6<j6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will then appear that each theory had its element of truth. In like 

 manner we are endeavoring to attain to the proper conception of the 

 condition of the earth in the Age of Ice. The whole truth has not 

 yet been discovered. When fully revealed, it will appear far more 

 magnificent and glorious than has now been surmised. 



•♦•♦■ 



THE PATHOLOGY OF THE PASSIONS. 



By FEENAND PAPILLON. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FEENOH, BY J. FITZGERALD, A.M. 



III. 



IX the former part of this essay we considered the general physi- 

 ology of the passions : their pathology is no less interesting, and 

 to that we now ask attention. When we reflect that the nervous sys- 

 tem of the animal life and the system of the great sympathetic govern 

 all the vital operations, and that the regularity of these latter is abso- 

 lutely dependent on the orderly performance of their functions by the 

 centres wherein are found the prime springs and the fundamental 

 activities of the animal economy, we conceive at once how countless 

 diseases may arise out of disturbances produced by an abuse or an 

 excess of the passions. Physicians have in all ages reckoned the pas- 

 sions among the predisposing, determining, or aggravating causes of 

 the majority of diseases — especially chronic diseases ; for it is a pecu- 

 liarity of the nerve-substance that it is impaired, and that it spreads 

 abroad the consequences of its impairment, only little by little, and by 

 imperceptible degrees. The work of the passions might be compared 

 to the operations by which an army approaches a beleaguered city : 

 they set about overmastering health and life circumspectly and slowly, 

 but their advance is always sure. A few observations concerning 

 the psychological and physiological disturbances produced by the pas- 

 sions of the moral order, which are the most disastrous in their effects, 

 viz., love, melancholy, hate, anger, etc., will give some idea of the 

 material working of these poisons of the soul. 



We may regard love as a neurosis of the organs of memory and 

 imagination, in so far as these two faculties are related to the object 

 of love. The memory in particular seems here to acquire an intensity 

 that is truly extraordinary. In illustration of this point, Alibert states 

 a fact which he observed at Fahlun. As some laborers were one day 

 at work making a connection between two shafts in a mine, they found 

 the remains of a young man in a complete state of preservation, and 

 impregnated with bituminous substances. The man's features were 

 not recognized by any of the workmen. Nothing further was known 



