WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN PERSONALITY ? 391 
much stronger than when the patient cannot be persuaded there 
is anything wrong with him. In these instances there is a 
kind of double personality, one surveying the other, and know- 
ing it to be wrong-headed. When the errors, or delusions, are 
not recognised, the personality is single, but different from that 
which existed in a sound state. When insane people of 
normally good characters fancy they have committed crimes, 
and feel horror and remorse, the character, or personality, 
remains the same, but is the victim of delusion. From this 
mode of speaking it must not be supposed that character and 
personality are regarded as the same thing ; but what is called 
character consists in attributes of the personality, and when 
those attributes suffer a great change, the result is like a trans- 
formation of one person into another. Thus, in a case men- 
tioned by Forbes Winslow, on the authority of Dr. Brierre de 
Boismont, a person in high office, who had performed the duties 
of his station satisfactorily, and in private life exhibited gene- 
rosity and honesty, became mean, avaricious, licentious, and 
fraudulent. Similar disorders cause 44 the brave and heroic to 
become as timid and bashful as any maiden in particular states 
of ill health. Mild, inoffensive, and humane men are driven to 
acts of desperation and cruelty ; ” and modest girls indulge in 
indelicate actions and disgusting talk. The late Forbes Winslow 
thought such outbursts of evil came from the 44 innate corruption 
and natural depravity of the human heart ” ; but scientific men 
do not allow theological crotchets to serve as explanations for 
physical facts ; and although no one can afford the slightest 
explanation of why and how thought and emotion are connected 
with chemical and molecular changes in nervous or cerebral 
matter, abundant cases prove that physical disturbance by 
disease or wounds can produce the changes of character which 
we are now considering. Not only can mechanical violence 
change character in certain cases for the worse, but we find 
opposite instances recorded where there has been a beneficial 
result. Thus, to cite an instance from Forbes Winslow’s un- 
philosophical but amusing and useful story-book, 44 Obscure 
Diseases of the Brain and Mind,” — 44 a child, up to the age of 
thirteen idiotic, giving evidence either of a total deficiency of 
intelligence or of a stunted intellect of the lowest grade and 
order, fell from a height upon his head, and was stunned. He 
rallied from this state of unconsciousness, and was, credat 
Judaeus ! found to be in full possession of his intellectual 
faculties.” Father Mabillon is also said to have been cured of 
idiocy, at the age of twenty-six, by tumbling against a stone 
staircase and fracturing his skull, for which he was trepanned, 
and thereupon exhibited a 44 lively imagination, an amazing 
memory, and a zeal for study unequalled.” In another instance 
