ORDRONAUX 
ON HALLUCINATIONS CONSISTENT 
ft'ITH REASON On Hallucinations Consistent with Reason. 
By- JOHN OHDRONAUX, M. D., Professor of Medical Juris- 
prudence, &c. ON HALLUCINATIONS CONSISTENT WITH 
REASON. 
By John Ordronaux, M. D., Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, 
&c. 
A Lecture Delivered before the Students of Columbia College, 
New York. 
Gentlemen :-Any examination of the subject of mental unsound- 
ness must be incomplete, which does not include some notice of the 
phenomena of hallucination. This too often neglected chapter of 
mental pathology is the true arcana of mystery-the grand storehouse 
of nature's secrets, which science seeks in vain to penetrate. As its 
limits span the unfathomable gulf between mind and matter, and 
trench upon the domain of the infinite, so the physical tests by which 
material causations are measured fail us here, and we are left to 
grope among isolated facts, and self-gratifying conjectures, happy, too 
happy, if we can trace a few sequences, and measure a few effects. 
The inward voice of intuition, which never speaks without striking 
the key-note of a natural truth, teaches us, even in the absence of all 
sensational knowledge, that there is a link which catenates us to 
Infinity. It is the consciousness of a personal identity-of an imma- 
1 2 
terial principle within us whose essence eludes our search, albeit its 
operations reveal the order of its laws. It is the principle of intelli- 
gence, as distinguished from the property of sensation. And inas- 
much as the degree of development of the intelligence is the meas- 
ure of man's mentality, so the cloudiness or clearness of this principle, 
its ability rightly to apprehend-rightly to comprehend, whatever 
ideas are presented to it, will always determine the normal or abnor- 
mal state of the mind. The insane generally reason well from their 
own premises. Grant but the truth of these, and their conclusions 
are not often erroneous. It is in the intelligence that lies the disorder. 
The self-deception is in the misapprehension of the original relation 
of things, and not in the subordinate relations which flow out of them. 
In this view of the subject, any disturbance of the intelligence towards 
whatever sense radiated, may provoke the occurrence of hallucina- 
tion. The particular sense simply repeats in a physical manner the 
delusion which already exists in its intellectual centre. Whence it 
follows that we may have hallucinations of a particular sense, as of 
sight, sound, smell, or taste, without involving either of the rest; and 
in all these conditions of partial derangement, the mind may or may 
not be conscious of the error under which it labors. 
Indeed, it is so common to associate with the idea of insanity, those 
extreme forms of mental perturbation which are indicated by unmis- 
takable physical manifestations, that we are in danger of overlook- 
ing those milder functional disturbances which sometimes afflict even 
the healthy. Violence of conduct and vehemence of language, or 
its contrary, moroseness and taciturnity-acts of glaring absurdity, or 
of childish awkwardness-paroxysms of unbridled temper and inco- 
herent utterance, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"-these 
are the usual lineaments which the unlearned and unskilled in men- 
tal pathology ascribe to the insane. 
Much, all of this indeed, is unquestionably true at different times, 
and yet to insist that any one of these facts by itself constitutes in- 
sanity, is simply to assert that a simple acceleration or retardation of 
function is a morbid phenomenon, and that health has fixed and ab- 
solute limits, beyond which it never passes. In reality, nature, 3 
throughout all the economy of organized life, nowhere operates with 
the dull, monotonous precision of clock-work. There is a margin to 
mental as well as physical health, within which the functional pen- 
dulum may oscillate with more or less rapidity, and still without dis- 
turbance of the general economy. Our daily feelings and our daily 
strength, whether of mind or of body, are not absolutely similar 
throughout any given week or month ; and our bodies-although it 
may pain us to confess it-are but the representative barometers that 
indicate the epidemic character of the season-the influences of air, 
diet, exercise, occupation and modes of thought upon our physical 
well-being. These are the grand elements which operate upon the 
springs of emotional life, and produce contradictions and diversities in 
human character. There are temperaments, like those of Robert Hall, 
Montaigne and Thomas Hood, which are capable of enduring, serene 
and unruffled, the acutest pangs of bodily infirmity ; while there are 
others, like Coleridge and De Quincey, who, tortured to madness by 
excess of nervous sensibility, fly to the dearly-purchased palliatives of 
human art for that relief which kills while it affects to cure. Such 
natures represent the extremes of reflex sensation-they show also 
the presence of a material power antecedent to the operations of the 
will; for, strong as this latter may be, it can smother nature's voices 
only for a while, and sooner or later their right to be heard as well as 
felt will assert itself. " Naturam expellas furca tamen usque 
recurret"-is the significent language of Horace in illustration of this 
idea. 
It is natural, then, for physical ailments to make themselves seen 
as well as felt, and the outward revelation which they make to us in 
the form of symptoms, is only the mute and unwritten language of 
suffering organs. But we must remember that the point at which 
this expressive tongue speaks, or the dialect which it adopts, is not 
always related, even by analogy, to the centre of the disturbing force. 
