of the solitary in the exhausted and 

 mentally collapsed state of the oracular virgins after prolonged 

 religious excitement, and after the influence of the ritualistic thera- 

 peutics of the day had ceased to stimulate. These thoughts were 

 probably common enough in a land where nature was luxuriant 

 and where incessant toil was not requisite for existence. Farther 

 to the east, where the struggle for life has never been great, there 

 has been no hesitation in asserting that the idiot and the insane 

 are under the especial care of the Deity ; and amongst the followers 

 of Mahomet the first of these has ever been looked upon with awe 

 from the apparently willing self-exposure to the noonday sun, to 

 the bitterest cold, and from the total disregard of consequences. 



There is nothing in the cuneiform writing of the Babylonians 

 nor in the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians to denote the existence of 

 idiots during the time when those empires flourished ; and it is 

 very remarkable that there should not have been any notice of the 

 idiotic state mentioned in the Book of Leviticus in the catalogue 

 of those physical defects which were to prevent the priest from 

 taking an active part in the ceremonial of the Tabernacle. 



If misery, social degradation,, and the free indulgence of the 

 animal passions involve idiocy, there ought to have been plenty of 

 it during the whole of the Roman Republic and Empire wherever 

 the eagles rested. But there is much silence on the subject 

 throughout the Latin authors. There were idiots in those days, 

 and the practical Roman looked upon them as useless entities. 

 They had no sanctity in his eyes, and hence their probable rarity. 

 Doubtless the unfortunate children were neglected, and there is 

 much reason for believing that they were " exposed." A congenital 

 idiot soon begins to give trouble and to excite unusual attention; 

 moreover, unless extra care is given to it, death is sure to ensue in 

 early childhood. There are some very curious passages in the 

 Latin classics that refer to the burial without cremation of very 

 young children, and it is evident that although the laws against 

 intramural sepulture were very stringent, there were instances where 

 it took place surreptitiously. There is some reason for believing 

 that many of the babies whose skeletons are now and then found 

 close to Roman villas in this country and on the Continent had 

 been buried there before teething had commenced, and that they 



