256 Vital and Cosmical Energy . [May, 
asphyxia, or death, deserts— either temporarily or finally — 
its material tenement, to emigrate as an indestructible, veri- 
table entity elsewhere.” * Now since we can, under certain 
circumstances, restore life by the re-establishment of its 
material conditions, it is evident that we have to deal not 
with a spiritual entity, but with a delicate and easily deranged 
mechanism. It is true that if too long a time is allowed to 
elapse before restorative measures are applied, the repair of 
the machine becomes impossible ; but this arises from the 
intimate relation of its minute and complicated parts. 
Every change in the organism sets up a multitude of other 
changes, which progress so quickly that the whole soon be- 
comes irreparably disintegrated. 
Anatomical and clinical observations in cases of mental 
disease, as well as experiments upon the living brain of the 
lower animals, point to the same conclusion. In the article 
by Drs. Tuke and Gibson, in the ninth edition of the “ En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica,” Insanity is described as “ a chronic 
disease of the brain, inducing chronic disordered mental 
symptoms,” — a definition possessing “ the great practical 
advantage of keeping before the student the primary fadt 
that insanity is the result of disease of the brain, that it is 
not a mere immaterial disorder of the intellect.” That bar- 
barous treatment of the insane which still lingered in 
England and France during the early part of the present 
century is closely connected with the ancient dodtrine of 
demoniac possession ; and so long as Dualism continued to 
influence scientific practice, it is obvious that no efficient or 
systematic remedial measures could be adopted. The 
alienist medicine of Ancient Greece and Egypt, like that of 
our own time, was founded upon a materialistic basis : and 
we are but just awaking from the cruel mediaeval dream to 
that light of day which was discerned — clearly, though far 
less brightly — by Hippocrates and Galen. 
Mental pathology is now in a position to take vengeance 
for its long negledt by laying bare those morbid physical 
conditions which give birth to the mystical hallucinations of 
apostles, martyrs, prophets, and founders of Religions. 
We may fairly contend that all recorded celestial visitations 
“ belong to the very alphabet of medical science, and may 
be confidently diagnosed as not preternatural occurrences at 
all, but merely symptoms of over-excitement — the result 
either of anaemia or hyperaemia — of the nervous centres in 
the head. Just as demoniacal possession is manifestly 
* Life and Mind, p. 2Q. 
1 