It is easy to understand why laborious or impaired digestion should 
reveal itself through a sensation of weight and oppression in the stom- 
ach, but it is not easy to understand, nor can it be explained, why 
the dreams emanating in such a condition of body, should always be 4 
of a horrifying and distressing character. Were those dreams simply 
of an oppressive character, as where a great sense of weight is expe- 
rienced about the chest, we could analogically explain them by the 
overloaded state of the stomach ; but when they pass into the presen- 
tation of unfathomable gulfs over which we are suspended, or of bat- 
tle-fields upon which we are being attacked, the theory_of analogy 
completely fails us. We are thereupon forced to conclude, that the 
law regulating the association of ideas is one whose operations are 
not entirely volitional. Its functions are ceaselessly going on, wheth- 
er we sleep or whether we wake. When we desire we call-up a 
train of thought, but having done so we can not always dismiss it 
again ; for although we may throw before it the veil of other thoughts, 
it will nevertheless break through them, as the morning sun pierces 
the mists of night, and re-assert its more engrossing presence. Thus 
the weary lawyer or physician who, with brain overtasked and nerves 
unstrung, seeks nature's great restorer on his midnight couch, strives 
in vain to banish from his mind the image of those many doubtful 
cases upon which he has exhausted his talents through the livelong 
day. Useless the attempt to disperse the ghosts of those mighty en- 
terprises. Vain, indeed, to summon up images of less magnitude with 
which to dispel them. As well might you endeavor to oppose the 
gentle Zephyr to the stormy Boreas. The mighty business of the day 
hath mastered him. The deity at whose shrine he has but too faith- 
fully ministered will not be sated yet, and the poor, weary worshipper 
is compelled to repeat his intellectual sacrifice, happy enough when 
outraged nature drags him wounded from this altar into her temple 
of sleep and oblivion. 
It has been remarked by Schlegel, in his Philosophy of Life, that 
" many facts in medical experience, and peculiar phenomena of dis- 
ease-as well as the loathsome generation of insects in the atmos- 
phere, or on the surface of the earth, and many diseased states in 
both, appear to point rather to some intrinsically evil, and originally 
wild, demoniacal character in the sphere of nature." This opinion 
agrees substantially with that of the Christian fathers, and was the 
one actively maintained by them in their conflicts with Paganism. 5 
It was a reflection of that system of pantheism, which ascribed to ev- 
ery law of nature the handiwork of a distinct deity. More particu- 
larly was this the case with that class of mental disorders which, in- 
explicable by us, was still less explicable by them. Among the an- 
cients, therefore, any departure from the normal standard of mental 
health was always regarded as a visitation of evil spirits, from which 
priestly exorcism could alone afford relief. And the nomenclature of 
these disorders, borrowing its complexion from the pervading hue of 
public opinion, indicated their ascription to causes of a supernatural 
character. The scientific knowledge of that day being on a par 
among pagans and Christians, we accordingly find the writings of the 
Fathers abounding with passages attributing to the "blast of de- 
mons" divers sicknesses and severe accidents, sudden and strange ex- 
travagances, blight in the grain, taint in the atmosphere, pestilential 
vapors, foul madness and manifold delusions. Much of this was un- 
doubtedly founded upon the frequent allusion to evil spirits which is 
to be met with in the New Testament, but more to that ignorance of 
physiological as well as pyschical laws which has waited for eighteen 
centuries to be dispelled. The old idea of a pythonic or demoniac 
possession, in which the individuality of the person and his identity 
are swallowed up by the enveloping presence of the daimon, is well 
described to us in the Gospel of Matthew. It was the characteristic 
symptom of the approach of the afflatus or inspiration to the an- 
cient oracles at Delphos and Dodona, and is still seen among the Hin- 
doo pythonics of the present day. Modern science recognizes this 
phenomenon as the prodromic stage and the unvarying accompani- 
ment of an access of epileptic, hysteric and convulsive disorder. In- 
deed, since no divine prohibition restrains us from examining this sub- 
ject, nor enjoins a belief in the presence and active interference of 
disembodied spirits on the earth, we are at liberty to avail ourselves 
of all the resources which progressive knowledge can afford in aid of 
investigation. A careful comparison, therefore, of the phenomena of 
demoniacal possession as described in the Scriptures, with the mani- 
festations daily revealed to us in the various forms of mental disease, 
must satisfy us that they are identical in character, if not in degree, 6 
with such maladies as mania, epilepsy, hysteria, an&chorea. While 
the inspiration of both ancient and modern oracles is easily recog- 
nised to be born, if not of these disorders, at least of influences simi- 
larly acting upon the brain through the operation of powerful narcot- 
ics, far be it from me to say that those perversions of the moral af- 
fections, which even the most rationalistic system of medicine can not 
always trace to a connection with physical agencies-that cropping 
out of the blossom of original sin-may not depend, for aught we 
know to the contrary, upon more subtle influences even than those 
of blood, nerve or vital force. Certainly, the inexplicable, and gene- 
rally inscrutable, character of the malignant tendencies underlying 
moral depravations of conduct-tendencies at once so brutal andover- 
poweringly fiendish-often occurring in those previously of the most 
correct and sober deportment, leave us in doubt whether the sphere 
of merely physical agencies can produce such dire moral tendencies, 
without first overpowering the intellect-this latter being the only me- 
dium through which we can view moral manifestations. Unfortunate- 
ly for the certainty of all our investigations, we can only examine, but 
not always explain; and until conjecture gives way to fact, and be- 
lief gives way to knowledge, we shall scarcely be able to advance be- 
yond the ante-chamber of mental pathology. 
