and they are so. They are unable to see the precise and full relations of things. They omit to take into account a multitude of circumstances, which are necessary to such precision and comprehensiveness of relative perception. In a single word, the inexpressibly important trait of sound judgment is not merely weakened or perplexed (which is the fact in all cases of disordered judgment), but is annihilated. Insanity, in the strict sense of the term, has supervened; and there is an evident necessity of the substitution of the guidance of friends and of the law for their own personal and self-responsible control.

CHAPTER IV.

DISORDERED ACTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ASSOCIATION.

§ 130. General remarks on the nature of Association.

THE laws of the mind, the great principles which regulate its action, as well as its mere perceptions or states, may be disordered; for instance, the laws of Association. The term Association expresses the general fact, that there is a regular consecution of the mental states. This succession of mental states, however, as is well ascertained, is not an accidental and irregular one, but has its laws. The leading laws of Association, modified by some subordinate

ones, are Resemblance, Contrast, Contiguity in time and place, and Cause and Effect. Such is the spe

cific and just operation of these laws in their application to the thoughts and feelings, that a just and coherent action, in other words, a movement regularly successive, and reducible to fixed principles, will characterize the operations of the mind in a perfectly sane state. When the mind is disordered in the associating principle, the mental action will be very different; characterized by wildness, exceedingly rapid transitions, and, in general, by great incoherency. Perhaps an instance of this form of insanity, taken from real life, will best illustrate what we mean to say. The following extract was taken down from the remarks of an insane young man of a good education, who was formerly detained as a lunatic in the Pennsylvania Hospital.

I am King

"No man can serve two masters. Philip of Macedonia, lawful son of Mary, Queen of Scots, born in Philadelphia. I have been happy enough ever since I have seen General Washington with a silk handkerchief in High-street. Money commands sublunary things, and makes the mare go; it will buy salt mackerel, made of tenpenny nails. Enjoyment is the happiness of virtue. Yesterday cannot be recalled. I can only walk in the nighttime, when I can eat pudding enough. I shall be eight years old to-morrow. They say R. W. is in partnership with J. W. I believe they are about as good as people in common; not better, only on certain occasions, when, for instance, a man wants to buy chincopins, and to import salt to feed pigs.

Tanned leather was imported first by lawyers. Morality with virtue is like vice not corrected. L. B. came into your house and stole a coffeepot in the twenty-fourth year of his majesty's reign. Plumpudding and Irish potatoes make a very good dinner. Nothing in man is comprehensible to it. Born in Philadelphia. Our forefathers were better to us than our children, because they were chosen for their honesty, truth, virtue, and innocence. The Queen's broad R. originated from a British fortytwo pounder, which makes too large a report for me. I have no more to say. I am thankful I am no worse this season, and that I am sound in mind and memory, and could steer a ship to sea, but am afraid of the thiller. son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Born in Philadelphia. Born in Philadelphia. King of Macedonia."*

************

This extract will serve to explain what we have said in respect to a want of coherency and regularity of mental action, where the associating principle is disordered. In all cases of perfectly sound mental action, there is a chain, a connecting link, binding one part of the train of thought to another; generally easily discoverable, but less obvious in some cases than others. But in the extract which has been given, and in all similar cases of disordered mind, it is very different. Nearly each successive thought has the appearance of being entirely inde. pendent of what went before.

*Rush's Diseases of the Mind.

131. Of sluggish and ineffective Association. Imperfect and disordered association exists in a number of varieties, and assumes various aspects. There are some cases where the Associating principle appears to be more sluggish and ineffective in its action than would naturally be expected in a perfectly symmetrical mind. The action of the mind is amazingly slow; it seems to labour under a sort of paralytic torpidity; so much so, that it creeps on with great difficulty from one topic to another. This is sometimes noticed in conversation. We are conversing, for instance, with such a person; as a natural result of the effort of conversation, we become in some degree excited; our minds, in consequence of greater associating activity, take a position far ahead; and we look back with a degree of impatience for the corresponding movements of our sluggish interlocutor. After a while we discover in his uplifted eye the gleams of nascent intelligence, and a thought, perhaps a very just and appropriate one, emerges from the depths of mental inactivity, which we imagine, judging from our own different mental structure, ought to have been on its journey long before.

The facetious author of Knickerbocker's History of New-York, in exaggerating some peculiarities of national character, has given an uncommonly favourable view of this mental defect, viz., the ideas are so large they cannot be turned over. He is speaking of the venerable Wouter Van Twiller. a man shut up within himself like an oyster, and of

"He was

such a profoundly reflective turn, that he scarcely ever spoke, except in monosyllables, yet did he never make up his mind on any doubtful point. This was clearly accounted for by his adherents, who affirmed, that he always conceived every object on so comprehensive a scale, that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it, so that he always remained in doubt, merely in consequence of the astonishing magnitude of his ideas."

It is here, in the view which has now been given, we find one element of that great phasis of human nature, mental dulness or stupidity. We do not mean Idiocy, but merely dulness, a want of a quick and penetrating apprehension of things. We say that we find here one element of this, because the elements, or, rather, the sources of dulness, are many, and are implicated in various parts of the mental structure. A man may be accounted a dull or stupid person in consequence of a naturally dull or blunted power of external perception, or in consequence of a weakness in the power of relative suggestion, or in consequence of å great defect in the imaginative power, as well from the circumstance of great weakness and tardiness in the action of the associating principle.

$ 132. Of mental defect in consequence of too quick and rapid Association.

A more striking associative defect than that which we have just been commenting on, is one of a directly opposite kind, viz., too great rapidity of asso