ON THE FEMALE CONSTITUTION. 375 



stance in somnambulism, is the unequalled accuracy with 

 which a person in that state sometimes conducts his proceed- 

 ings, an accuracy superior to that of which he is capable when 

 fully awake. A somnambulist has gone out by a window, and 

 walked along the roof of a house, with a degree of security 

 which he never could have enjoyed in the same local situation 

 in his waking hours. Such facts evince a strange mixture of 

 accurate perception and self-management with the absence of 

 general recollection and self-knowledge : and it is remarkable 

 that the accurate perceptions which persons in this situation 

 retain, and which may in some measure be the effect of habit 

 on the faculties, are so completely dissevered from the imme- 

 diate influence of general sensation, that when the individual 

 is wakened by loud speaking, or by a shock from a by-stander, 

 he sometimes becomes inexpressibly bewildered and unhappy, 

 and does not know where he is. Instances are said to have oc- 

 curred, in which a somnambulist abruptly wakened while walk- 

 ing out of doors, has, by the unhappy distraction attending 

 the transition, been thrown into a state of permanent insanity. 



The influence of association on all our thoughts, on the me- 

 mory, on the imagination, and even on the freedom and facili- 

 ty of those mental movements which we call exertions of the 

 active powers, is familiarly observed by every person who has 

 paid the least attention to human nature, or to the proceedings 

 of his own mind. We never wonder at our mental acts being 

 varied in their degree of intensity or facility by this all-per- 

 vading principle. It is only a greater degree of the same de- 

 pendence on particular associations that constitutes such ano- 

 malies as made their appearance in the history of this poor 

 girl. In other cases, objects are recollected less easily and 

 less vividly in some circumstances than in others. In this case 

 one set of objects was not recollected at all, and could not be 



vol. ix. p. ii. 3 b in 