It is not my purpose at this time, however, to enlarge upon the 
extreme phases of a malady which we have already examined in its 
more prominent types. Having considered all the various forms of 
insanity as classified by experts, together with the legal relations 
which flow out of them ; having shown you wherein the great sci- 
ences of law and medicine should, by yielding to each other's proper 
supremacy in all that belongs exclusively to either, unite in a spirit 
of generous compromise, it will be unnecessary for me to review these 
subjects here. I shall not therefore speak to you of absolute insani- 
ty. My design now is, to investigate that particular chapter in its 
philosophy, which is revealed to us through the minor aspects of men- 
tal disturbance. These firstlings may constitute, either the incuba- 
tive stage of the disease proper-its dawning period, or, on the other 
hand, they may co-exist with perfect soundness of reason-being sim- 7 
pie and single abnormities of function, in relation to particular 
thoughts, feelings, or acts. As such, they do not invalidate a will or 
a contract, unless they are found infecting its subject-matter; because 
a rational act implies a rational agent, and with degrees of under- 
standing, or complexions of understanding, the law does not concern 
itself. If there be understanding and no fraud, the act will be valid. 
My subject then will be limited to the consideration of hallucinations 
consistent with reason. 
Hallucination, as I have elsewhere shown, differs from illusion in 
that it involves disturbance of the sensorium, as well as of the sen- 
ses. If I see an object distorted, it is simply an illusion, because a 
thing may be objectively true, and yet subjectively false. If I am 
pursued by sights, sounds, smells or tastes, for which no objective 
cause exists, this is an hallucination. Again, if I am conscious that 
the impression or idea is unwarranted by physical facts-that no sights, 
sounds, smells or tastes exist ozitside of myself-then the mind, by 
its competency to correct itself, proves the persistence of a state of 
health, equal at least to the behests of the will. If, on the contrary, 
I can not reason myself out of the falsity of an hallucination-if I 
can not dispel this claimon of the imagination-if I can not dissever 
it from surrounding phenomena, as the creature of the heat-oppress- 
ed brain-then the mind, permeated by this cloudy error, no longer 
obeys the will, and its faculties are completely swallowed up by the 
spectre before it. Horace has well depicted the character of this 
form of mental cloudiness, in the person of the citizen of Argos. 
" At Argos Jived a citizen well known, 
Who thought he heard the accustomed tone 
Of deep tragedians, on an empty stage, 
And sat, applauding with ecstatic rage." 
And in Shakspeare's comedy of " Taming the Shrew," a striking 
illustration of disordered idealization, is afforded in the person of 
Christopher Sly. The frolic consists in intoxicating Sly, and allow- 
ing him to recover himself in the midst of splendid surroundings, so 
that a true momentary hallucination is developed in him, and he im- 
agines himself " a Lord, indeed." 8 
" Am I a Lord? and have I such a lady? 
Or do I dream ? or have I dreamed till now ? 
I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak; 
I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things:- 
Upon my life, I am a Lord, indeed; 
And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly." 
The ability of self-identification is no proof of sanity, and the de- 
lusions so often entertained of glass limbs, or bodies made of wood, 
are not dissipated by producing sensation in substances which the de- 
ranged intellect knows should be senseless. The mind being enchain- 
ed to the attributes of that which it believes to exist, naturally enough 
opposes that which it believes not to exist; and the reason-that ul- 
timate tribunal to which the perceptive faculties return their observa- 
tions for comparison-having a cloud before it, can not correct the 
misapprehension of the lower senses. It accepts them as realities, and 
directs the conduct of the body accordingly. When the hallucination, 
therefore, has firmly possessed itself of the mind, we have a state of 
ideal intellection, in which the reason, after long struggling to main- 
tain its ascendancy over the judgment, has finally yielded, but after 
yielding can still apprehend and compare correctly the relations of 
other things. Thus it is rare, even in the insane, to have hallucina- 
tions of more than two senses simultaneously, and in the department 
to which I am addressing these observations, the hallucination does 
not often entend beyond one. Remembering, also, that false percep- 
tions may exist without insanity, we shall be the better prepared to 
consider them in their connection with the history of some of the 
greatest minds which have ever existed. 
We may state, as a fundamental truth in psychology, that the ori- 
ginal basis of an hallucination in the healthy, is a state of prolong- 
ed reverie. In great minds, like those of St. Augustin, Chrysostom, 
Mahomet, Descartes, Dante, and Milton, reverie, that intensification of 
all the powers of thought upon one central object, is ever the prelude to 
some grand creation. " The Christian Fathers," says a well known 
author, " retired to the solitude of the desert, or the convent, to in- 
dulge in profoundest thought, whence returning they came armed in 
a terrible panoply of invincible books." Some had visions-halluci- 9 
nations more properly-but all felt the heaving of the great wave of 
thought within them, which overpowered physical nature, and made 
the man live only in the world of intuitions. That inner world, 
which none with less introspective power than theirs could see, was 
the shadowy domain of sublimated thought-a realm of abstraction 
into which few minds can penetrate and still live unimpaired. To 
look upon this inner temple is to suspend our psychical connection 
with earth, to soar skyward, and to return with the workshop of the 
mind confused and revolutionized. Such was unquestionably the 
case with Mahomet and Swedenborg, who, fancying themselves the 
children of inspiration, cherished with zealous ardor those profound 
reveries which invariably gave rise to ecstatic hallucinations. In this 
state they witnessed those revelations and probably wrote those de- 
scriptions of the spiritual world and its government, which have im- 
parted to them, in the eyes of many, the high character of apostles 
and prophets. This form of hallucination, which from the peculiar 
phenomena attending it is called ecstasy, is a species of true catalep- 
sy-sometimes passing into somnambulism ; and a very curious illus- 
tration of this is related by Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Socrates, 
who, he tells us, while attending the siege of Potidea remained stand- 
ing an entire day, in a cataleptic state. These conditions of mind 
are affirmed by Plato to have often visited his master, whose exagger- 
ations of eccentricity he relates at great length in his Banquet and 
Apology. It would seem from these that the famous daimon of Soc- 
rates is in many respects liable to be construed into a hallucination 
of the sense of hearing, and, since this subject is still a moot one, it 
can with great propriety and utility be discussed in this connection. 
The demon of Socrates forms one of the most curious problems in 
the history of psychology. For an account of this metaphysical 
sphinx, we are indebted to the labors both of Plato and Xenophon- 
the former of whom has nobly vindicated the character of the Athe- 
nian sage in the Apology and Banquet and the latter in his Memor- 
abilia. Modern writers, no less than ancient, have in vain exercised 
themselves upon this problem ; the one side asserting the demon to be 
simply the voice of conscience-the other that it was a manifest hal- 10 
lucination of the hearing. In the Alcibiades of Plato, Socrates thus 
describes his familiar spirit : " Celestial grace has bestowed upon me 
a wondrous gift, ever since my youth. It is that of a voice, which 
when it makes itself heard restrains me from acting, and never ur- 
ges me forward. If a friend communicates any plan to me, and the 
voice at the same time makes itself heard, it is a sign of the disap- 
probation of such plan." 
We also find that one of the articles of accusation against him was 
that he introduced new divinities at Athens, under the name of dai- 
mons. 
Although at first sight it must be admitted that our prejudices, 
when investigating the mental health of the greatest philosopher of 
antiquity, are opposed to the recognition of any trace of infirmity, 
and in favor of an internal voice of conscience, such as exists in eve- 
ry morally responsible being-still, we must bear in mind that we 
are not thereby seeking to prove Socrates insane, but simply endeav- 
oring to establish a certain fact with reference to his mind; that is, 
its tendency to be visited by hallucinations. To suppose that he was 
the only Greek whose conscience ever spoke to him, is an absurdity 
not to be tolerated in any psychical inquiry. There never was an 
honest man in any age who did not owe all of that character to con- 
science. It is plain that Socrates found in such friends as Crito, Chaer- 
ephon, Cebes, Plato and Xenophon, as pure consciences as the world 
then contained. To allege that he alone of all these virtuous patri- 
ots heard her divine voice, is to argue that conscience was a gift spe- 
cially restricted to him; a form of proposition at once psychically in- 
correct, not to say impugning the justice of the Creator. What then 
could have been this demoniac voice, this something half human, 
half-divine, which arrested him when about to act, without reference 
to the quality of the action, and only with reference to the proba- 
bility of success, of good or bad fortune ? Is conscience as narrow 
and speculative as this ? Does she act as a mental broker or factor, 
advising us when to buy and when to sell, when to undertake an en- 
terprize and when not to? The absurdity of the idea is its best refu- 
tation, and we must accordingly turn to the domain of mental pa- 
thology in order to find a solution of our problem. 11 
Given, a man of unaccountable oddity from youth ;-wearing the 
same garment the year round ; walking barefoot in winter and sum- 
mer, dancing wildly at times, and with sudden leaps; carrying his 
head in a strange way; living in the most eccentric fashion; having 
no occupation but that of preaching and sermonizing in public pla- 
ces, at street corners, and even in the shops of artizans; pursuing eve- 
ry one with his questions, sparing none with his irony, and behaving 
in such an incomprehensible manner that Zeno the Epicurean called 
him the Athenian buffoon. What, if you remove the name of Soc- 
rates from this portrait, would you say of the liability of such a mind 
to have hallucinations ? What would you not rather say of the prob- 
ability of a false perception in such a man, if he daily told you that 
a certain demoniac voice was, at short intervals, warning not only 
him, but through him his friends, of the evil about to befall them? 
Is this conscience, or is it hallucination ? And yet this was the fa- 
ther of ancient philosophy-the incomparable sage, whose death 
stamped his character with the highest attributes of moral perfection; 
the man who first raised the standard of philosophical rebellion against 
the absurdities of polytheism, and the vices of a corrupt society. It 
was not unbecoming praise in Cicero to exclaim, in that glorious im- 
agery so peculiarly his own, that "Socrates was the first man who 
called down philosophy from heaven-who introduced it into cities 
and private dwellings, and compelled mankind to instruct themselves 
concerning life, manners, good and evil actions." 
Philosophy, then, does not protect us against the access of mental 
disorders. Indeed, they are too often the price paid for that high in- 
tellection which the ignorant and the unlearned envy and carp at. 
The greatest physician and natural philosopher of his time, Jerome 
Cardan, was visited by hallucinations, but from the symptoms attend- 
ing them which he has described, it is easy to perceive that they were 
due to great disturbances of the circulation, both in the heart and 
brain. And Pascal, whose genius in mathematics was second only to 
that of Newton, when he had greatly injured his health by fastings, 
vigils, and bodily macerations, was visited so constantly by hallucina- 
tions that he actually fell into the superstition of wearing an amulet 12 
against these demoniac visitations. Nevertheless, while subject to 
these intellectual disorders he wrote those admirable " Provincial Let- 
ters," which first shook the foundations of Jesuitism, and those " Mor- 
al Thoughts," which have afforded texts for many an overpowering 
homily, both in and out of the pulpit. That Pascal was partially de- 
ranged, none who have read his life will doubt. That it was 
not a disorder originally within his control, but aggravated by a wil- 
ful perversity of diet-a smothering of nature in her period of devel- 
opment, and an intentional changing of her outward and sympathetic 
tendencies into a forced introspection and introversion of her emo- 
tions, I, for one, entertain no doubt. It is always to be regretted 
whenever a great mind deliberately undertakes to destroy itself, by 
perverting or disobeying the laws of its own being. But I am not 
aware that we are required, either morally or physically, to sympa- 
thize with those whose superior intelligence arms them with a self- 
protective power not possessed by the ignorant. Both Socrates and 
Pascal by the asceticism of their lives invited mental disorders, and 
the difference between the two was due simply to the superior physi- 
cal character of the Athenian, who, with all his homileties on the 
liakon and the agathon, still went abroad and mingled socially 
with his friends and the world. Pascal, on the contrary, had no phys- 
ical manhood-nothing of that element of animal spirits which unites 
man to man in the bonds of friendship. Affection is not a mental 
process; if it were, we should form few if any attachments. The in- 
fant would not cling to its mother, the parent would not sacrifice life 
for its offspring; the dog would not starve himself upon his master's 
grave, if such conditions of self-devotion depended solely upon the 
intellectual sympathy of two creatures. So Pascal, abandoning his 
friends, living in seclusion, inwardly torturing his mind with contem- 
plations only of human depravity, and never refreshing himself with 
the sight of human virtues at the fountain of friendship and social 
communion, became covered with the mould and mildew of a blight- 
ed nature, voluntarily sinking himself into the realm of melancholy, 
irritability, and partial lunacy. 
Any powerful impressions long acting upon the common centre of 13 
intellection, and thereby producing reveries, may give rise to hallucin- 
ations. Some time is undoubtedly required for this effect to manifest 
itself, because the mind when fatigued naturally relinquishes its hold 
of any subject which has exclusively occupied its attention. In do- 
ing this it does not dismiss, however, the subject as an entirety; it 
puts aside only the examination of its undiscovered and undetermined 
relations. What is already thoroughly acquired is absolutely retain- 
ed, and may re-assert itself at times independently of volition. We 
are then said to have a "fixed idea," a predominant idea, and when 
it becomes overpowering!y strong, we do not hesitate to call it mono- 
mania. 
When in connection with the mind, moreover, the passions or moral 
affections are greatly enlisted, the hallucinative process goes on with 
great rapidity. It would seem that the sanitary guardianship of the 
mind over the body and the body over the mind is entirely suspended, 
and acts of most manifest self-injury are performed without apparent 
concern as to their ultimate results. Love,-hate,-remorse,-des- 
pair,-may all in turn give rise to "spectral imaginings." In the 
" Comedy of Errors" we have an example of a poor, hen-pecked hus- 
band, who, from excess of little griefs, bickerings, upbraidings, and 
rebukes, which no suit for divorce could rid him from, finally turns 
mad:- 
" And thereof came it that the man was mad: 
The venom clamors of a jealous woman, 
Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. 
It seems, his sleeps were hindered by thy railing: 
And therefore comes it, that his head is light. 
Thou sayest, his meat was sauced by thy upbraidings: 
Unquiet meals make ill digestions, 
Thereof the raging fire of fever bred; 
And what's a fever but a fit of madness ? 
Thou sayest, his sports were hindered by thy brawls: 
Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue 
But moody and dull melancholy, 
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, 
And at her heels, a huge infectious troop 
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life ? 
In food, in sport, and life preserving rest 14 
To be disturbed, would mad or man, or beast: 
• The consequence is then, thy jealous fits 
Have scared thy husband from the use of wits." 
It is probable that, had not poor Mr. Caudle, the victim of so ma- 
ny " curtain lectures," enjoyed the rare and recuperative tonic of sleep, 
he also, with Antipholus of Ephesus, would have been crazed. 
But the most gorgeous illustrations of hallucination with which 
either the ancient or modern dramatists abound, are those arising 
from the operations of remorse. Here the genius of Sophocles, Ila- 
cine and Shakspeare have poured out all the wealth of their abound- 
ing store-houses, and we stand appalled in the presence of that ideal 
Orestes or Macbeth who, goaded by the stings of conscience, and pur- 
sued by the pale images of their victims, are being torn to pieces by 
the conflict of reason with emotion. The storm of passion in Mac- 
beth, which kept his mind upon the rack between the prophecy of 
the weird sisters, and his desire to accomplish it through the instru- 
mentality of his own hand, is one of the " most awful creations of 
the poetic mind." The ambitious prince, his soul kindled with the 
thirst of power which the crown of Scotland is to afford him, pauses 
between inclination and reflection. He wants to act on impulses, but 
conscience as quickly smothers the utterances of this turbulent voice. 
He hesitates, he reasons-until the tauntings of his wife goad his pride 
to madness. All his thoughts and feelings, turning with ten-fold fury 
upon themselves, overthrow the guiding reason, and he sees before 
him the fell instrument which is to accomplish his desire. The dagger- 
scene is as fine an illustration of a simple hallucination as can any where 
be found. It is true in all the essentials of a psychological portrait, 
and shows how the impression upon his senses, although correspond- 
ing with the dread purpose of his mind, still fails to satisfy his judg- 
ment. Reason finally triumphs; he rejects the hallucination as the 
creature of the heat-oppressed brain, and ascribes it to its true source- 
the "bloody business" which enslaves his mind. 
" Is this a dagger which I see before me, 
The handle toward my hand ? come, let me clutch thee: 
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 15 
To feeling, as to sight ? Or art thou but 
A dagger of the mind ? a false creation 
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
As this which now I draw. 
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; 
And such an instrument I was to use. 
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, 
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still; 
And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood, 
Which was not so before.-There's no such thing. 
It is the bloody business which informs 
Thus to mine eyes." 
Had the reason not thus asserted its supremacy, and enabled Mac- 
beth to understand the true relation of the hallucination to himself- 
he could not at law have been deemed otherwise than insane, which, 
although but partial, would still have rendered him criminally irre- 
sponsible for his deed of blood. But when, by a violent effort of the 
will, the cogitative faculty pierced through the flimsy veil of momen- 
tary delusion, he correctly refers the image to the intensity of thought 
bestowed upon the " bloody business," which then engrossed his mind. 
I entertain no doubt that we often have Macbeths before our crimin- 
al courts, who, could it be known, had by dint of imagining them- 
selves murderers in gratification of fits of brutal revenge, produced a 
kindred state of hallucination in their own minds, so that when the 
bloody deed was done by them, they hardly paused to ask reason 
whether she might not have resisted successfully the blind impulses 
of passion. 
Those moral lunatics who are beset by voices apparently emanat- 
ing from Heaven, and commanding them to kill, are, we must be- 
lieve, in the condition of Macbeth. For it is impossible to perform 
an intelligent action without previously conceiving the elements 
which enter into its execution. The mind does indeed act with 
such rapidity, that we are not always aware of the distinctive pro- 
cesses through which it passes in arriving at a conclusion. Hence 
we often do think mechanically as it were. But whenever we de- 
liberate upon an act, then we may be said to synthetize its ele- 
ments, by assigning to each its appropriate place. When the voice, 16 
either of depravity or of disease, commands us to kill, and our minds 
are filled with the imperative of this necessity, we at once have a 
conception of the whole act, including some instrument by whose 
means it is to be accomplished ; and if any particular one, like the 
dagger worn by Macbeth, be at hand, it presents itself accordingly 
to the mind's eye as the one predominant element in the delusional 
impression. 
But as another evidence of Macbeth's sanity we have those striking 
evidences of remorse, which reveal how deeply the foundations of his 
nature are shaken. Remorse is not common to the insane. Doing 
what they deem to be absolutely right, good and proper, what should 
give rise to such an emotion in them ? But Macbeth fully appre- 
ciated the enormity of his offence, even before committing it, and 
afterwards prophesied truly that remorse would murder slumber, and 
make the murderer ever after "lack the season of all natures, sleep." 
Hence his bitter exclamation :- 
"Methought I heard a voice cry, 1 Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep.' " 
And again, in answer to his wife's interrogatory, he repeats, more 
emphatically :- 
" Still it cried, ' Sleep no more 1' to all the house : 
4 Glamis hath murdered sleep: and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more 1' " 
There was no hallucination in this. It was the natural chiding of 
an outraged conscience already plying him with the scorpion's lash 
of remorse. When this blossom of bitterness had sufficiently rankled 
in his bosom-when he had pondered, in all its depth and depravity, 
his dark offence-then we find him assailed by dire hallucinations, 
which his reason can scarce dispel. The vision of Banquo's ghost 
now rises before him, and even occupies his seat. It nods and shakes 
its gory locks at the usurper, and so impresses him that, in the midst 
of the royal banquet, he cries out deprecatingly :- 
• "Thou canst not say I did it: never shake 
Thy gory locks at me!" 
His wife thereupon upbraids him with cowardice, in these taunting 
words :- 17 
" 0 proper stuff! 
This is the very painting of your fear : 
This is the air-drawn dagger; which, you said, 
Led you to Duncan!" 
No sooner does she cease speaking and enchaining his attention, than 
the hallucination returns, and Macbeth exclaims anew :- 
"Prythee, see there! behold! look! Io! how say you? 
Why, what care I ? If thou canst nod, speak too. 
If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
Those that we bury, back, our monuments 
Shall be the maws of kites!" 
That all this occurred while reason was still not dethroned, is shown 
by the fact of his telling his friends of his strange infirmity, which 
is nothing to those who knew him, and when the vision re-appears 
he so fully realizes its ideal character as to dismiss it with an ex- 
pression descriptive of its emptiness :- 
"Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! 
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Which thou dost glare with." 
* * "Hence, horrible shadow!" 
In all that has been said upon the subject of hallucinations, I 
have confined myself solely to an examination of their various forms 
when patent. I have spoken-of the strange juxtapositions of reason 
with unreason in minds ordinarily ranking among the foremost of 
earth. And, did time permit me, I might have farther extended our 
excursus into this domain of mystery, by examining some of those 
curious, epidemic, religious hallucinations, which swept over Europe 
during the intellectual crepusculum of the Middle Ages. It must 
suffice now to suggest only a few prominent names, by way of intro- 
ducing you to a better acquaintance with our present subject, through 
the pages of illustrative history. To such characters, then, as Para- 
celsus, Pascal, Luther, Mahomet, Swedenborg, Cardan and Cellini, 
I must refer you for more specific details of the protean forms of hal- 
lucination. 
We have spoken of hallucinations arising from strong emotions 18 
operating upon the centres of thought; of the influences of passion 
in confusing not only the judgment, but even the intelligence, and 
through it the senses. These are obvious causes, whose operation 
may be daily witnessed. None, therefore, will dispute their effi- 
ciency in producing the effects I have described. But I should over- 
look a very important department in the world of causation, were I 
to omit to notice those preliminary and preparatory conditions of 
mind, in which, without the occurrence of passion, the intellect may 
yet be considered as bordering upon disturbance. 
I wish now to speak of a condition of mind, often predisposing to 
hallucinations, of which the authorities make no mention, although 
it is very common, and sometimes even dangerous in its character. 
It is an exaltation of, or exaggeration in, the rapidity of mental pro- 
cesses, due to the influence of persistent tension upon the brain. 
As you will naturally infer, it is the unwelcome attendant upon all 
active minds when overworked. I shall make no separate allusion, 
at this time, to the probable influences of narcotics in assisting to 
produce, or to exaggerate when present, this state of the intellect. 
As 1 am making a simple, psychological inquiry into a form of disor- 
der, I shall confine myself to the essential causes producing it, and 
shall not venture upon any physiological disquisition into the remote 
and correlated sources of its origin. We can all agree upon the 
fact-whatever we may think of its causes-of the existence of a 
species of mental disturbance, born primarily of fatigue, exhaustion, 
or prostration; and which, with your permission, and for want of 
any other name, I shall call a state of mental hypercesthesia. This 
is that state of mind in which one finds himself whose mental fac- 
ulties have been strained to their utmost tension for a great length of 
time. The result of long and unabated fixedness of attention upon 
any one train of thought, is speedily to exhaust the mind ; and just 
in proportion to the degree of volitional effort expended, will there 
ensue rapidity of exhaustion. The mind at such a time, although 
greatly fatigued, is not disposed to quiescence, but continues to oscil- 
late under the reflex influence of its original stimulus. 
This, of itself, is not a condition of ill-health, if it can be speedily 19 
removed. So long as the strain does not exceed the recuperative 
powers of the organ thus overtasked, the shock is not immediately 
dangerous. But we must remember that this unnatural stimulation 
of a function exhausts the tone of the organ performing it, in ad- 
vance of the effects of age. So that, with the mind as with the 
body, we can preserve it in vigor up to a very late period of life, if 
we will only use it as not abusing it. And I may state, in passing, 
a curious illustration of this truth in the fact that, at this time, the 
statesmanship of England is in the hands of men over seventy years 
of age ; while in this country no man is deemed an available candi- 
date for either judicial or political office, who has passed the scriptu- 
ral limit of human longevity. Now a state of mental hyperesthesia 
clearly borders upon abuse of the intellectual powers; nor can we 
wonder, therefore, at the train of melancholy effects to which it 
gives rise. 
In this condition of things the brain is inordinately active ; its 
blood-vessels are greatly dilated, its whole substance consequently 
enlarged. It presses in all directions upon the skull, which seems 
hardly of a size to contain it; and when this cerebral plethora is 
continued for weeks and months, who can marvel that men in the 
very maturity of age, and apparently strong enough to work over 
their desks for nine hours a day, should suddenly drop paralyzed- 
become victims to hallucination and insanity, or, worse still, fall into 
apoplexies. It is not asserting too much to say, that if our time- 
pieces were kept wound up to a similar pitch of tension by constantly 
turning the key, their main-springs, although made of steel, would 
not last a month! Yet this is the mental status of many professional 
men, particularly in large cities, where the unremitting pressure of 
business, and the fever of competition, stimulate them to unnatural 
efforts. Persons often overwork their minds unconsciously, because, 
through the compensating influences of nature, the external effects 
of the injury are for a while concealed, and not until some unmis- 
takable evidence looms up across the intellectual horizon is the 
offender made aware of his wrong-doing. 
The majority of professional men toil far into the small hours of 20 
night, and then retire-to sleep ? scarcely any, if at all; but only 
to think over and over again the duties of the morrow, until a hazy 
forgetfulness, not deserving the name of slumber, steals over the still 
occupied brain, and leaves it to finish in dreams the disconnected 
fragments of daily business. Need we ask what is the consequence 
of this mode of life when protracted ? Every thing shows us that 
Nature's laws are never violated with impunity, and slow-footed 
justice, halting and lame though she may be, rarely fails to over- 
take the retreating criminal. In those individuals who habitually 
overtask the brain, we shall find manifestations of that form of hal- 
lucination which is the offspring of intensified and protracted thought. 
It is the true hallucinatio studiosa, and the period at which it de- 
velops itself will depend upon certain physical causes, not necessary 
to be mentioned here. Let it suffice to say, that these hallucinations 
are generally preceded by inability to sleep soundly, and this tenden- 
cy to insomnolence once established, readily passes into that of coma 
vigilans, a state productive of exquisite irritability. When the brain 
is long robbed of sleep, it loses both the knowledge of, and the ability 
to, sleep; so that it requires to be re-educatcd, as it were, into this 
aptitude. During this condition of vigil it reacts upon the stomach, 
and this again upon the brain, so that we now have two foci whence 
nervous irritability can be radiated and interchanged. The famous 
Lawrence Sterne was once in this condition for several months, and 
Martin Luther, as the result of his protracted mental labors, was often 
visited by a hallucination that the Prince of Darkness stood before 
him, and on one occasion went so far in believing it as to throw his 
inkstand at him. General Rapp tells us that once, desiring to speak 
with the Emperor Napoleon, he entered his cabinet unannounced. 
He found him in so deep a reverie that his entrance was unperceived 
until he intentionally made a noise. Napoleon then recovered, and 
pointing to the ceiling said : " Look up there ! Do you not see it ? 
It is my star ! It is beaming before you. It has never deserted me! 
I see it on every great occasion." Dr. Johnson, too, whose mighty 
intellect could endure a superhuman amount of labor, was the vic- 
tim nevertheless of hallucination, and one of the most superstitious 21 
men of his time. Rare Ben Johnson was also similarly visited, and 
Andral, the great anatomist, was pursued for a long time by the im- 
age of a child, which he had most critically dissected. Leuret, the 
philosopher, himself a psychologist, was greatly annoyed by visions 
which he could not rid himself of. And I have several instances 
noted among my own observations of similar facts. A friend of 
mine, who is the President of a bank, and a shrewd financier and 
economist, is exceedingly annoyed by the presence of a bottle of sar- 
saparilla, which is always spouting its contents before his eyes. The 
moment he fixes his attention closely upon any object the bottle dis- 
appears, but on releasing the mind from this contemplation the bottle 
returns. Yet none of these men whom I have mentioned were in- 
sane, none would have been disqualified at law either civilly or crim- 
inally. On the contrary, every one would pronounce them blessed 
with strong reason. Theirs were cases of mental dyspepsia. I am 
inclined to think that, in our country, the very laws of business, of 
society, of education-in a word, the genius of our institutions-favors, 
and, I may say, forces us into, a preternatural activity of mind. As 
slowness and deliberation of action are regarded as marks of mental 
incapacity, so the premium and the prize are assigned to the oppo- 
site extreme, and the man in self-defence is obliged to be "fast." 
Moral influences-modes of living-pushing and crowding the 
education of the mind into such limited periods of time as do not 
admit of development proportionate to the ascending scale of duties 
imposed upon it-these are the causes which produce in America an 
universal precocity of mind. In the educational department, some 
improvements are, we are happy to say it, beginning to redeem us 
from the charge of gross physiological ignorance, and the alternation 
of bodily exercises with mental tasks, promises to protect the imma- 
ture minds of school boys from the ostentatious stretchings of peda- 
gogues and ambitious fathers. As the health of manhood depends 
in a great measure upon the health of childhood, so the vigor of 
mind with which the young man begins life will depend upon the 
character of labor imposed upon it during early youth. Up to this 
time, then, we are certainly masters of our mental occupations, their 
duration and their quality. 22 
It is far different, however, with men in professional life. Once 
entered within those lists, and there is no intermission consistent with 
reputation and a due discharge of duties. From this battle-ground 
there is no honorable escape, save through death. The professional 
man, like the knights of Branksome Hall, must wear his harness by 
night as well as by day. Ready must he be at any moment to 
obey a summons, whatever its character, or the complexity of inter- 
ests it involves. The tide of traffic, of litigation, of statesmanship- 
all the rivers of industry in our country, flow at such a rapid rate, 
that, once embarked in his own little shallop, each must ply his oars 
unceasingly, if he would ascend the stream to its fountain-head. 
What weary hours of toil-what vigils-what brain-throbbings 
await us in the passage ! What but a brave heart, an earnest pur- 
pose, a consciousness of rectitude, can bear us through the long 
reaches of patient abiding, or of protracted labor. 
But God, wiser than man, has arranged the economy of nature 
with particular reference to our all necessities. He has given us the 
day to toil in, and the night for rest. If you will but observe it, it is 
incredible how much labor-thorough, progressive work-how much 
study can be accomplished, how much writing can be done, what 
varieties of intellectual tasks can be successfully achieved, day after 
day, and month after month, by working the brain only during the 
day, and resting sacredly at night from all labors. You may say 
that man is a creature of habit, bound by no special hours, either of 
rest or labor, and that he can accustom himself to anything ; but in 
this you err. It may not be always easy to explain the connection 
between physical and mental phenomena ; still less can we explain 
the influence of certain hours of the day upon our bodies, as con- 
trasted with other hours. The problem is of difficult solution. I 
may say this much, however, that there never was a recorded case 
of extreme longevity in a man who was not at the same time a 
sound sleeper and an early riser. And these two conditions presup- 
pose early hours of retiring. As a class, the insane cannot be said to 
sleep-they merely slumber, and one of the most painful objects to 
behold is he whom neither " poppy nor mandragora, nor all the 23 
drowsy syrups in the world can medicine to sleep." That man is 
either insane, or on the point of becoming so, and he will soon tell 
you of " chimeras dire"-hallucinations, in a word, afflicting him 
through eye or ear. Therefore, gentlemen, since from so many in- 
controvertible circumstances we are nationally prone to undue ac- 
tivity of mind, and since, as professional men, we are additionally 
exposed to the dangers attending upon over-tasked intellects, let us 
put the warder of repose between us and that state of mental ten- 
sion which so constantly threatens our intellectual health. Let us, 
then, cultivate sleep-not the sleep of sloth and inertia, not the list- 
less reverie of ennui, not the kefl' of the Arab, or the noon-day siesta 
of the tropics, but that other and nobler Somnus, whose temple open- 
ing only at nightfall, invites the weary, day-worn traveller to rest. 
Here, with the silent stars for his everlasting ministers, he sits en- 
throned in halls of sweet obliviousness, waiting, with the lavish and 
impartial affection of a parent, to crown us all with the poppy 
wreath of sleep.